EDDIE FLOWERS & THE WAX-LIP-SWAMP-DUB | VINYL RECORD (LP)

Eddie Flowers is a legend of the American rock sub-underground. Starting as an Alabama-bound fanzine scribe back in the early '70s, Eddie drifted to Bloomington to lend his presence to the Gizmos in the days before 'punk' was codified. Next, he turned up in L.A., where he founded the legendary acid squawlers, Crawlspace. Crawlspace was a thoroughly nuts collection of loosely rotating heads, who existed from 1985 into the new century. They played few actual 'shows,' but still managed to churn out endless documents of their music making. Still, Crawlspace's few vinyl offerings are exquisitely f***ed, and include some of the first heavy deployments of Can-generated riff-pulsing heard anywhere on the scene. Anyway, L.A. has a way of eating it's children, and Eddie was darn near gobbled by the Sunshine Monster before he was spirited away to Indiana by some old and solid friends. Once there, he lost no time getting a new 'situation' together, and this album is it's first graspable evidence. The music created by The Wax-Lip-Swamp-Dub unit is thick with acid-haze (generated by a real random assortment of instruments) and powered into fields of Can-like glory by the superb drumming of Tyler Damon (previously heard on (Manas III (FTR 330LP, 2017)). Eddie's vocals sprawl across the top of it all, giving an entirely new meaning to R. Meltzer's phrase, 'blabbermouth lockjaw of the soul.' The vocals here are all that, but they lay out like a beatnik rattlesnake frying happily in the Texas sun. It is a beautiful trip. Hint to travelers: the higher you fly, the better your view -Byron Coley, 2019. Edition of 300.