Sunburned Hand of the Man was fantastic the other night. Was pleasantly surprised to find Keith Wood of Hush Arbors/Golden Oaks/Wooden Wand playing with them, and MAN what a performer. Also nice to finally meet the Sunburnedies after being a big fan from the start. This 5 piece version was simply incredible, touching upon Crazy Horse raveups, Dead C murk swells, creeping/gurgling free jazz and bombastic funk explosions, though there was perhaps lesser in the way of grove and more dissonant headlong drone this time out. Just astounding. Sunburned truly exemplifies the sound, and can only be considered one of the key bands in this unfolding scene (which I will not try to name because I don't know what it's called). Don't miss 'em if they come your way!

I purchased their last copy of the "Wedlock" 2LP which came out last year on Eclipse and is comprised entirely of recordings made via video cameras during a wedding held in the Summer of 2003 up in Alaska. It features a lot of collage type pieces, spontaneous jams, jugband blues, mongrel yeeows, moans and cackles, spoken word, the best man's toast and much joyous laughter. The excellent mix and package makes this a truly unique achievement in that it's both a celebration of the band, love, family and friendship (and therefore live!) as well as a stand alone work of art on par with the Faust Tapes, perhaps lent a little more sentimental weight than the typical epic noise rock record. Beautiful. Also got the brand new studio joint, "Complexion" and I'm loving it about as much. They've only gotten better over the years.

Opener's Unconscious Collective threatened to be interesting for a few minutes before delving into a fairly standard jazz/noise thing, with too much jazz and not enough noise. Mazinga Phaser (Mark III?) played bombastic post punk/krautrock that sounded sorta like mid period Swans crossed with Butthole Surfers. All in all, a fairly "what the fuck?" set, but I dug it despite the constant/cloying bass hum.