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The Janitors | Drone Head

Chill out and dig some long-lost garage-rock diamonds in the psychedelic rough.

THE PRESS RELEASE

“Fuelled by folköl and an uncontrollable urge to hiss and make noise The Janitors went into their own studio Psych grottan and during 2012 gave birth to two EPs, a couple of singles and remixes and a lot of raised eyebrows from audiences and blogs from all over the world. The shamanic psychedelic trance of darkness and drone of the The Worker Drone Queen and Head Honcho EPs ended up on more than a few end of years best offs back in 2012 and since then the cult over this record has grown and grown. The recordings eventually found their way into the hands of Cardinal Fuzz, who on the spot decided to release the whole shebang on a glorious 2×12″ gatefold vinyl. Also exclusive to this release are the Al Lover remix of Death Song and Strssmnt remix of Coming Down + a brand new track Nevereverism. The Janitors give love to noise, monotony and pop songs and mainly consist of two people in love with the darker side of the 80´s with heroes like Loop, Spacemen 3 and JAMC. We call what we do stökpsych or evil shoegaze boogie woogie, you decide for yourself.”

MY TWO CENTS

Patience ain’t never been one of my virtues. I’m the guy audibly sighing behind you in line at the ATM — and probably snidely telling you there are other people in the world if you decide you want to buy an extra scratch ticket at the lotto kiosk. But even el jerkwado supremo can grasp that sometimes you gotta hurry up and wait to get yer mitts on the real good goodies. Like Drone Head, this compilation of long-lost diamonds in the rough from a buncha Swedish psychedelic garage-rock meatballs called The Janitors. Now, I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that I heard of these doofuses (doofi?) back in the day, or own an original copy of their stuff on vinyl, or saw them in a basement at By:Larm or anything like that. Truth is, this and them are nothing but news to me. Hell, I couldn’t even tell ya how I stumbled across this album; I just found it on my desktop and hit play. But I can tell you it’s hitting back — and smacking me right where I live and breathe. It’s scuzzy, fuzzy, buzzy, muddy, cruddy, murky, smouldering, mouldering, dirty, nasty, crude, and a whole ton of other adjectives that don’t seem to jive with guys who named their band after somebody charged with keeping things spic, span, ship and shape. Go figure. Maybe the whole nomenclature process was a rush job. But it would be the only thing about this album that is — some of these magnificently mesmerizing songs slog and slug it out for six or seven or even 12 interminable minutes, slowly oozing and slithering toward the horizon like some sort of groaning, droning mud monster clawing its way out of the primordial bog and dragging itself to nowhere in particular. And when you have nowhere in particular to go, here’s what you oughta do: Fire up the bong, douse all the lights, slap on the headphones and settle in for the duration. All will be revealed eventually. All you need is just a little … well, you catch my drift.

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