Wet Tuna – Warping All By Yourself LP

Description

The kaleidoscopic sonic agriculture ofWetTunahas long inhabited its own universe. Over the past five years, they have established themselves as one of the most forward thinking and anarchic of the many groups rethinking and reconceptualizing the notion of the jam band, all the while frustrating critical attempts to slot the groups music into any scene, sound, or easily classifiable genre fad.

ForWetTunas latest, Warping All By Yourself, Matt MV Valentineoccasionally aided by longtime collaborators Samara Lubelski, Erika EE Elder, Mick Flower and Doc Dunnflies mostly solo. Continuing the Tunas m.o. of homegrown, dubwise psychedelia that eternally pivots on the edge of chaos and funk, Warping All By Yourself is as radical and beguiling as anything in the bandsor, for that matter, its principle architectsdiscography.
There remains a beautiful simplicity at the core of MVs workbench alchemy; as with the music of Can, there is in his productions almost always a lodestar fixed within the eye of whatever maelstrom or fragmented primal abstractions surround it. On Warping All By Yourself, funk and soul are both the unifying principles and the unlikely bedrocks upon which everything else orbits and rests, resulting in a concoction of iconoclastic, free-dancing music that has as much in common with Funkadelic as it does Crazy Horse.
Beginning with the sound of lapping waves on the shore of Coney Island, opener Raw Food sets the stage with an indica-kissed fever dream of shoegaze-y guitar and vocals over a slinky, sumptuous bass lurch; breakbeat-laced Aint No Turnin Back recalls the enigmatic street boogie of Royal Trux circa Inside Game, while Kinda Feelin Good foregrounds a slow-motion Earl Chinna Smith-style groove before dissolving into the kind of thick and blurry vortex from which a thousand e-damaged A.R. Kane fans have never returned.
The albums high point might be the irresistible Sweet Chump Change, perhaps the firstWetTunajam you could seamlessly sandwich into a DJ set between Herbie Hancocks Watermelon Man and A Tribe Called Quests Award Tour. Over a blood-pumping bed of warm keyboards, drums, and hand percussion, MV and EE free associate on what sound like potential song titles for some Kyuss-worshiping stoner rock band (Geek messiahunicorn blood, down at the pubspectral geezergravity tweeze), while MIDI flutes, organs, and cascading, painterly guitars peek and poke through the cosmic fug. An absolute banger.
The kinetic, psychedelic, and downright fun Warping All By Yourself serves as further proof that the most visionary, truly original American art continues to be made on the margins. Dont sleepgetWet!

James Toth, 2022