Holy Mountain
2007
Wooden Shjips
About This Album
The Wooden Shjips -- Ripley Johnson, guitar and vocals; Dusty Jermier, bass; Omar Ahsanuddin, drums, and Nash Whalen, organ -- play minimal, droning, garage band meets Krautrock psychedelia full of long, meandering instrumental passages and pounding, primitive rhythms. Often tunes are based on two or three notes that are endlessly recycled into a hypnotic, or annoying, pulse depending on your taste. Incoherent echo drenched vocals rise and fall on swells of rhythm while guitar and organ dominate the foreground, delivering grinding, fuzz soaked stabs of improvisational madness. The short -- five tracks, 35 minutes -- album alternates between focused song-like pieces and long, free-flowing jams recorded on the fly in the studio. "We Ask You to Ride" grabs you right out of the box with its Zombies-like beat, think "She's Not There," and a spooky organ that floats out of the speakers like the ghost of garage bands past before Johnson's screaming guitar attacks your ears like a dentist's drill hitting a raw nerve. The echoes of Johnson's whispered vocals drop brooding Jim Morrison-like images into the mix before Whalen's organ takes the tune home with a short minimal solo.
Track List (try tracks 1,2 and 3)

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