Thurston Moore and John Moloney-Full Bleed Caught On Tape (2015)

Thurston Moore and John Moloney-Full Bleed Caught On Tape (2015)

“For me, playing is about playing with other people.”

Derek Bailey

By: Ghost Writer

As a part of the once great psychedelic Sunburned Hand of Man, John Moloney never sounded as thunderous as he sounds on Age Limit, the first musical exercise of Full Bleed Caught on Tape, his newest musical collaboration with ex-Sonic Youth Thurston Moore, Moloney is a merciless monster banging violently on his drums, always eager to go at full speed leaving some space fir Thurston's inspired pyrotechnics.

At first listening you can imagine Age Limit coming off from some Doom Metal, album, perhaps something coming from a Melvins record,  but is Thurston's input which ends up setting the duo apart,  Moore could be considered a noise musicians, but the guy, first of all is a devoted music lover, and that is precisely what comes out every time he steps on his effect pedals, traces of Hendrix distorted fantasies come out of Thurston's guitar on the incendiary Nothing Glamorous, in which Moore uses Moloney's brutal dream as a solid base for launching his guitar screaming attack.

Again on Full Bleed, typical monolithic heavy metal is a reference, the duo starts with something that could have come from a Black Sabbath record, Moloney is a slow grinding creature from hell, while Moore seems more than happy tearing apart his six string imagine himself as some sort of bastardized version of Tony Iommi, and then on Self-Rule sounding like a horrible beast caught on a deadly trap, all this while Moloney goes against his tom toms.

Arguing with a Balloon comes as a complete surprise, as the duo goes on fully psychedelic mode,  Moore creating some ghostly guitar lines,  inspired perhaps by the great Keiji Haino, then, both musicians go on the loose on the more free form oriented piece of the record.

No matter how avant garde Moore and Moloney pretend to be, their punk rock roots end up on the surface, like on the beginning of Dispute,  which could be seen as a song close to the brutal attack of the mighty Discharge, or the weirdest moment of the always awesome Black Flag, there are even some moments here in which the pair of musicians go into very interesting free jazz territory with Moore guitar evocations touching the sublime by bringing us some really cool guitar changes and resurrecting some of the magic of the early Youth.

The whole record is full of amusing moments, like on the avant punk of Unsupervised, with Moore expertise becoming the key to such unique piece, with Moloney backing him up perfectly, there is some hardcore noise fun, but the duo traduces it into the world of live improvisation, no surprise, after hearing the brutal Moore's riffing that he played with black metal all-stars Twilight, the guy really knows how to make some heavy noise, just check the amazing ending of the song.

Full Bleed Caught on Tape really lives up to its title, as both musicians thrash their instruments till death, drums and guitar bleed at the merciless attack, this is pure helter skelter played all along the recording time