San Diego’s mutated rocknroll trio known as Sumatraban returns with its second slab of music in the form of the INTERLOPER LP.
Led by Glen Galloway (Trumans Water, Soul Junk, Octagrape) along with Preston Swirnoff and T.S. Ward, Sumatraban accelerates where their debut ‘MU’ left off, with a collection of ecstatic and fractured tunes that celebrate and mourn the utopian-dystopian dimension.
On this outing, expertly recorded without too much fuss by Ben Moore, the fidelity rises but never escapes the cracked tones that make up the urgent sound blasts generated by Galloway and Swirnoff’s weirdly harmonious guitars and Ward’s booming drum kit. Over it all, Galloway’s cryptic and pleading verses bubble forth from his snout as the Elements Walk On By. The palette is richened by Swirnoff’s cacophonous garage organ, Galloway’s baritone sax squall, and other mysterious tones not currently identified.
From the opening postpunkard anthem chords of ‘Kilowatt’, to the kraut-meets-no-wave-ism of ‘Fish Slang’, and the Chromesque-Beefheartening groove of ‘I Ate Collide’, INTERLOPER comes out of the gate driving the wrong way down a one way waterfall and never lets up.
It is a welcome chapter in the jarring saga of that impossibly constructed greenhouse made of seaweed, wax, and concrete with a mind-bending roadside view- the Sumatra-bahn.
Recorded by Ben Moore at Singing Serpent / Released by Luau Records 2019