Thought Forms - Skypegs
Posted on 13th January 2012
Thought Forms – Skypegs
LAVA THEIF / LT004
LTD ED hand made CD
2011
A simple hand painted, printed paper envelope complete with little foam button for which the artefact holding the recorded music sits beaming with Thought Forms potential. Skypegs is a three track EP from the Melksham guitar and drums trio, pets to Geoff Barrow’s label Invada Records and just home from six weeks touring as Portishead’s choice support in the US, potential indeed. This is the first recordings since their debut self-titled album in 2009.
Ghost Mountain You and Me opens with an understated chord progression that fills out with giant booming Bonham drums that guides the listener into the kind of intensity and volume they’re going to get to. And lifted we are to dizzying heights of fuzzy clouds of sound. I have often imagined that this band are the sonic equivalent of good ecstasy – blissful, transporting, happy – even in its heaviest moments there is a nirvana – and not the band…well maybe a bit, but definitely, with vocal texture, My Bloody Valentine.
Song for Junko hears Thought Forms push into more upbeat territory that until now, for them, has been uncharted. This suits them. This song is a superb example of current noise-pop – its musical structure is verse/chorus/verse with soft/loud/soft respectively, has the characteristics of usual pop song fare. Until, they turn it quickly into anti-pop song by taking a Cocteau Twins approach to lyrics and lyrical sounds – there are words in there somewhere I’m sure – but the ‘A E I O U’ voices from both Deej and Charlie get your ears searching inside the ether of the guitar tones, a kin to Sonic Youth or Bardo Pond you find yourself inside the song, and there, inside, there is one hell of a drummer controlling your every move.
Bowing the final track sounds like it says – guitars with violin bows maybe, smoother building, oddness, more chance than choice, but against the spine tingling vocal Charlie delivers through a rally style microphone – perhaps mega – it’s a piece of art rock that shines. Think Magic Markers with knives in the mouths. And the end of the day, if this is a pre-cursor to TF’s next album, we should all be at every show they ever do just to collect their every tone, beat and squawk for memorabilia. Skypegs is a triumph.
-Miss Gardiner
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