Review: Lush Worker - Realms

To say that Mike Vest is prolific is a gross understatement....not only is he part of that space rockin' leviathan Blown Out, he has also laid waste to our brains with psych doomsters Bong, 11Paranoias, Lobster Priest, Haikai No Ku, Space Victim, Drunk In Hell, Basillica and, more recently, Melting Hand and Dodge Meteor...phew....don't know when he gets to sleep or eat or whatever! Lush Worker is ostensibly his solo project and there is a new tape, 'Realms', coming your way courtesy of the excellent Hominid Sounds label. For those who may be worrying about whether Vest can capture the huge sounds and brain scrambling intensity on his own....fret ye not...'Realms' is a trip into the cavernous underworld of Vest's imagination and may well be the soundscape to a thousand nightmares...and I mean that as a compliment.

'Realms' kicks off with 'Mild Exorsism' [sic] and straightaway we stray into a territory inhabited by Vest's wailing guitar echoing around the speakers in a maelstrom of psychedelic drones. There are no 'riffs' to be heard here...just the unearthly keen of guitar and effects. If you listen to this on headphones, which I urge you to do, the feeling of space is unreal....the howls of sound echo round your head like nothing I've ever experienced... it's disconcerting at first, but once you let yourself get into it, it becomes savagely blissful. 'Surgical Xenocide' starts with an demoniacal cry straight from the pits of hell itself and heralds the welcome of more sepulchral swirls of guitar and dense drones. It's possibly more abstract than 'Mild Exorsism' but with a recording such as this the very concept of abstract goes out the window...this is not supposed to have a structure per se...these tracks are meditations on what one man can do with a guitar and an effects pedal. 'Zoid Fuel' is the longest track at over ten minutes and follows the same course. There has always been discussions about 'what is psychedelia?' with regard to music, and I guess there always will be, but as I mentioned when reviewing the last Blown Out album, surely what it means is that it is how it makes you feel and not the stereotypical associated sounds.....the one thing that can be said about Vest, in whatever guise he may be wearing, is that his music has the ability to create....soundscapes, nightmares or whatever...that is psychedelic! The extended length of 'Zoid Fuel' makes it even more immersive; you get lost in the immense oscillations of guitar and effects and it becomes positively hypnagogic. 'Lethal Purple' has the same eddying guitar and drones but also some, what may seem to be incongruous, tinkling of bells. This juxtaposition of the innocuous with the malevolent only serves to heighten the atmospheres that pervade the recording. 'Out System' is the most accessible of the 5 tracks...the (relatively) 'straightforward' psych guitar and the ever-present drones seem more fluid on this track than elsewhere and conjure visions of desolate and dystopian landscapes, there is more than a hint of faded beauty about it....a surprisingly optimistic note on which to close the album.

It was tempting to merely draw comparisons with Blown Out for the sake of this review...and there are comparisons; the same sense of space and the same crushing density.....but it's not as easy as that. Lush Worker provides Vest with the perfect vehicle to indulge his more experimental music making and so becomes less constricted by formula or shape. This freedom leads to his weaving some sublime soundscapes using nothing more than a guitar and effects. The overall sound can be said to be 'psychedelic' in that the wah-wah and reverb is ever present but this is to short change what Vest has achieved....it is 'psychedelic' in that it can truly conjure visions and moods....if you let it of course. It's not always an easy listen, but then nothing good comes in this life with being easy! Yet again Mike Vest has come up trumps and another superb recording to add to his large and impressive canon of work. 'Realms' will be released on tape by Hominid Sounds on Monday 17th on black-cassettes, and includes a digital download as well as two LP's worth of Lush Worker bonus tracks to download from the Bandcamp page here.