Hocus Peakus – Peak Records

Nighttime music seems to be more popular at the moment than it’s been in quite a while, and for my money at least, it has to be interesting to be successful. You can either have quality lines, or comedy breaks, or something a little special in your tunes, or you can smack in a load of noises that scare the shit out of people and are more or less there for their own sake. After opening with a nice, pretty inspirational speech from Alex Grey, it’s straight into the deep end with Yab Yum’s Immortal. It’s a nice tune, it’s definitely got the energy going through it and has a good sense of depth, but it lacks a bit of soul… like it’s just going through its motions. Electrypnose’s Opto is another nice record, it’s edgy and chunky and has a good amount of trickiness to it, with daft samples and changeovers and god knows what going on; the balance between gnarly and silly works well. Naked Tourist’s Three Lines In A Row is packed with edginess and evil, but seems to lack a bit of energy... it thunks along until it reaches its peak, and flings out fairly standard nighttime noises, which are essentially the same noises GMS were using circa Growly Family. Sector D’s Fucking Chorus is another kettle of fish fingers entirely. Completely on the money this one, the energy is pouring out of the speakers and the gritty, scary vibe that’s going on works utter wonders. Its thunky, clunky and manic – the sample in the middle is deliciously twisted, and it rides on out with one of the fattest, most delicious runs I’ve ever heard in this subgenre. Atriohm’s Pagan Anaesthetic is much more dissociated, an almost half-Finnish sort of sound with the nightmare dial definitely turned up to eleven. Seroxat is on good form with Victory, a mashup of tar-coated beats, flicky production and rising Nintendo noises. The final run is blistering, seriously psychedelic mashfest stuff and an absolute delight to be on the receiving end of. The madness continues with Blisargon Demogorgon’s Undead, seemingly a ploy to discern who in the audience is a zombie and who isn’t, and Mystic Instinct’s Peak Dreams, an orgasmically sinister bit of psytrance that could be the background music to human evolution happening in eight minutes of sped-up footage. Yab Yum’s & Drumatik’s Tripmatik is certainly very trippy, with shifting this’s and morphing that’s, but once again it lacks something that I can’t quite put my finger on… again, almost like it’s trying to out-weird itself, like a second year film student trying too hard to be David Lynch. For the most part, Hocus Peakus is definitely in the camp of layered, caustic sounds in the name of psychedelia, and it only really drops your jaw when it eases up on the gas pedal. Their mission here is, I think, very full power nitro-injected nighttime music, and such it’s definitely mission accomplished. If you want more substance, you may be better off looking elsewhere.