The Dead C – Patience – Badabing – BING070 - ***

Calling their 25th album Patience is a quietly hilarious move by New Zealand's immortal gods of transcendental junk shop noise, The Dead C.
Its opening track, Empire, is a testing eighteen minutes long. Guitar feedback, usually a gestural shortcut to bite-sized rock thrills, becomes translucent ectoplasm, smeared over stumbling listless drums, wrapped in rehearsal room ambience.
Sensory deprivation alone suggests a descending chord sequence in the closing two minutes. The final piece, South, tickles the cochlea for a quarter of an hour with scratched strings, devotional gong sounds and truncated surges of frustrated energy.
The Dead C continue to reward our patience.

(6/2/11)