Some messages read like a kick in the nuts. 3 months ago one such message landed with all the swiftness of a precision size 10 in my inbox from Paul Le Keux, chief alchemist of one of Rugby England’s leading neo-psychedelic lights Uberfuzz. In a nutshell he explained why after several neon years and a string of exceptional records the band was calling it quits, hanging up the guitars and strobe-lights and ambition for furthr musical escapades. I guess with hindsight the underlying reason must have been that which commonly eats away at most excessively creative brains before finally exploding in an uncontrollable urge to tear everything down – namely the age-old beast of burn-out. When I finally undoubled myself from the comprehension of what I’d just read I promptly emailed him back to thank him for the untimely kick, express my disappointment and suggest that from what I’d heard before that this was hopefully but a temporary blip since music was so blatantly “in your blood”. The thing that bothered me most was having played catch-up with the Uberfuzz back catalogue it was glaringly obvious that record by record here was a band that was rapidly growing in stature with a quite remarkable upwards trajectory – the sound blazed steadily brighter, the songs grew mightier by the month, when they were doing their loud Vietnam soundtrack riff-driven thing they were quickly edging into Kurtz territory, and when they spun their bright-sided space instrumentals the combination of melodies and arrangements were taking you further out each time.

Thankfully I was on the money about the music and the blood thing, because with the memory of the aforementioned boot in the balls still crystal clear in my mind, Uberfuzz are back. The upwards trajectory shows no sign of fading, the sound is brighter than ever, the songs are as mighty as anything gone previously, the riffs smell like tanks rolling into ravaged cities, hash and flowers intermingling in secret underground nightclubs, and the luminescent internal space-explorations are simply too fucking great for me to successfully put into words. As much as I prefer a full-length record to sink the teeth of my ears into, here is one 5-song collection you really should make some space in your head for. “As If It Matters” jump-starts into action with it’s title track, prototypical Uberfuzz, another alchemical fusion of rock & roll, pure pop and blues, alive with synths and fuzzy guitars, vocally a stone’s-throw from Spaceman 3, The Velvet Underground, and early Verve. In the context of the 5 tracks it’s a happy middle ground, somewhere in between the riff driven tracks and the psychedelic lullabies. There’s no doubt that everything Uberfuzz touch these days is pure sonic gld, but its by far the “safest” of the songs, gently easing you into a record that quickly peels apart into a schizophrenic world of sound. 

From “As If It Matters” in you can cut this record in half. “Evil Kiss” and “Crush” are honed dark electric guitar heavy monsters of songs scorching everything in their way, whereas the closing “E-Waltz” and “Too Good To Be True” are melodic signals on the horizon, blowing electrons around in your brain down unmapped neural avenues. And though the ubercool black rock& roll face has undoubtedly got its place in the overall Uberfuzz family portrait of styles, its the latter two that got me really excited about this EP. “E-Waltz” is instrumental brilliance, at once acoustic and electric like the perfect soundtrack to some psychedelic shuffle of love on the dancefloor of an imagination when everyone is far too wasted to really be moving at all. Closing “Too Good To Be True” is not only this record’s pearl, but historically will perhaps be remembered as the birth of The Grosvenor Suite band, sounds a lot like Arthur Lee just accidentally walked in on Primal Scream’s “Screamadelica”. A real melting pot of sound, clever guitar hooks, Scott White’s angelic multi-delayed vocal rendition at the centre of a dreamlike whirlwind. It’s Uberdelic Ubergenius. Or words to that effect.

Having burst through the blip and emerged on the other side apparently sounding rejuvenated and as up for it as ever before it somehow makes “As If It Matters” matter much more than it would have done if this had simply been another record in chronological sequence. Such a seemingly close call highlights the fragility of even the most impressive and innovative bands – you just never really know when a record is a “last record” and that’s as good a reason as any why you should snap this up now, play it to death until the songs are as embedded in your brain as they are in the songsmith’s blood. Yet somehow I don’t think this will be the last transmission we receive from planet Uberfuzz, and with rumours abound that a sitar has been recently acquired, you can probably expect (but not take for granted) that the trajectory will continue stretching for the skies on the rip of this latest offering.

Download UBERFUZZ “As If It Matters” from the QUIXODELIC RECORDS link at the top of this site. 

Listen to “Evil Kiss” from the EP:

CATEGORIES:QUIXODELIC RECORDS, REVIEWS, UBERFUZZ