Saturday, September 14, 2024

The Slowest Clock - Smile Futurismo! All I Heard Was Purple (2014, Eye Unseen)

Slowest Clock were denizens of Dublin, IE, and while there may not be a "Dublin sound," this album barely suggests the quartet in question emanated anywhere near the British Isles.  Consisting of recordings tracked between 1989-90, the material on Smile Futurismo! was intended to wind up in the guise of their debut LP.  S/C's fortunes went south soon after the recordings, and frustratingly, the multitrack tapes from the sessions were misplaced for decades as it would turn out.  A subsequent studio session did in fact yield a posthumously released album, Life Still in 1995, but eventually, the aforementioned early lost tapes were located nearly 25 years after the fact, composing the fifteen tunes occupying Smile Futurismo!

Touted as psych/freakbeat revivalists, Slowest Clock weren't necessarily evocative of anyone from the original '60s vanguard.  Not completely removed from that sort of ethos, there is some occasional evidence ("You're So Strange" and "Turning Green") regarding how these guys might have been loosely shoehorned into those environs.  The winsome "Eastern Flowers" leaned in the vicinity of R.E.M., but wasn't quite in league with American indie rock either. Elsewhere, there are several songs here that strike me as unfinished, having miraculously surviving past the demo stage.  ...Futurismo! is an album of anomalies with seemingly minimal connective tissue, yet still rewarding if you're willing to invest a few concerted listens.

01. Going Home
02. Warhola
03. You're So Strange
04. Le Bordel Philosophique
05. Little Fishy
06. Cherie
07. Eastern Flowers
08. Acid Lake
09. Turning Green
10. Say What's On Your Mind.
11. Wasted
12. You Never See Me
13. Desert Mouth
14. Rejoice
15. In the Cinema

2 comments:

Christian said...

Hello! I was wondering if you could find for me Died Pretty – Trace (1993)? Please let me know, thank you so much!

Failsafe said...

I saw a band the Mexican Pets around 1996 when they toured London. Irish band, not a million miles from this sound.