#fuzz riff

Having just visited the musical world of the mysterious Prince Ozay, I’d like to now turn my attention to another project celebrating secretive identities and transportive balearica known as Steady Income Band, who’ve just released an untitled 7” on Pond Life. As in my Prince Ozay review, I won’t spoil the secret, though here it is less well kept and the inclusion of the letters “MG” and “GA” on the artwork alongside even a cursory search will reveal the project’s origins. But regardless of the source, the sounds are what matter, and across two spiritual sonics immersions, Steady Income Band carry the mind to seaside jungle paradises and forbidden temple rituals, wherein minimalist machine rhythms, island hand percussions, and slap bass funk romantics sit beneath pan-pipe mysticisms; stoner riffs anchor molten glam-psych climaxes while fuzz leads set the air flame; mallet instruments fall like rain against a drunken tom-tom ritual; and layers of free jazz esoterica are manipulated via outer-dimensional dub transformations.

Steady Income Band - Untitled (Pond Life, 2020) The A-side beings with cosmic crystals generating soothing currents of resonance while waves of some intergalactic ocean crash far in the distance. New age melodies colored in hues of teal and sapphire are buried in the ethereal murk, drones waver like a mirage as cymbals and tambourines work into the mix, and eventually, a rainforest groove develops around these sexual slap bass licks...the vibe slow, low, and methodical…like tropical funk reduced to its skeletal essence. Congas and bongos induce further body hypnosis and mystical pan-pipe melodies cycle through the sky as warming waves of synthesis billow in, hover in place, then mysteriously fade away. There are subdued instrumental choruses wherein quivering pads bathe the mix in hues of a noir sunset and ambient chord stabs push through the tropical fog…as if dream house pianos are being rendered through a balearic blur. The mix eventually reduces to exotica percussion accents, birdsong lasers, and cymbal taps, which then sets up a molten climax of psychedelic power, as proto-doom riffing crunches beneath anthemic fuzz shred sorcery. After this riffadelic freak out, we settle into lounge jazz smolder, with the guitar still shredding...only now the tones are clean, liquid, and buried under layers of smoke. And as the track ends, the slip slappy basslines slowly fade away, leaving behind a Floyd-ian rhythm pulse, heavenly string orchestrations, and spiraling blues leads.

On the flip, marimbas splash and splatter through a spring reverb haze while tribal tom-toms flub and flob into a drunken processional. The fall of idiophonic rain is crazed and asymmetrical, with tones pitch-shifting and bending in ways that defy logic, and rainforest whistles commune with sci fi laser zaps, swooshes of resonant feedback, and insectoid oscillations. The robot-tribal ceremonial never relents, though it sometimes seems to malfunction, with beats clattering over themselves and sounding as if they might fall apart, only to snap back to the ritualistic temple groove. Tapped cymbal accents break free from the rhythmic flow only to disperse into a fractal glow and abstracted feedback melodies evoke the songs of some sickly bird while pools of primordial liquid bubble and boil. Subtle dub fx add an additional layer of alien psychedelia and as the track continues to lurch and lumber, my mind drifts to the earliest free jazz vision quest of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, though here everything’s been chained to a cyborg pulse and slowed to the speed of a delirium dream.