Heatsick - Reverse Gardens

Artist Heatsick

Label Turgid Animal

Year 2007

Genre(s) Drone

I came to know Birds of Delay before having even heard of Heatsick. The Berlin side of this UK/Germany duo, Steven Warwick, also produces acid mangled jams under the moniker of Heatsick. Taking a sledgehammer to conventions in favour of free-form psychedelic scuzz. I first heard Perpendicular Rain on Not Not Fun and had an insane desire to track down more from the demented warped electronics maestro.

Enter Reverse Gardens on the UK based Turgid Animal label. On this release Warwick offers two tripped out jams, each around the thirty minute mark and each offering up a veritable smorgasbord of spacey, warped and shuddering psychedelic noise. All the usual characteristics of noise are present, pulsating high end and rumbling low end. Hiss, fuzz and skree. At the same time these elements are twisted and redefined. Like pushing the circular block into the square hole but managing to make it fit. The tracks are repetitive but never to their detriment, lulling and tripped out. Imagine being plucked out of your bed by a UFO suffering engine troubles, pluming smoke into your bedroom and obscuring everything. The warbling noise shudders along, dragging the listener with it. Sections repeat, loop and merge seamlessly into one another all the while wrapped in a blanket of hiss. Lay back, relax and let the journey commence.

Side B sounds like an electrical fault in a dub studio, with King Tubby looking on in horror as screechy wah takes over his bubbling bass. Not too dissimilar from some earlier Sun Araw work. The mangled electronics start to take over the track, pulsing to the top. There's a lot of projects that claim in their little blurbs to be the result of "broken electronics" but I don't think any really hammer that fact home in their music, Heatsick on the other hand sounds like the expert handling of broken electronics to make a cohesive complete product. Reverse Gardens makes strong use of repetition, sounding like early Psychedelic Rock (Blue Cheer, maybe even Christine 23 Onna) in the process of being pushed through a blender. Repetition slowly warping as it becomes more and more damaged.