I take it all back, the kids are alright. It seems they are enthused by the future enough to collect from car-boots and connect bits of tech to give us a soundtrack of what might become. Fuck Button’s Tarot Sport is thus the perfect youthful accompaniment to Moebius’ Kram.
Before my first encounter with Tarot Sport I was slightly worried. I’d heard phrases and words such as ‘accessible’, ‘mainstream’ and ‘cross-over hit’ bounded about. Understandably, I think, this produced concerns that one our artists of 2008 had watered down their sound. This anxiety was underlined somewhat as I came to realise that the brilliant ranting-cum-speaking-in-tongues that added so much to Street Horrsing had been jettisoned.
And I still miss the indecipherable fuming. However, this album has won me over in three ways. First, there’s a real sense of arrogant independence on show here: for example, not many combos could get away with a 10.32 opener (‘Surf Solar’). Second, with a flick of a switch they have the ability to mesmerise with an utter grandeur and massiveness (for want of a better word). Third, the now seemingly signature fuzzed guitar/organ drone is still apparent and as warming as ever.
Take ‘Olympians’: the sense of space and enlargement on this track is so convincing and hypnotic that it can make you feel both godlike and irrelevant at the same time. If you don’t believe me, just stare at the sky when you listen to it. No, try it.
So give it time (if you have enough). It’s an album of expanse and scale that at first can make you feel a bit lost, a bit insignificant. But then you give up any sense of control or possible importance, and you come to realise that being lost can be a wonderful thing.
Just buy it.
angrybonbon
Want this now. Sounds great, even without the screechy disturbed-man-trapped-in-metal-box noises.
it still sounds pretty screechy – the cat gets rather agitated when I put it on. Good stuff, all the same.