PHOENICIAN DRIVE:
TWO COINS:
STOLEN BODY RECORDS:
12" RED VINYL:
OUT NOW:
An extended 10" EP (and download) on the ever-fascinating Stolen Body imprint, Belgium's Phoenician Drive are anything but a typical signing for the Bristol-based label. Well, that's if you can term anything on Stolen Body as 'typical' or 'straightforward'.
Formed by percussionist Diego Mosco and comprising a handful of talented musicians from many backgrounds, Phoenician Drive combine hippy European psychedelia, Balkan, North African and new-wave. It's a seemingly impossible cocktail on paper but in practice works a treat. Two Coins For the Boatman sounds like Ozric Tentacles, Tinariwen, Gogol Bordello and Plant & Page jamming at a sand-swept souk. It's dervish mantra continues unabated for around nine minutes with minimal vocals and maximum intensity.
In contrast accompanying second track Fat Bill has more in common with Krautrockers Faust and Automat than the more exotic comparables on the first track. Although we're served up another lengthy mantra (clocking in at 11 minutes), Fat Bill is a rather more fractured work of art and appears to be divisible by three. A stuttered post-punk intro, a neo-progressive vocal passage and a maniacal climax that evokes a desert storm in Tangiers, all of which makes the b-side even more compelling. And impressive. If I was to liken Phoenician Drive's music to a Brussels district, I'd pick St Josse.
8/10
TWO COINS:
STOLEN BODY RECORDS:
12" RED VINYL:
OUT NOW:
Formed by percussionist Diego Mosco and comprising a handful of talented musicians from many backgrounds, Phoenician Drive combine hippy European psychedelia, Balkan, North African and new-wave. It's a seemingly impossible cocktail on paper but in practice works a treat. Two Coins For the Boatman sounds like Ozric Tentacles, Tinariwen, Gogol Bordello and Plant & Page jamming at a sand-swept souk. It's dervish mantra continues unabated for around nine minutes with minimal vocals and maximum intensity.
In contrast accompanying second track Fat Bill has more in common with Krautrockers Faust and Automat than the more exotic comparables on the first track. Although we're served up another lengthy mantra (clocking in at 11 minutes), Fat Bill is a rather more fractured work of art and appears to be divisible by three. A stuttered post-punk intro, a neo-progressive vocal passage and a maniacal climax that evokes a desert storm in Tangiers, all of which makes the b-side even more compelling. And impressive. If I was to liken Phoenician Drive's music to a Brussels district, I'd pick St Josse.
8/10