This’ll be fun. If you’ve heard those old demos — they’re on YouTube and all that — that earliest Monster Magnet stuff is noisy and experimental and raw as hell. Even as God Unknown Records announces Test Patterns: Vol. 1 to be released on Nov. 11 with a remix of “Tab” by John McBain — yes please — and the demo that first spawned the longform psych weirdness of that track-as-album’s final incarnation, the label notes that it comes from the 1989 demo, Forget About Life, I’m High on Dope. Should the whole demo be released? Yeah, probably. Will it? I don’t know. Fuck do I look like?
Fact is, that first incarnation of Monster Magnet, with Dave Wyndorf, McBain and the thankfully-archivalist Tim Cronin were kids screwing around. The noise they made, drawing from psych, kraut and space rocks, their own Jersey Shore disaffection and feedback-laced catharsis, just happened to be the key to unlocking a certain segment of the universe that was shut tight until they came along. Did they know they were doing it? Did they know that, 30-plus years later, those tapes would be getting reissued as ‘volumes’ of a band’s earliest work? Likely not. That doesn’t make it any less impressive.
Sign me up for this one. And if there’s a subscriber option for multiple volumes, I’ll take those as well. Even the teaser here sounds over the top.
Right on:
MONSTER MAGNET ANNOUNCE ‘TEST PATTERNS: VOL. 1’ TO BE RELEASED NOVEMBER 11TH VIA GOD UNKNOWN RECORDS ON 12” VINYL
Very excited to announce the return of MONSTER MAGNET’s ‘Tab’ – THE LEGENDARY PSYCHEDELIC MASTERPIECE on God Unknown Records.
Originally formed by Dave Wyndorf, John McBain and Tim Cronin, Monster Magnet lysergic oozed into the world in 1989 with two demo tapes – ‘Forget About Life, I’m High On Dope’ and ‘I’m Stoned, What Ya Gonna Do About It?’ – making it perfectly clear from the start where they were coming from. This was a band reveling in bad trips and the death of the hippy dream with a Manson Family stare, playing squelchy lo-fi psychedelic music with a rabid punk rock sneer, like The Stooges terrorising Hawkwind at the most unpleasant free festival imaginable. There were tales of entire audiences at their gigs being spiked with LSD. It didn’t matter if this was true or not, it all added to the mystique. This was indeed a satanic drug thing, you wouldn’t understand.
Long considered to be the true essence of Magnet’s early psychedelic voyages, ‘Tab’ is finally returning to earth’s stratosphere with the release of ‘Test Patterns: Vol.1’, available November 11th via God Unknown Records on 12” vinyl.
‘Test Patterns: Vol. 1’ features a 2021 remix of ‘Tab’ by John McBain, alongside the original demo, recorded in 1988 and then released on the aforementioned ‘Forget About Life, I’m High On Dope’ in 1989.
“Hawkwind, early UFO, Amon Duul, Can, Skullflower, Morgen, Loop, Crystalized Movements, early Alice Cooper, Walking Seeds, Butthole Surfers, Spacemen 3. When we recorded the first demo and got to TAB, we just beat the shit out of it until it became heavy, noisy, weird, mean and either too long or not long enough, depending on your mood. Everything we wanted in a song (at least everything I wanted in a song), punishingly psychedelic. Jersey Shore krautrock.”
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