The cover of The Cosmic Dead‘s new album Scottish Space Race appears to be making an impassioned plea for national independence, depicting as it does a Scotland that is so independent it has become an island away from all the bullshit going on in the rest of the UK. And right now I can’t exactly say I blame them. But it’s not a political album. It’s a Cosmic Dead album. A journey into space fuelled by caffeinated tonic wine. A Bucky Rogers In The Twenty-first Century, if you will.
As one would expect from Scotland’s finest psychonauts, Scottish Space Race is an epic psychedelic onslaught. Don’t be fooled by the mere four tracks on offer — clocking in at about seventy-five minutes, there’s plenty of Cosmic Dead goodness to go round. And those tracks really do need to be that long to fit all of it in.
Opener “Portal” starts off all ominous and scene-setting, all filter sweeps and whooshing noises, like you’re waiting for Hawkwind to come on stage. Then a low chant rides in on a cavalcade of drums and the real fun begins. We have lift-off round about the twelve-minute mark, the Hawkwind booster modules drop away and we’re in something like Acid Mothers Temple territory. If Acid Mothers Temple were also secretly a bit like Motörhead. “Ursa Major” is classic space rock, building over its tweny-five minutes from a relatively restrained opening to a truly bombastic crescendo. It’s the sound of galaxies boiling away into space while you hurtle through the wreckage in a tiny capsule with a THC canister attached to your face. The title track ironically is the one that makes planetfall, big earthy riffs and garage rock, but still with all the bells and whistles to remind you that the planet you are on is no longer Earth. But it may well be Scotland. Can you dig it? Can you dig it? CAN YOU DIG IT? Why yes, sir, I can. It’s the thrashiest track on the album, but it’s strangely hypnotic. Mantric thrash? Hell yeah.And then the voyage concludes with the wonderfully-titled twenty-four-minute opus “The Grizzard”. Almost Sleep-like in its stoner riffing until the drums pick up the pace and we’re spiralling into orbit again, guitars leaving vapour trails across the night sky. When the soloing begins it’s like watching attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion (RIP Rutger Hauer). It has more crescendos that anything this side of Swans‘ The Seer, and every time you think it’s over it kicks you right back into space again.
Overall it’s quite a trip, in every sense of the word. This is how you do space rock without sounding like a bunch of hippies.Beam me up, Scotsmen.
-Justin Farrington-
