77 Gaza Strip

Reviews:

"Precious few debuts in recent memory accelerate into the open-ended void of the imagination quite as vividly as this Boston quartet's, who's expansive melange organ/synth groans 'n' whispers, looming bass lines, restless percussion and multi-timbred guitar riffery will set both contemporary space-rockers' and aging mushroom acolytes' heads afire." Magnet #32

"Boston's interplanetary scoundrels Abunai! Take us on an undulating, pulsating trip through a swirling electric fog, steeped in archival influence but firmly rooted in the now…a meandering, mesmeric masterpiece." Ptolemaic Terrascope 24

"What the drone scene needs, a band with melody. Abunai! mesh lush arrangements with a tunefulness that harkens back to mid-80s paisley underground bands like Rain Parade" Popwatch #9.

"Guitar fixated neo-psychedelia… Abunai! offset their whirling guitar maelstrom with folk-rock elements (including a fine cover of Richard Thompson's Calvary Cross) and acoustic lyricism. At times they recall the hallucinatory quality of Fairport Convention's ground-breaking A Sailor's Life." The Wire #167

Incendiary Boston 4-piece Abunai! take their name from the Japanese warning cry meaning "Look out!" (a regular form of interjection in manga and animation) and their inspiration from the most fruitful periods of psychedelic music exploration from the 60s through to the present. Space-rock, folk-rock, The Beatles and P-funk are reference points, along with recent carriers of the torch My Bloody Valentine and Flying Saucer Attack. Playing only their third gig at the epochal Terrastock festival held in Providence, RI in April, Abunai! were one of the hits of the festival, winning over an influential assemblage of neo-freaks with an impassioned and highly melodic set that definitely had that hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-neck thing going on. It was clearly time for them to get some of this magic down for posterity.

Their debut release (which fittingly takes its title from the working title of the Byrds "Change Is Now") is a quintessential tab of 1990's psychedelia, vaulting in its ambition and razor sharp in its interpretation and expansion of influences into new territories. "Universal Mind Decoder" contains within its 10 tracks everything from space rock jams ("Cosmo Gun" and "Dreaming of Light"), to densely-textured collisions between folk lyricism and acid-fried guitar squall (their reading of the traditional "Gypsy Davey" and Richard Thompson's haunting "Calvary Cross"), to tracks that blur all he boundaries like the bouncing "space-jig" "Inspiration", the modal juggernaut "77 Gaza Strip", where excoriating waves of guitar give way to a single verse sung in almost choral style, and to my mind their finest moment, the jaw-dropping ballad "Quiet Storm". Personally though, I think their version of "Gypsy Davey" is going to get the most attention. It takes Sandy Denny's Fotheringay version as a starting point, then underpins it with the bass-line from "Friday Night August the 14th" from Funkadelic's "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow", then overlays the lot with drone-guitar plucked from heaven to hammer home the narrative. Folkadelic? You bet. Cover art by the Terrascope's redoubtable Davina Ware.