Review: Shampoo Boy – Crack

Shampoo Boy
Crack

Blackest Ever Black
Street: 04.06
Shampoo Boy = Head Dress + Ben Frost + Barn Owl

The 2015 follow-up to the brutalizing Licht, Crack is a thick, unyieldingly heavy and cantankerous album. What makes up the body of this strange animal are three long-form compositions full of subterranean crackling electronics, submerged drones and fucking heavy-as-rocks lead guitar (if such a thing exists in the noise/drone universe) that provides feedback-drenched overtones or sky-cracking lead shredding over a rolling sea of disturbed electronics and spooked bass lines. The trio of Vienna-based musicians include Peter Rehberg (founder of one of the great labels of our time, Editions Mego), Christina Nemec and Christian Schachinger, who have created an album of exploratory and mostly improvised interplay between electronics and guitar/bass setup that turns the traditional rock-ist format on its head. The result is a masterpiece of a record that knows restraint, subtle buildups and epic conclusions that find resolution within the process of unbiased creation. –Ryan Hall