I Am A Lake Of Burning Orchids, Summer in My Veins, Loveswirls, CD-R love001 (2011)
With a name like I Am A Lake Of Burning Orchids, you just know this UK act is going to be a trancey psychedelic blackened noise shoegazey act, don’t you? And with debut recording “Summer in My Veins”, IAALOBO deliver a bright big shimmering slab of noise distortion. The whole thing whizzes by in a 22-minute buzzy blur with the majority of songs coming under the 2-minute blink-n-you’ll-miss-’em wire and one song clocking in at close to 10 minutes.
The whole album has that gorgeous late-summer mood that some people might associate with Christian Fennesz’s better known recordings though some of the song titles and lyrics suggest a cynical and perhaps even sinister and creepy attitude towards love and romance. The heavy electronics and sound distortion straddle a huge territory of musical contrasts ranging from psychedelic noise delirium and drone to shoegaze and black metal. The IAALOBO musicians have an ear for the most beautiful and happy pop melodies and enjoy wrapping them up in fizzing, crumbling noise distortion while all around the most severe death-rattle ghost vocals spiral like malevolent animated barbed wire. The entire recording has a spiky acid sheen. You’ve got to pay attention to most tracks as they are very short and spill out all their day-glo colours and heady fragrance in their brief life in the manner of desert flowers that bloom suddenly after a rainburst and then lapse back into hibernation when the water dries up for who knows how many months or years of dryness.
The recording this album most resembles in parts is Mario Diaz de Leon’s “Hypnos” so if you enjoyed that work, you’ll love this one too – heck, you can even try playing both together if you’re a true sucker for blissed-out heavy psychedelic noise techno trance. The packaging is something to behold too, coming in a bright scarlet envelope with an insert. A limited pressing of 50 copies was made and as I was late to the party by four years, I’m afraid they’ve all gone!
Contact: Aquarius Records