Music
[Album Review] Guano Padano ‘2’
Straying a bit out of the normal Bloody-Disgusting fare, I sat down with Guano Padano’s latest album, 2, this weekend. I was seduced into checking it out when I learned that Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle) did a guest appearance on one of the songs. If Mike Patton decided that this album was good enough to do some vocal work on, you better believe that I’m very intrigued and want to check it out.
The album opens up with “Last Night”, a mellow, beautiful track that I envisioned being used during a movie scene where a car is flying down the highway through the desert, late at night, the driver obviously distraught and on a mission. However, that image quickly vanished as the song bled into the second track, “Zebulon”, a Morricone-tinged toe tapper with overdriven blues riffs.
The next track, “One Man Bank”, mixes in some Oriental flavors while still preserving the Western attitude from the previous track. This is a slow track that would be perfect for some sexy dancing a la Selma Hayek in From Dusk ‘Til Dawn. Meanwhile, “Lynch” would be perfectly at home in a film noir piece.
Patton appears on “Prairie Fire”, an eerie track that is musically perfect for his vocal talents. He gets the opportunity to whisper his words, almost crooning them before nearly howling to the sky. Maniacal laughs puncture the soundscape every so often. The foray of Patton into Guano Padano’s world is brilliant.
From a production standpoint, this album is wonderfully tackled. There are a wealth of instruments and a wide variety of tones used for each one. It’s the type of album that will have you finding new sounds, new passages, new moments with each play.
Mixing jazz, surf rock, bluegrass, a few Oriental themes, and a hefty dose of Latin flavor with a Twin Peaks air of mystery, this is the type of music that would make any Quentin Tarantino fan get up and dance like Vincent Vega or Mia Wallace.
The Final Word: Guano Padano’s 2 is an intriguing and sexy smorgasbord of musical influences that work beautifully together.
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It’s a new day, and you’ve got new John Carpenter to listen to. John Carpenter, Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter have released the new track He Walks By Night this morning, the second single off their upcoming album Lost Themes IV: Noir, out May 3 on Sacred Bones Records.
Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.
Sacred Bones previews, “It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.
“Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone.
“The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”
You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now! And listen to the new track below…
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