Fiend 2 - Caledonian Cosmic

Second in the series of archived solo recordings from Brendan O'Hare, Caledonian Cosmic isn't so much a progression from Caledonian Gothic as it is another side of O'Hare's work. The hints of Krautrock in the title, à la Komische music, play out here, with O'Hare following his own magpie-like path, not so much cloning the past as combining it however he so chooses. The selections here include Faust-tinged playfulness, Ash Ra Tempel guitar freakouts, Can and Neu!-influenced jams and so forth yet, unlike a lot of revival acts of the '90s, things here are fresh given O'Hare's talent in creating something new out of it all. Things sound familiar without simply cloning — a good example is "Null," with shadowy, murky guitar soloing à la Manfred Gottsching, while echoed snippets of O'Hare's lyrics bounce and retreat from speaker to speaker. Add in a strange, peaceful central rhythm buried even further in the mix, and the result is a fine new approach, reminiscent of contemporaneous stylistic work from Bristol-based groups like Flying Saucer Attack or Amp. He uses the echoing vocal effect more than once elsewhere, as on the appropriately titled "Spacedtime," indicating a greater stylistic tie among the tracks beyond when they were recorded. A couple of short tracks aside, on Caledonian Cosmic O'Hare seeks to stretch out the groove, with numbers averaging around eight or so minutes and the final one, "The Birthplace of Stars," almost 20. "Testimony" makes for a good, off-balance start, with O'Hare's evangelist ranting sent through layers of delay while church-into-psych organ plays along and all sorts of tweaks and beeps from who knows what source start piling on. "The Birthplace of Stars," meanwhile, has a vast, looming sense of ebb and flow wonderfully offset by softer guitar melodies to create a meditative, haunting blend of sound.