speedqueen - big leaves on a small tree

avant-garde / experimental

Speedqueen (or SQ, as they would alternately call themselves) were the duo of Joe Tunis and Marc Faris based out of Rochester NY back in the 90's; at their core they were a guitar and drums duo, but they also utilized keyboards, effects, and a lot of noise in their longform jams. Big Leaves On A Small Tree is a much heavier and more varied collection than this bands' other recordings.

song description snippets:

... spastic noise metal riff and busy, percolating drumming locking in on a crushing groove-loop .... skittery improv-drone piece, with strange conversations overheard in the background behind quiet free drumming, scraping guitar noise, amp hum and room ambience..... metallic math workout, sludgy and spastic, somewhere in between Godheadsilo and Melvins with wild howling vocals, eventually breaking down into a cacophony of freeform noise and feedback.

.... going from brutal heaviness to Slint-y math rock workouts to those weird improvised dronescapes and spoken word conversations..... a huge amp drone freakout a la Total or Earth as rumbling loops of guitar distortion tumble into the void surrounded by streaking feedback, and screaming cable noise..... sounds like what Godheadsilo might have sounded like if they had started messing around with avant-garde improvisation and heavy free-drone.

.... a deep dronefield, pure floating heavy tone that sounds like Speedqueen are summoning up clouds of black smoke out of rumbling amplifiers and Tibetan prayer bowls.... like Melvins stomping through a stoned free drone jam. The last half of this track morphs into a massive psychedelic feedback drone jam on par with the more recent stuff from Zaimph, Hototogisu, Skullflower, and Double Leopards.

drone/math rock stuff.... a gorgeous rippling melody propelled by layers of guitar loops, a girl's voice appearing in triplicate panning around from speaker to speaker as a krautrocky drumbeat kicks in and the whole song lurches forward, angelic female singing drifting over the clockwork Circle-like hypno rock jamming.

.... brutal and noisy math-sludge beating, spastic riffing grappling with the pounding drums while gritty, crackling drones hum in the background... krautrock type jam but way heavier than anything they've done before..... a trippy mess of manipulated tape heads and loops of droning guitar chords swimming in pools of shimmering drone that all becomes more and more distorted and loud until it builds into a crushing, grinding roar of Total-esque white light feedback and distortion.

Big Leaves On A Small Tree is just amazing, combining crushing arty math-metal with blasts of heavy free drone, krautrock, and avant-improv soundscaping, a radioactive mix of Godheadsilo, Circle, Melvins, Dead C, Hototogisu, and free improvisation.

big trees small leafs

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