The Mylar Tantrum

The Sunburned Hand of the Man collective's entry for Three Lobed Recordings' Modern Containment series consists of one track at 22 minutes, perhaps making it more of an EP than anything else. Still, at their best Sunburned can work wonders with the world of droned-out psych improvisation, and The Mylar Tantrum is a good example of that effect at work. As time has passed the group's affinity with such performers as Pelt and closer to home, Cerberus Shoal, has become clearer, so starting out the piece with a key short melody played on some form of squeezebox or organ seems perfectly apt. Beginning also as it does in totally abrupt fashion, it's likely this was part of a larger recording session, and the suggestion of this being merely the snippet of something bigger is quite aesthetically pleasing. Rhythmic drones and loops make up the track at the start as well, but slowly and surely spindly, brief guitar riffs and open-ended filigrees begin surfacing and gaining more prominence. Wordless vocal cries at about six minutes in actually distract more than enhance the effect, to be fair — it's intended to be a sudden interruption, naturally, but the result is almost too jarring. More apt is the appearance of percussion parts — bells, wooden instruments and more — along with the slight fading away of some of the drones, which by the second half of the song turns into a full-on drum jam in classic early Amon Düül collective style. Various keyboard/squeezebox parts retain primacy in the mix, though, and when the drums fade away at about 15 minutes that's all that's left, a gentle, moody ramble. This in turn gives way to the final section of chants, whistles and more drumming and percussion, feeling like the conclusion of a very late night ritual somewhere just mysterious enough.