Splash It On...

chainsaw rainbow - art brut (2016)

With his latest album, Chainsaw Rainbow's mastermind Dominic Massaro offers up ten new tracks of effects-laden guitar and dreamy drifting, including a new version of "Love is a Vapor".  Covering a range from soft-ringing chords to blaring feedback (and regularly layering the two extremes over each other), the songs play with contrasts of aggression and introspection, spooling out hypnotic loops but ratcheting the tension up to prevent getting drawn into drowsiness.  Punkish raucousness and shoegaze's pedal play are blended in interesting ways throughout the tracks, whether pushing into harder territory or slowing down to calmer cruising, as the swirling tones and heavy resonance bleed together in well-handled waves.
The album also shows some changes in the way Massaro is approaching the songs, though picking out particulars is a bit tricky due to the idiosyncrasies of each individual Chainsaw Rainbow release.  Where photorealistic had a focused, almost tunnel-vision-like push through channels of single-minded drone and pedal drive, Art Brut shows more diversity within the bounds of the tracks, wandering about and taking in some changes instead of blasting away.  While both approaches have their merits, it's a little too easy to imagine the musician getting worn out on the latter in quick order, so the signs of alteration are reassuring, while also giving listeners who aren't directly in tune with the fuzz-drone experience something more to latch onto if it's their first time hearing the band.  As usual with Chainsaw Rainbow, check it out when you're in the mood for some good-humored heavy psychedelic material with a wide streak of shoegaze and drone influences, and you should be well satisfied.
~ Gabriel

For Fans Of;    Mind, Skullflower, Spacemen 3, Telstar Sound Drone, Terminal Cheesecake

Facebook • BandCamp

chainsaw rainbow - love is a vapor

~

Noise And Color...

chainsaw rainbow - photorealistic EP (2015)

The latest release from chainsaw rainbow, this four-track EP finds JETDOG's side-project continuing to explore the heavy noise distortion and fuzz of long-drawn riffs.  "sidewinder" and "caffiene" [sic], the first two tracks on the EP, do their job by fading in, buzzing up to full deployment, and fading back out into echoes of their noisy reverbed strains.
After those, "sparkler" may be the stand-out of the four, with some cool delay-reverse effects on gentle and relatively clear notes building a firm melody before phased, whomping heaviness is introduced.  Being as it's the longest of the tracks, the room to space things out has "sparkler" feeling more like a regular fuzz rock song than the others, though it does embrace the wilder disintegration effects towards the end.
"violet gorilla" closes things out with twangy bouncing notes feeding off of their own amplification, developing a semi-hypnotic rolling momentum with enough hookiness to work as the last track.  Comparing photorealistic to earlier chainsaw rainbow EPs is a bit tricky (especially if you didn't catch them on release, as they have a tendency to disappear from BandCamp after a while), but with the return to vocalless riff-churning, it does seem to satisfy the urges that brought the musical project into being.  Those with a love of pedal effects and zone-out music will want to check this one out.
~ Gabriel

For Fans Of;    A Place To Bury Strangers, Boyd Rice, JETDOG, Loop, Stereolab

BandCamp

chainsaw rainbow - sparkler (320 kbps)

~

Let Your Head Swim...

chainsaw rainbow - 747 (2015)

Already out with a full album after the release of his debut EP, pink haze, back in May, chainsaw rainbow is back with more loose-minded treks through thick fuzz and meaty riffs, keeping a heavy psych vibe ringing out while digging into shoegaze grounding.  Virtually devoid of vocals, the music focuses on chewing into the riffs as on the EP, with two tracks from that release, "astropop" and "pink haze", included on this album for comparison of how the style has expanded. 

With the guitar's echoing and gnarled sound-waves providing the main pulsing beats to the music, it's easy to hear the music as something larger than a single player's output, as long as you're in the right mood for the chord collisions.  It's a set of songs that call for your ears to give up their usual expectations and go with the fuzzy flow, and while that's a mode that might be difficult for some to slip into, fans of heavy psych and extended riffage would do well to check into chainsaw rainbow with this release.
~ Gabriel

For Fans Of; A Place to Bury Strangers, JETDOG, Spacemen 3, Telstar Sound Drone, Vanilla Trainwreck

Facebook • BandCamp

chainsaw rainbow - cherry sunburst (320 kbps)

~

Filling The Air...

chainsaw rainbow - pink haze EP (2015)

The four songs to be found on Chainsaw Rainbow's debut EP bring a pulsing lo-fi psychedelia to life in the form of feedback, tones, and drones, with each song seemingly recorded live in a single go.  Oscillations, reverb, and riffs that swell into fully-fledged grooves rule the airwaves, while muffled vocal contributions are spoken occasionally, softly under the roar.  

There's plenty of guitar mutation to satisfy those who hunger for that sort of thing; if you didn't catch the wink to Jimi Hendrix in the EP's name as a suggestion of what you're in for (along the lines of the wilder stuff in the live "Machine Gun" or his version of "Star-Spangled Banner"), you should probably spend more time with the classics.  Those in need of a steady and definite beat will likely be turned off by the semi-amorphous shape of the guitar's outpourings, but if you don't mind sounds just oozing and vibrating, give it a fair go.
~ Gabriel

For Fans Of;    Telstar Sound Drone, Culto, JETDOG, Blackwolfgoat, Skullflower

Facebook • BandCamp

chainsaw rainbow - mindflower (320 kbps)

~