HR071 - Room 291 - The Conspiracy Of Light — C60 — 1988
Side A:
One Eye
The Good Life
The Conspiracy Of Light
My Dark Angel
The Age Of Marvels
Side B:
Big Guns
The Stone Face
Sweetheart
Eleven Years
One Eye
The Good Life
The Conspiracy Of Light
My Dark Angel
The Age Of Marvels
Side B:
Big Guns
The Stone Face
Sweetheart
Eleven Years
REVIEW by Jerry Kranitz
From Boulder, Colorado, Room 291 was headed up by Paul (PJ) Kern on vocals, sequencing and guitar, with assistance on various tracks from Griffin (synthetic noises), Jim Kremer (bass), and Jon Martinez (guitar). All tracks were recorded live or in rehearsal from 1985-87. If you can imagine John Carpenter film soundtracks as Industrial pop, then that’s what a lot of this music brings to my mind. And Kern's dramatic vocal style is a big part of the sound.
Side A opens with the spacey, punky rocking Industrial pop of ‘One Eye’, which you CAN dance to! I like the rocking guitar and lo-fi synths. ‘The Good Life’ is slower and with a spacey Gothic vibe. ‘The Conspiracy Of Light’ is a killer cross between guitar heavy space rock and synth-pop. I like the lo-fi caustic sear, dirty guitar and electro percussion combo. Lots of subtle genre mixing on this tape. ‘My Dark Angel’ is a darkly seductive Industrial-Goth song. The pace picks up when it segues into ‘The Age Of Marvels’ and becomes an angry angsty yet high energy Industrial dance rocker. It has some surprisingly intricate instrumental passages that rock out on the dancefloor while the synths and guitar trip out in space.
Side B kicks off with ‘Big Guns’, which sounds like a punk and electro take on 1970s swagger rock. I especially like the noisily acidic guitar solo accompanied by whimsical merry-go-round bleeps and bloops, which then transitions to a pounding tribal percussion and gun blasts segment that feels like the soundtrack to a battlefield attack. These guys do a good job of thematic development on the longer tunes. ‘The Stone Face’ starts off with atmospheric rumbling synths and stinging acid guitar licks before returning to the ‘Big Guns’ theme. ‘Sweetheart’ is another atmospheric Industrial-Goth song that later takes off into dark and doomy space. Great noisy grinding psychedelic effects on this one. Finally, ‘Eleven Years’ consists of electro doom rock with intense guitar and is one of my favorite examples of Kern's theatrically anguished vocals. At nearly 11 minutes the band transition through multiple sci-fi rocking themes, often sounding like Hawkwind at their most electronic. A killer closer and my favorite track of the set.
From Boulder, Colorado, Room 291 was headed up by Paul (PJ) Kern on vocals, sequencing and guitar, with assistance on various tracks from Griffin (synthetic noises), Jim Kremer (bass), and Jon Martinez (guitar). All tracks were recorded live or in rehearsal from 1985-87. If you can imagine John Carpenter film soundtracks as Industrial pop, then that’s what a lot of this music brings to my mind. And Kern's dramatic vocal style is a big part of the sound.
Side A opens with the spacey, punky rocking Industrial pop of ‘One Eye’, which you CAN dance to! I like the rocking guitar and lo-fi synths. ‘The Good Life’ is slower and with a spacey Gothic vibe. ‘The Conspiracy Of Light’ is a killer cross between guitar heavy space rock and synth-pop. I like the lo-fi caustic sear, dirty guitar and electro percussion combo. Lots of subtle genre mixing on this tape. ‘My Dark Angel’ is a darkly seductive Industrial-Goth song. The pace picks up when it segues into ‘The Age Of Marvels’ and becomes an angry angsty yet high energy Industrial dance rocker. It has some surprisingly intricate instrumental passages that rock out on the dancefloor while the synths and guitar trip out in space.
Side B kicks off with ‘Big Guns’, which sounds like a punk and electro take on 1970s swagger rock. I especially like the noisily acidic guitar solo accompanied by whimsical merry-go-round bleeps and bloops, which then transitions to a pounding tribal percussion and gun blasts segment that feels like the soundtrack to a battlefield attack. These guys do a good job of thematic development on the longer tunes. ‘The Stone Face’ starts off with atmospheric rumbling synths and stinging acid guitar licks before returning to the ‘Big Guns’ theme. ‘Sweetheart’ is another atmospheric Industrial-Goth song that later takes off into dark and doomy space. Great noisy grinding psychedelic effects on this one. Finally, ‘Eleven Years’ consists of electro doom rock with intense guitar and is one of my favorite examples of Kern's theatrically anguished vocals. At nearly 11 minutes the band transition through multiple sci-fi rocking themes, often sounding like Hawkwind at their most electronic. A killer closer and my favorite track of the set.