You Have Just Been Poisoned

...And your Ribena is spiked with acid, no doubt....

…And your Ribena is spiked with acid, no doubt. The Serpents are a vaguely (though not exclusively) Welsh indie supergroup type thang, featuring various members of [a]Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci[/a], [a]Super Furry Animals[/a], Melys, and most bizarrely, Bunnyman Will Sergeant, ganging together to record marathon 48-hour sessions of tripped-out, sprawling, ambient rock.

…EXACTLY the sort of behaviour we created punk rock to eradicate. However, listening to this album does not require subsequent delousing of one’s hair. Yeah, the tracks linger on perhaps a little longer than they should, but in an eminently languid fashion, with enough interesting ideas surfacing during each passage to make the whole exercise seem downright sprightly.

And this is a defiantly modernist approach to the whole hideous hippy jamfest, taking in vicious acid squiggles (‘Bricweithiau Borth Wen’), dub fx, slightly cheesy sounds and a whole Can-ful of motorik Krautrock grooves underpinning the whole enterprise. It ain’t exactly a thousand miles away from Regular Fries‘ sterling debut LP – more self-indulgent and less snappily attention-grabbing perhaps, but riding a similar vein of lush, sprawling, deep-funk mush.

If you’re still sceptical, check out that last Kula Shaker LP, and decide what you truly [I]want[/I] from your nu-psychedelic rock – a trippy wheeze or sloppy cheese. The Serpents are, indeed, eminently [I]out there[/I]. But they’re willing to draw you a map.

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