Volcanic Tongue Catalogue

MV & EE
Live Road

Blackest Rainbow Recordings No Cat

LP
£14.99


Edition of 400 copies live album from Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder, joined by Ron Schneidermann (Sunburned et al), Doc Dunn and Chris Corsano. Live Road focuses on the more extended Environments style of MV & EE and makes for one of their most psychedelic and otherworldly sides, pitched somewhere between ’72 Dead, Alan Silva’s Skillfulness LP, the early lunar COM style and some of the wilder of the recent Heroine sets. The version of “Mine All Troubled Blues” that opens the set features some of Valentine’s most wayward guitar picking, a beautiful demonstration of how far-reaching his re-think of the possibilities of country-blues guitar has become. Takayanagi couldn’t have phrased it better. Then there are two versions of “Environments” spliced together to generate a hallucinatory headspace that combines plumes of outside strings with peacock drones and visions of melting steel. The B side sees Corsano piloting the group into a tear-it-up power stomp through “Tea Devil” before they dissolve back into another “Environments”. One of the MV and EE’s furthest orbits of form, beautifully realized by Blackest Rainbow with wraparound jackets featuring cover art by Jeremy Earl of Woods. Highly recommended.