K. Salvatore
The Counterfeiter
SIWA Records

I'm worried. I mean, these guys here, these the guys who a few cycles back proffered a case study on the killing of Moebius and Rodelius, and then executed it on wax. And now here they are before me, not only readying the knives and ears for both Alan Parsons AND Pink Floyd on the obsidian altar (or maybe it is in all actuality Mr. Alan Sherry and the No Neck Blues Band), but on the very papyrus itself entombing the LP, sprawls a cold blue Jesus and Mummy, with the curse of "COUNTERFEITER" scarred across their expired skin. If they are willing to take on the last two thousand years from their wadded prayer rugs, who am I to meddle, much less affix words of flattery and hate to each pedal of their Jacobin ladder? But whom are they overthrowing? Look back to the sleeve/ sheath for a sec longer, and wrapped around such the wriggling snake of a black dagger is the very Shroud itself, the greasy messiah stains of it sending the strays of the back streets to howl and sigh, through their black noses, sniffing the god-like salts to be very near indeed. And oh, it IS so close. And yet...

The vinyl itself is a recording of some very human oil and curled hairs, turning in on their own selves, aspiralling for both the grey clouds of the saints' eternal lofts, as well as the daemons' Chinatown waters, and the motion of such sweat is quite riveting, to say nothing of its collective trickle down the Nape and Nile of yours truly, the body floating, freely, clearly the best blood vessel. And when they're not floating somewhere between the toads and toes of the bearded ones, the two Salvatoreans are engaged in a most serious session of face-peeling, going through layer after sticky-skinned layer of past-polite gestures, deep down into psychotic core persona, each peel growing darker with the dank mental humus, the rot that gnaws at the light, the raincoats that are the secret of Sammy the Rat.

They have gotten to each other's candle, and gotten real gone, past all the bloody curtains, to the very bottom, finding a fire somewhere between expulsive flare and solitary flame, revealing in the end a mid-range light. Which is unfortunate, as even its hue is not solidly Vishnu-blue; it wavers, swims up and then back down. Their best moments involve a googily chewing of the black leaves, groggy at the bottom of the sound pool, as well as some fine above sea-level gasping on flutes and trumpet, lending a new airiness to their rooftop kingdoms. But they won't be killing kings anytime soon.

Copyright © 2001 Andy Beta