Title: Self-titled Label: Reel Audio Media File Under: Transonic bombs over Baghdad RIYL: GSYBE, Ennio Morricone, Elvin Jones & Richard Davis Imagine if you will an extended soundtrack to the recent liberation exercises that decimated large chunks of Iraq. Think empty spaces filled momentarily by screams then strange scurrying noises and a scuffle, all to the backdrop of a distant beat you only realise half an hour later is the sound of your country people going up in flames. Somewhere there is the chipping away at rubble, the body parts poking resolutely into the air, the waste, the wastelands. That's what the first album from Canadian instrumental band All I See Is Red sounds like, and that's only at quarter volume on my stereo. On headphones I thought the bombing was beginning in my back yard. Their self described term "beat-orientated catastrophic compositions" is the most appropriate I've heard all year. Loosely post-rock, the three piece frontal assault set of guitar, bass and saxophone (Hornak, Owen and Butler respectively) are held together by the frantic, verging on free-jazz drummings of Sty Larocque, a man who has played with Living Colour and Chuck Berry in previous incarnations. Here the drumming adds cohesion, even in its raggedness, and eight minute plus songs like "The Destruction of Al-Shifa" are shaped and structured even as loops, scratches and other effects drop in and out. Occasionally the band, like most in this area, can verge on noodling, but somehow at the last moment AISIR draw back from that dirty edge and give melody and meaning, like cool air in the desert night. Hornak especially, by varying his guitar sounds from arabic to surf to Crazy Horse, is always keen to embark on melodic journeys, waves that peak and ebb or crash into something murkier. And when everyone hollers, "All in!", expect visits from your neighbours enquiring about the hell mouth that's opened up in your living space. Sombre and heavy as the night, yet showing glimpses of a pale, clear dawn, All I See Is Red have made great music in all its edges, plunges and whirlpools.
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