Announcing his first album in 2016, New Zealander Troy Kingi confirmed it was the first in a project entitled 10/10/10: ten albums in ten different genres in ten years, followed by retirement. Remarkably, he's still on track. Highlights include Shake That Skinny Ass All The Way To Zygertron (psychedelic soul), Holy Colony Burning Acres (roots reggae) and the brilliant Black Sea Golden Ladder (a folk singer-songwriter hybrid made with another Kiwi, Delaney Davidson).
The albums are soulful and blur into each other quite nicely – genre boundaries aren't entirely respected – but album number eight, recorded at the fabled Rancho de la Luna studio in Joshua Tree, stands out as a real labour of love.
It's an album that reflects Kingi's admiration for Queens Of The Stone Age's Songs For The Deaf, with the fuzz ramped up and song titles like Cactus Handshake and Dynamite Yourself. And it works.
Ride The Rhino, Ocelli and Hot Medicine are suitably sludgy, and the frantic Momentary Lapse Of Deflation whips like the tail of a trapped scorpion. Geronimo is a lovely slice of lilting Tex-Mex psychedelia, while the thumping Silicone Booby Trap is a junior desert rock classic. Only Halfway To Mexico, a lumpen freakout based on a riff somewhere in the vicinity of Foreigner's Hot Blooded, fails to impress. Otherwise, pass the Mezcal.
