HW: Fwd: Pressurehed article and review

[DAMON CAPEHART]

OK... keep in mind that Pressurehed ended up cancelling the gig, so oh well.

Also keep in mind that this is the -unedited- version.  I never actually saw
the actual, printed article, so I'm not sure how it was pared down.  (it
certainly needed some, IMO... I wrote it so it would.)

Damon

On Tue, 15 Jul 1997 00:14:44 DAMON CAPEHART <monsieur at mymail.net> wrote:
---- Forwarded message follows ----
PRESSUREHED Explains the Unexplained At The Orbit Room On August 5
Damon C Capehart
monsieur at mymail.net

If you're looking to satisfy your craving for out-of-this-world, pulp
sci-fi, psychedelic, industrial, Moog-driven space rock, you'll probably
want to skip the Veruca Salt show on the fifth in favor of Pressurehed at
The Orbit Room.  The band of a thousand adjectives has risen from the Los
Angeles underground promising a "killer light show" in addition to their
unique brand of - well, what I wrote above.

For the past few years, the members of Pressurehed - lead vocalist Tommy
Grenas, drum programmer and keyboardist Len Del Rio, former Death Ride 69
guitarist Doran Shelley, and punk band Trash Can School's ex-bassist Paul
Fox - have been touring as former Hawkwind member Nik Turner's backup band
for his "Space Ritual" and "Spiral Realms" tours of 1993 and 1995,
respectively, performing a number of Hawkwind classics including "Master of
the Universe", "Ejection", "Orgone Accumulator", "Silver Machine", "High
Rise", and "Brainstorm", the last of which was covered by Monster Magnet a
few years ago.  Pressurehed's experience with Turner and others has helped
make them today much like what Hawkwind were in their heyday, and also
incidentally produced two superb live CD sets, "Space Ritual 1994" and "Past
or Future?", which may be found in the Nik Turner rack.

Pressurehed's latest album, "Explaining the Unexplained", shies about 5
degrees away from the in-yer-face, hard industrial sounds of their previous
albums to focus a bit more on their analog synthesizers and sequencers.  No,
Pressurehed hasn't gone techno - at least not completely; the music is still
as in-yer-face as advertised.  Their experience with Turner and Friends,
however, along with their ambient side-project Anubian Lights, has given
them more diversity than they could have dreamed as a rising garage band in
1987.  From the campy tribal rhythms of "Mokele- Mbembe" and Shelley's
reverb-saturated, bluesy guitar solo in "One Who Has Seen" to the danceable
trance of "Transgression" and Clash-like straight-ahead hard rock of
"Berezovka", Pressurehed prove themselves both talented and versatile.

In addition to the impressive music, "Explaining" also comes with "the
startling book that asks, do dinosaurs still live in the Congo?  What is the
'great orm' of Loch Ness?  Have aliens visited us in the past?  Do wildmen
still roam the forests of the world?  This and much more inside."  Indeed,
the booklet is as entertaining as any of the more outrageous issues of
"Weekly World News", though unfortunately without the pictures.  Darn.

For those of you who prefer the harder-than-hard industrial onslaught of
1993's "Sudden Vertigo", fear not.  Due to the aforementioned partnership
with Nik Turner, Pressurehed haven't had the chance to tour as Pressurehed
since before the album came out, and are quite likely to play quite a
selection from that as well as from their 1992 debut, "Infadrone".

[[Orbit Room info if necessary]]