Dick Baldwin, fakejazz, Issue 5, 25 August 2000

This is the first of the Jonathon Whiskey series I have seen and heard, and I'm really impressed. The vinyl is thick and nice, and the packaging is heavy cardboard-type paper (like Shellac's first album or a June of 44 album) with a black and white picture of an owl pasted on the front. It looks really nice, and it's limited to 250, so I'm sure this will be selling out quickly.

The Tarentel song is a live recording that starts out noisy with a steady cymbal crashing amid abrasive-but-still-pretty noise. After a couple of minutes it fades out to more free-form guitar tone swells, lazy strums, and bass melodies ranging from very low end to high squeaky e-bow feedback (or something very similar at least).

Rothko's side is very songy with all 3 of their basses playing straightforward parts. It's a slow and pretty song. A little over halfway through, one of the basses adds a lot of distortion and plays a simple line over the top of the song still playing in the background. It builds then fades out and ends with the basses playing the same part it started with.

The packaging is great, and the songs are among the best by each band (the Rothko piece is easily my favorite of all theirs). Find this before they're gone, and get it! Or, if they're already sold out, watch Ebay, and pay whatever it might cost.

rating: 12/12