I am pretty sure that I have heard of The Brainiac 5 before even if I can’t actually precisely recall their position in the pantheon of British music. Nevertheless, they have a new album out called “Back To Shore” and, without further ado, to the words on that particular musical adventure.
For an album of this time and place, it is remarkable how convincingly dated “Back To Shore” sounds. That is, of course, a deliberate choice on the part of the band with the, seemingly sequenced, underlying rhythmic rigidity being counterpointed by a downright trippy randomness that makes many of the songs drift in a sea of sound like the result of some pill popping, and lava lamp lit, studio madness.
Let’s consider a couple of the songs. “A Woman’s Work”, for example, rambles inexorably like some sixties psychedelic experiment on the folk side of the track while “This Way” resonates rather more successfully with the oddball untidiness that made the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah band great.
I’m not sure where The Brainiac 5 are going with this album but they do, at least, make a somewhat diverting change from the predictability of modern music.
Available from Bandcamp.