VA - One Nation Under a Grave (2007)

Twisted Nerve legend Andy Votel presents a 'mutant mix tape' featuring raving cannibals, UFOs in distress and perverted tribal rituals. All in a days work, of course, for our reporter Cindy Suzuki...

Andy Votel is something of a legend in the world of depraved psychedelic records: his labels Twisted Nerve and Finders Keepers specialise in collecting the most freaky and obscure gems known to humanity, then warping them together into “mutant mix tapes.”

Were he around in the 1950s he would almost certainly have been labelled a communist. But as it is, he's around now - and his albums sound like eccentric LSD parties, or perhaps out-takes from the Eurovision Song Contest, featuring the black sheeps that were too weird for the world.

"do not attempt to consume this album without some kind of friendly guardian being in the room..."

This record is the third in a current series that includes ‘Music To watch Girls Cry’ and ‘Songs In the key Of Death’. It clicks all the right boxes for a classic Votel compilation: all the artists on it are a) phenomenal musicians and b) probably very high. The mix is interspersed with such classic B-Movie samples as “I can make the secrets mine… and I can use Dracula to help me!”

Alas, there was no tracklisting available as this article went to web, but the music, we are assured, comes from Spain, Turkey, Sweden, Poland, France and South America, which accounts fro the frequently indecipherable languages. Not that any of that stuff matters – this is music for witchdoctors, and the sense of ‘the other’ is what makes it all so voodoo.

So one minute we have a kinky French lady doing a striptease cover of The Who’s ‘My generation’, then the next we’re listening to a an American high school student discussing how beautiful the stars are while a hyperactive blues riff zooms behind her. A Romanian choir croons ‘Sound Of Silence’, while a perverted sitar twangs away in the distance. It’s like the greatest Russ Meyer movie never made, with a soundtrack performed by tropical cannibals being secretly controlled by Serge Gainsbourg.

Just one word of warning: do not attempt to consume this album without some kind of friendly guardian being in the room to keep your head together, should you suddenly display signs of irrationality, incoherence, or madness. (Artrocker.com)

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