Anyone Googling the band name “Climax Golden Twins” will eventually find themselves directed to a list of song titles accompanied by brief descriptions, and alongside tracks such as “Dead People” and “Mince Meat”, we are treated to this helpful blurb for a piece called “Leaf Whistler” (from the album Leaf Music Drunks Distant Drums): “a man plays a small leaf held between his lips as an elephant walks by.” Whilst the oddball picture this information has probably painted may not be entirely representative of their whole (quite extensive) catalogue, it does a pretty good job of helping prepare the listener for this, the latest offering from AFCGT.
Climax Golden Twins account for the “CGT” part of this collaboration with the “AF” coming courtesy of Seattle’s A-Frames, although any extra information as to which members of which bands are involved is scarce. In fact, any attempt at a background check is an uphill struggle, even down to their discography; this seven-track collection, available on vinyl or as a download (but not CD), is the group’s first official album release for Sub Pop, who released the last A-Frames album (Black Forest) back in 2005, although they have, over the last couple of years, spewed out a number of 10” and CD-R releases of varying limited availability on labels like Fire Breathing Turtle. The one thing that is clear is that AFCGT’s three-guitar/bass/drums line-up is capable of making one hell of a noise.
This album is way out there Neither as self-consciously wacky as CGT’s found-sound collages, or as dystopian as A-Frames’ post-punk, it is music for Zappa and Beefheart fans to smoke to; it’s trippy and complex, but it’s also hard as nails and batshit crazy, like the Butthole Surfers or early Boredoms. Mostly instrumental, it incorporates hardcore punk riffola and industrial drone, but manages to make something much more than the sum of its parts. It is, in an almost literal sense, space rock; the scraped strings and feedback that are all over the album could be the sounds of dying stars imploding, while the marching drums and grinding, repetitive chord sequence of the 10-minute “Two Legged Dog” sound like an army of invading robots trampling some alien civilization underfoot. Even the album’s “mellower” tracks, like the fantastically-named “Reasonably Nautical,” crank up the tension with rattling percussion and misfiring electronics, leaving the listener feeling as though they were trapped in a doomed space station.
Having commented on the band’s ability to create a racket, it should be noted that AFCGT’s greatest achievement is making the quieter moments as interesting, if not more so, than its louder ones. In fact, the noisier, faster tracks take up a comparatively small chunk of the album, acting mainly as interludes between the longer, strung-out pieces. For example, opener “Black Mark” bursts out of the gates with three minutes of sludgy stoner riffing and pounding drums, but the next similar track doesn’t come for another quarter of an hour, and then it only lasts three minutes. Granted, the track in question, “New Punk 27,” makes the most of it by cramming half a dozen or so different hardcore riffs into its short running time, but after that there are only 60 more seconds of rocking-out in the album’s final 15 minutes. It may or may not owe everything to sequencing, but like some of the best ’70s Krautrock albums, the effect is deceptive – an album that is 70% atmospheric drone, but sticks in the memory as a snarling avant-punk beast.
