Catches you off guard music like this. I am pure psychedelic love child, but when I came across this band it was something else. GOAT from Korpilomolo in Sweden came on to my musical radar via a rabbit hole Bandcamp listening session – I won’t decipher the “rabbit hole” listening algorithm that got me here but it did include Andy Bell and Masal and SAULT’s Today and Tomorrow album.
On a mundane Wednesday evening at the end of May 2023 I was channel hopping, and the hop stopped on BBC2 mid-programme – The Gallows Pole, a criminal tale of anti-establishment in the 18th century about a gang of counterfeiters producing fake coins their crime carried the death sentence – soundtracked by a crazy fuzz pedal guitar solo. The fuzzy filth I was listening to turned out to be ‘Let it Burn it’, and instantly sounded familiar from my previous Bandcamp rabbit hole of psychedelia. The love child was reborn and into the fire I willingly walked.
GOAT did the soundtrack to the BBC2 series as Shane Meadows is by all accounts a big fan of the band. For a soundtrack it has some big standout tracks on it: ‘Let it Burn’ which I have mentioned; ‘Fill my Mouth’ starts with an amen break drum beat and builds with some funky electronic sounding wah-wah guitar, and we can’t leave out the crazy female vocals which also dominate this track.
The last track on the soundtrack is ‘Gathering of Ancient Tribes’. The guitar is sublime, hard driving Jimmy Page, John Squire esque riff that flows, grooves, builds and takes you to that psychedelic dreamscape (I have revisited Wolf People’s RUINS album on the back of listening to this, another album with hard driving loose melodic riffs).
Back to my rabbit hole playlist: ‘Do the Dance’ is a full-on Phil Lynott Thin Lizzy style guitars and the more prominent female vocals; next up ‘Soon to Die’, complete with a lovely sample to open the track “Did you ever think when the hearse rolled by that someday you are going to die”, from Harley Poe’s track ‘The Hearse Song’.
For more Psychedelic goodness check out their Stonegoat album, as well as the Run to Your Mama remixes, and in particular Thought Forms ‘Mountain Thumbs Remix’. Pure filth and psychedelic love.
Michael Conboy
MEANS 