Review: Les Big Byrd ‘Diamonds, Rhinestones And Hard Rain’
Think of the Pixies playing in a subway station on LSD opening for Enigma and you can start to make out the holographic landscape that Les Big Byrd might have derived from. It’s industrial rock personified through psychedelic electronica. Mareld kicks off this jam-a-rama but the topper to your rhinestone cowboy belt buckle is the title track, hands down.
It’s a song that is replayed back through the beginning, middle and end. Diamonds, Rhinestones and Hard Rain keeps getting revisited like Area 51. It has a harrowing echoing effect that transcends into the collective beat it ascended from. Les Big Byrd have thought outside the box with aural beats and synthetic auto looping vibrations that just about every instrument could make.
Half of the song titles I cannot pronounce but if I were to dig deeper into the meaning of this album I would come up for air because this meditative rock can be played underwater. It’s a sound bath with shimmering sea salts projecting you outwards and aloof on a deserted island.
The Night Bus also takes us on a spellbinding bus ride drinking enchanted potions infused from magic carpet trips the Scandinavians have clearly returned from. Does one need drugs to enhance their experience with this experimental extravaganza? Not necessarily, but with members from Teddybears and Ceasars on board, Les Big Byrd are hip to tripping you out furthermore with their connections to Swedish rock industries alike.
aural beats and synthetic auto looping vibrations…
It differs from their previous album Eternal Light Brigade released in 2022 but not by much. The band found their direction and ran with it until the running was in slow motion but faster than a speeding bullet. Stockholm will continue to raise the bar with innovative, transcendental rock like this for the light-headed. If their frequency doesn’t give you an out-of-body experience, there was too much deadweight anchoring your spirit to your physical body in the first place.
Strings, things, and psychedelic wings seem to be their motif. Fairies don’t just wear combat boots but steampunk, laced-up thigh high boots attending cyber punk concerts that Les Big Byrd are throwing. And I can’t tell if it was by accident that their new release resulted in The Matrix soundtrack or what. I take back a previous statement though. The only drugs I condone taking whilst listening to them are ones produced in quantum physics laboratories.
Label: Chimp Limbs Recordings
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Twitter | Instagram
Scribed by: Spring ‘The Strutter’ Chase
