Strange sounds make Hovercraft zoom

In "experiment below," Hovercraft's Campbell 2000, Sadie 7 and Dash 11 orchestrate a surreal, mysterious, unknown landscape that the album visits numerous times. Without breathing a word, Hovercraft's tones fluctuate in your head. The band's world is the mad chaos of a nightmare, or a dreamscape for that matter.

Hovercraft and "experiment below" are music's own version of the cinema's surreal nightmare "Eraserhead," whose creator, David Lynch - of "Twin Peaks" fame - should definitely hook up with Hovercraft for future soundtrack inspiration.

Working like a film, "experiment" opens with eerie, gnashing tracks of "anthropod" and "phantom limb." Both contain elements of guitar hailstorms and drum thrusts along with lifeless, frightening high-pitched bleeps. "Phantom limb" contains a very interesting, nearly two-minute solace from the madness with a quiet, boiling reverberation.

Following "phantom" is "transmitter down," a piece that begins with a twangy guitar of the OK Corral gone mad. Later on in the track, Sadie's powerful bass accompanies lifeless, empty clicks and sounds reminiscent of those found in Jerry Goldsmith's score for the film "Planet of the Apes."

Hovercraft
experiment below Muse/Blast First 3 stars Reviewed by Daily Arts Writer Chris Cousino

These quiet, soulless tones and very low volume spaces make up the crux of the album. The strongest tracks are found in the short space adventure "benzedrine" and "wire trace," which both have softer sides filled with haunting voids. "Wire trace" contains one of the coolest, queasy sounds of a dissonant heartbeat.

As Hovercraft's odd realm passes into serenity with "wire trace," the final track "epoxy" is the grand pubah of them all - an apocalyptic culmination of the end of the world that the three musicians have created. It's insane, it's loud and it's all the more poetic.

Some may dismiss Hovercraft as plain noise, which, in a sense, it is. But it is well-crafted and well-produced noise that makes the chaotic, subconscious sounds of this Seattle trio all the more interesting and deranged.

09-22-98