Blasthead – Landscape

Lastrum LACD-0049
2002.08.30
Sounding a bit like Harmonia or the more electronic side of Krautrock, Blasthead appears on the same label as The Calm. It’s a similar mix of jazzy instrumentation, Mo’Wax downtempo beats played live (or at least I think so), a series of groove experiments.
It reminds me most of the Orb’s first album without the spoken word samples, or more likely the Orb’s version of ambient. Unlike the Orb, Blasthead feel no need to keep the dancefloor in sight. Rhythm, when it comes, arrives unexpectedly, sometimes fast, like an exploding drum circle, other times slow, like the multi-layered handclaps that remind me of Eno/Schwalm’s Drawn from Life. Lots of hammer dulcimer. At one point, some very discordant free jazz sax makes its way into the mix, waking up all the stoners in the chill out room.
There’s liquid bass, bubbling synths, a general blue-purple sound.
“Scene 4” grooves for for five minutes before blossoming into a big-beat, organ-drenched psychedelic rock freakout. At the moment, these two albums are hard to tell apart.