There’s a certain messy alchemy when raw archives collide with living myth. Thresher meets Underground Mountains is one such document, an unrepeatable session dredged up from the Jam Cellar (R.I.P. and curses on the landlords). What unfolds is a collision of biker-space-punk fury and free-jazz-noise communion.
Underground Mountains gives us the first three tracks, and they’re tasty. Opener “Making Sound in Space” has a buzzing bass and tape loops snarling against sax squalls and guitars scorched into motorik drive. It’s equal parts Black Flag and Sun Ra, lit by a barroom neon moon.
By contrast, “First Waltz” drifts into jazz-funk-kraut delirium with grooves thick as tar and rhythm sections collapsing and reforming with joyous chaos.
Tracks four through nine belong to Thresher, and that’s where the trip veers fully off the rails. “On the Ladder” layers chanting over a free-jazz clusterfuck, the kind of brain-scramble that makes your ears bleed.
Then comes “Let the Wolf In,” a feral stomp that barges through the door, punches your grandma, and never bothers to say sorry.
On “Back in My Body,” the question is less about return than survival. What body are we talking about here? The track thrashes like a noise-rock seizure, every instrument short-circuiting at once. “All Neck” only doubles down, a careening blast of chaos that feels one riff away from collapse.
Closer “Plug In” takes a sharp left turn: it creeps in on a psychedelic haze before unraveling into something like a demented Pink Floyd nightmare.
The cast is sprawling: Underground Mountains (Andrew Hunter, Trevor Worsell, Jeremy G. Cox, Tim Nicholls, Shane Hartman) tangling their roots with Thresher (Russ Walsh, Emerson Nicoll, Travis Taylor, Andy Elliot, Tommy Snider, Kevin Griffin).
Nothing here is rehearsed, nothing repeatable. It’s all free, all in-the-moment, a wild improvisation that rips eternal. Psychedelic free-jazz-noise-punk that doesn’t meet in the middle. It crashes headlong and burns incandescent.
If you’ve ever wanted to hear what it sounds like when the Black Lagoon monster trades shots with Krautrock astronauts in a smoky basement, this is your tape.
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