Stone Premonitions 2010 - "The Clowning Achievement"
It has been quite a while since I last heard from Tim Jones of Stone Premonitions, and it has been all change there in that period. After some success with bands like The Rabbit’s Hat and Census Of Hallucinations the label has combined the core members of those bands to come up with Stone Premonitions – the band. In this new guise they have just released their first album ‘The Clowning Achievement’, and as you would expect it combines all the best elements of those two bands, alongside the keyboard contributions of new member David Hendry. ‘Perpetual Motion’ starts things off with a pulsating beat and suitably oblique lyrics from Tim, but it is the way that the band get a groove going and stretch it out for over nine minutes without getting boring that makes this track so good. ‘Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind’ starts with some speeded up vocal weirdness, but soon settles down to become a riff-heavy rocker with some fine guitar-work from Jones (and did I notice a little steal from ‘Foxy Lady’ in there, Tim?). ‘The Judas Kiss’ has an infectious reggae rhythm running through it, over which Hendry layers synths and effects to produce a classic piece of space-rock. In comparison ‘Down By The River’ is a straight-ahead rocker, with staccato guitar and Tim and Terri B sharing the vocal duties. Dave Hendry’s ‘Infinite Potentialities’ gives us a chance to hear the sort of stuff he was doing with OHead before being lured away by SP2010, being thirteen minutes of sprawling space-rock, Tangerine Dream-like sequencers and atmospheric synths. ‘In The Image’ is quite commercial in parts, and would be a good starting point for anyone wanting to sample this album, while ‘Why Are We Here?’ has something of a Sabbath feel in its heavy guitar sound. ‘Give Us Back Our Heaven’ rounds off the album with another groovy dance track, and I can imagine this one going down a storm at the free festivals. So, a new direction for the label, and yet at the same time utilising all the best bits from what they have achieved so far. If anyone has already sampled any of the bands on the label then they will know exactly what to expect from this album.
by Peter Jolly (www.peterjolly.co.uk)