Atomic

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It should not make sense. NONE OF IT MAKES SENSE.

Three blind mice meet a marching band, runs into Sergio Leone in an underground New York disco, takes on a subterranean rollercoaster with a punk rock drummer to see a blonde goddess who murmurs expectantly about forthcoming apocalypse. All this in an ambiguous spacetime flux, flipping wildly between major and minor. Switching up tempos, and exploring dimensions in between.

If this is nuclear holocaust — atom-age rapture, see what I did there — I want more of this sweet apocalyptic disco.

Three blind mice. What? Why start there? Because it plays a trick. A triumphal ascent, set to a martial, marching cadence to signify their — our — steady progress to our certain evisceration. Did you ever see such a thing in your life? The beat is mechanical, like a machine beyond mortal control, a crazy escalating upbeat, but in case we have not deduced what the nice found out, we are in a minor key? We can’t say we weren’t warned, warned, but things are beyond our reasonable power to change. At the crescendo — are we happy or sad? — a parade ground drumroll — what is coming, and is this it, or a premature end? An adolescent spurt? A jolt, un petit mort — sex is death & death is sex, a little cresting wave, a sure-shot snareshot — stop — a wide empty dustbowl, a kerrang of spaghetti western guitars and the rollercoaster clunges down into the abyss. Now the drummer Burke sets the pace, pulling frantically at the beat, a brisk four-on-the-floor stomp, hauling the band along at 135, but you know he’d go 150 if they’d only get a leg on — there, two measures in he’s given up on the quarter notes and is impatiently drumming his fingers with sarcastic hi-hat triplets as if to say, NO RUSH GUYS JUST WHEN YOU ARE READY.

They cycle round the intro vamp. Second go-round those hi-hat triplets are louder, the snare more strident, more like tongue-clicking like come on man we haven’t got all day there’s a sweaty apocalypse going down, man. But Stein and Infan and their cool hand Ennio Morricone guitars will not be rushed. They play this dreamy double tracked twang and you know that this is James Calvin Willsey learned everything he knew, God rest him.

And underneath it all this tension. Fast against slow. Happy in the face of sad. Lively, but morbid. Plumbing depths but somehow aspiring. Is there a faint, rising keyboard swell?

For all the sombre sombrero guitar that marching four beat has got a place to be and Burke is taking us there — and kaboom! there it is! Suddenly we're all major, the disco bass leads and the drummer Burke,is back in the pocket like he's saying I told you so, just cha-cha cheerleading now and here is the golden goddess and uh-hah, make it all right. Magnificent - Destri’s keys are pealing like church bells after a famous victory and it is all so major and positive — is that the ride over? No! boom — the ARP explodes onto line and oh your hair is beautiful we are thundering down into the depths once more in a beautiful minor - you can't understand joy if you don't know sorrow

Destri’s keyboard is reaching up, augmenting, yearning for something beautiful as if he can see it just above the grate

off on the rollercoaster Tempo and that drum beat

Bass solo A flanging denuded perfect fifth, neither major nor minor, a sequenced beat, and Nigel Robinson

The bass The arps The Ennio Morricone guitar