"I
Am The Sun" EP
EMI Records
CD EP, CDEMS 34
10" Vinyl EP, 10EMS 34
Dark Star have only just started, and already they're way better than Levitation ever were. Unless they blow out that revealing light again, after the magnificence of that first EP, "I Am The Sun" is a bit of a hiccup in Dark Star's momentum. At least on the title track; another messiah dream, but one which loses Graceadelica's assured velocity and goes hugely bonkers, both love song and murder mystery in one blurt of pomp, paranoia, and roaring surreal darkness. "Jesus was my age when he got nailed", wails Bic, his head spinning faster than a dervish on a drillbit. "I'm coming back to you, I'm centrifugal", "I'm paranormal!". Yeah, but calm down man, you're scaring the cat. Still, none of this Kula Shaker hysteria entirely blocks off the nerve-shredding energy - like Porcupine Tree jiggling frantically on a hotplate - that those urgent riffs and frenetic banging drums spray off. Something which the brilliant, belting psychedelic-techno remix from The Overseer P.F.I.T. taps right into, boosting Bic's babbling with a cruising rush of smooth majestic beats, glittering electronics and sliding doors.
But following the exaggerated fever is a much more satisfying sticky heat; two pieces growing out of the same bed of vivid stupor as The Verve's "Gravity Grave", or Floyd's "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun". The slow heart-slouch of bass, the static-soaked gasps, the slash of cymbals and of cloud-guitar, all giving the impression that the sky is darkening, the floor of the studio is melting, and we're all dropping out of the world. And the words are soaked in the unravelling menace of dark psychedelia. Like the hallucination voyage a distant, smeary South London voice is describing into a dictaphone on "Semaphore", or Bic's own whispering, wounded narration on "Living Under The Ground"; "Said I'm disappearing... / Thought "In most things I'm treading backward paths to get some distance from the past"... / It's my only way out of here".
Like Levitation, Dark Star are possessed of such power that they could as easily shake the world or tear the muscles off their own bones. 'Thing of Wonder' for effort and promise, lads, but don't let the frenzy buck you off this time. "Gracedelica", at least, is an object lesson in how to ride the bastard over the horizon and back.