"Instrumental Fire" 1996

If you're looking for great surf and instrumental music, this is IT! "Instrumental Fire" is an excellent compilation and sampler of some of the best modern instrumental bands of today. From the trashy L.A. sounds of the Bomboras, to the smooth Los Straitjackets, the fiery Fathoms (easily the best of the modern surf bands) or the all-out space fest of Man or Astroman?, it's all here on this CD. Pulp Fiction is gone, but this is the new order of surf instrumentals. Buy this, you won't regret it...a great disc! - amazonAt the time of its 1996 release, Art Bourasseau's MuSick imprint's tag was "the Instrumental Label" (that has since changed), so this compilation of 16 wordless, but not necessarily vocal-less, recordings from around the country and even the world was a logical starting point. The liner notes are a little lame for a set of mostly obscure combos with short descriptions that try too hard to be cute instead of informational (the blurb for the Vice Royals reads "Making music for the movie of your life. Discover the magic -- live the dream"), but the sounds are consistently raw and rocking. Surf is not surprisingly heavily represented by artists such as the little-known Lord Hunt & His Missing Finks and Los Straitjackets, the latter by far the most recognizable act here. But there is plenty of variety, with garage (Germany's the Cave 4), space rock (the Bomboras), spaghetti Western (the Fathoms, Ben Vaughn), trash (Boston's Four Piece Suit), and even blues (Los Straitjackets' Eddie Angel) all rearing their murky heads over the course of the disc's short but potent 40-minute running time. Nothing lasts very long, with Man or Astro-man?'s "Intoxica" clocking in at a concise but still not too brief 1:40 and the Tiki Tones' loungy "Sneaky Tiki" getting out of the way in 1:53, so if you don't like one style, another is waiting around the corner. Many of these acts never released full albums, or if they did they are all but impossible to find, so this serves as a clearing house for great lost bands such as Scratch Bongowax and the Travelers of Tyme that maybe only had a few short-lived singles in them before they moved on to the dark recesses of instrumental rock's dusty history. The sound quality is all over the place as befits the concept, but it's consistently listenable and even the most mono of tracks, such as Lord Hunt's "Twice Pipes," fit the primitive approach of the material. The audience for this might be limited to record geeks but it shouldn't be, because any rock & roll lover will find something to love within these 16 tracks, and instrumental genre fans will need this as an essential part of their collections. - Review by Hal Horowitz

trax:

1. Forbidden Planet - The Bomboras 2. High Wall - Cave 4 3. Blandingo - The Fathoms 4. Kolme Kitaraa - Four Piece Suit 5. C'mon Do the Laika - Laika & the Cosmonauts 6. Intoxica - Man or Astro-man? 7. Enfermo - Ben Vaughn 8. El Camino - The Vice Royals 9. Twice Pipes - Lord Hunt & His Missing Finks 10. Brawl - Eddie Angel 11. Sleestak Chaka Trap - The Travelers Of Tyme 12. Surfin' Turd - Scratch Bongowax 13. Sneaky - The Tiki Tiki Tones 14. My Favorite Dean Martian - The Omega Men 15. Theme from the Unknown - The Tiki Men 16. Spanish Fly - Los Straitjackets