Bandersnatch, 原子 (2017) A Review

Bandersnatch, 原子 (2017) A Review

By: Ghost Writer

“Great music can be found everywhere…”

This weekend was wonderful musically, I was listening to new releases by Danish band Communions, Swedish band Horisont, Mali tuareg band Tinariwen, British intense Sleaford Mods, the French experimentalist Richard Pinhas and Togolese great Vaudou Game, music from all over the world, beautiful music and lots of different sounds, enough to keep these days music sterility away, as you know, Ghost Writer unofficially motto is "great music can be found everywhere…" and many surprises are waiting for us to be discovered just around the corner, today, just after a few minutes of listening to this 2017 release by Moscow's three piece garage rock Bandersnatch (the name coming from Lewis Carroll great surrealist book Alice in Wonderland), you know this band is too big even for the big Mother Russia to handle, the glorious opener Trigger with brutal drumming and razor sharp guitars simply remind me at moments of great moments by the Stooges and other exquisite proto punk bands, but specially The Stooges whose mind blowing Raw Power was released 44 years ago these days, Bandersnatch sound here comes hotter than hell and more alive than ever, a great blow to the head with the title track, enigmatically called 原子, Japanese for "Atom", which brings a wide range of sophistication into the mix, along with impressive guitar playing, obliterating bass work and pulverizing drums, the band playing in a ferocious way few Russian bands have played since the days of the mighty Grazhdanskaya Oborona (the main band of the great late Egor Letov) and the powerful Korroziya Metalla, two of the greatest extreme band's coming from Russia (U.S.S.R.), while on Alone II, the band gives itself a chance to play a spaced out slow burning piece with epic monumental riffing trying to catch a little breath before continuing the relentless attack.

See You comes next and keeps up with the frantic pace of the whole incredible album, proto punkish in its approach and which Syd Barrett like psychedelic vocals which definitely gives these garage rock tunes a very distinctive nature that makes them impressively universal, the band relentless attack is gloriously constructed around the barbed wire guitars like on the jackhammer like on the piece called Lass Mich.

Atom or 原子 is a sublime garage rock record, a breath of fresh air within some mediocre wave of trendy garage rock, Bandersnatch is a band displaying enormous amount of raw energy, or “raw power”, coupled with boundless ambition displayed thru their playing in order to create an astonishing recording that finds some trouble in establishing an adequate equilibrium between its high energy pieces and the more atmospheric ones, it's a volatile mix that comes triumphant thanks to their uncompromising approach, even giving them chance to experiment with tongue in cheek tunes like closer Acid Bunny that sounds closer to some German kosmische music, and even crossing into some Sonic Youth territory, a satisfying recording from start to finish, and another record to add to the great tradition of brutally raw Russian music, a great surprise and a definite contender for best record of this month to me.