Customer Reviews

Brain Cycles

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really enjoyed Radio Moscow's debut album when it was first released. The laidback songwriting style had me anxious to hear more from these Iowa rockers.
I bought Brain Cycles immediately when it was released, and was blown away by this superior sophomore effort. The brain melting guitar on the first track, "I Just Don't Know", calls to mind Jimi Hendrix, and it just keeps getting better until the funky tones of the final track, "No Jane". "No Good Woman" is a smoking 8-minute plus jam that WILL have you bobbing your head and stomping your foot.
If you like Black Keys and the harder edged stuff by White Stripes, you will enjoy Radio Moscow. I expect these guys to be a pretty popular band before long.

And lastly, if you like this, check out "Where the Water Rises" by Dead Coyote, available now as a download from Amazon. This is another excellent two man band, and their self-produced album WILL demand your attention. Check it out!
You just gotta love the internet and online shopping, bringing great bands like these to places that would otherwise never hear from them, even if there was still a genuine ROCK RADIO!

Radio Moscow are another of the excellent guitar bands on the Alive label with one foot planted firmly in the 1970's, and the other foot in the future. I had my mp3 player on shuffle the other day, and a track from this latest album came on just after an old Captain Beefheart tune, and it struck me that the Captain might've sounded something like this if he'd never messed with weird time signatures, and dadaist lyrical excursions. The previous reviewer was absolutely correct about all the other bands whose influence seems to permeate the music of Radio Moscow. And yet they never sound deliberately retro, and the music isn't dated. Which proves that there are still bands out there making great rock records in the classic mold who would appeal not only to those of us who grew up with the first generation of great guitar records, but also this current generation that might be looking for something a lot more interesting, and engaging than the latest media flavor of the week. Don't care for conventional radio? Listen to Radio Moscow.

Iowan Parker Griggs returns with Radio Moscow's second album of power-trio electric blues. The trio here is one of instruments rather than players, since Griggs accompanies his bluesy psychedelic guitar leads by pounding out flamboyant, full-kit drumming. He's surprisingly accomplished at both, and with bassist Zach Anderson (replacing the debut album's Luke Duff) and the magic of overdubbing, the duo brings to mind the heavy sounds of Hendrix, Cream, Blue Cheer, Jeff Beck, Montrose and other pre-metal hard rockers. If anything, Radio Moscow's gotten heavier, riffier in its tuneage and flashier with its rhythms. Though he was no slouch on the group's previous album, Griggs' sounds like he's been practicing his drumming.

Radio Moscow is a heavy-jam powerhouse, with many of the tracks clocking in at 4- and 5-minutes, and the studio-effect heavy "No Good Woman" stretching to over eight, including a (flashback alert!) minute-thirty drum solo. Griggs serves as the band's vocalist, singing through processing that sounds like a Mellotron, but the lyrics mostly serve to keep the guitar solos from running over one another. It's best to approach the band as an instrumental combo, with the scattered vocals as texture. The singer who could actually front this torrent of sound (rather than stand by and occasionally lob lyrics into the quieter parts) would just end up distracting from the group's interplay of guitar, bass and drums.

The tight, heavy riffs brings to mind early UK prog-rock and metal bands like King Crimson, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come and Black Sabbath, but generally without the lengthy excursions into jazz-styled jamming. Available on both CD and vinyl (but sadly not reel-to-reel tape), this should really be heard at maximum volume through classic 1970s speakers such as Altec Voice of the Theater A7s and a suitable cloud of smoke. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Please, please, there are more references for this type of music than the white stripes (overrrated) and the black keys(great yet sort of hipsterish)... look into your parents' record collection and turn on, tune in, trip out...
Radio Moscow are great, just great, and they certainly made my day today: the guitar player is outstanding, and it's a crying shame that he seems to be a teenager born into the myspace/iPod generation. no fault of his, certainly... man, the kid can play. watch out, he might just become a true legend very soon, against all odds!
they truly sound old, bluesy, jammy, excellent. dear kids, ever heard of grand funk, cactus,captain beyond, hendrix, budgie, buddy guy,robert johnson,mountain, blue cheer?
that's were it all began, and this band is the newest keeper of the flame. oh, yes... i was born in the early seventies and got hooked on rock at a very early age. back then, around 1980, the big thing was Kiss, at least in Mexico and other parts of the world. Kiss were as big as Disneyland, and certainly as commercial and capitalist, but they played heavy rock and were always mentioning their influences. so I decided to check those influences out, and guess what? all those other older bands were better... and heavier. and that research gave me a historical perspective which I still cherish. though I wouldn't like to be your dad, I will advise you, as an older friend and rocknrollobsessive,to go out, turn off the computer for a minute and search for an used record store. ask for 60's/70's heavy rock; steal the albums if you have to. go home, or to your nearest mountain, and hide for a few weeks. throw the cell phone away- you're not gonna need it at all. yes, become a nerd,a hippie, a freak, a cast-out, but don't think about what you're doing as if you were about to submerge in a post-modern videgame full of guitars! now, close your eyes, press play on that portable turntable you stole from grandma- and listen... just as I'm sure this kid Parker Grigg did. as we all need to do to chill out and belive in rocknroll again, this dying artform that succumbed to its own addiction to fame and fortune, the American way...Radio Moscow's music doesn't sound new, and their songs are not particularly original, but, oh devil, do they ROCK!
Listen.
However,wanna know something? this decade has brought many good bands along, bands maybe as good as the elders. check em out if you feel too young to even consider the last decade. i'll name a few: quest for fire, mammatus,witchcraft,ancestors,weird owl, jucifer (before they went all black metal),assemble head in sunburst sound, entrance, plus the 'recent'classics, you know, mudhoney, kyuss, early monster magnet, the MASTERS of reality, kyuss, cathedral, pentagram..
File along with johnny winter, clapton, robin trower,frank marino, jimi, robert johnson,derringer, randy holden... maybe even steve hillage and uli jon roth... and, is it just me or are they using a guitar effect on a solo that is certainly reminiscent of stuff done by the very, very, very obscure Samuel Prody?
Oh, and did I mention that Grigg plays all drums and percussion, too? in case you're wondering, at times he does resemble Carmine Appice, no kidding.
This music feels like getting your soul back again. cheers!

No band has ever reminded me more of the Jimi Hendrix Experience as Moscow does. The lead guitars are outstanding and they are complemented by articulate and aggressive drumming both performed by Parker Griggs. The percussive stokes and ping-pong effects in "Hold On Me" are so Hendrix-like it's incredible. The whole album is filled with great blues structured songs and face melting guitar solos.

Despite what the cover looks like, this is less psychedelic freak-out and more blues-based, 70s garage rock power trio with wah peddles out the wazoo than anything else. Aside from Black Boot (an acoustic instrumental) every song here is laden with catchy riffs and fretboard-melting solos, especially Just Don't Know, Broke Down, The Escape, the end of No Good Woman, 250 Miles, Hold On Me and No Jane. Yes, I just named every song on the album.

The exception is Brain Cycles, which opens with a solid guitar line before veering off to Golden Earring territory. Album is also downgraded slightly because of the extended drum solo in the middle of No Good Woman that almost brings the whole thing to a halt. However, if you can survive the drum solo, the end of the song is amazing and so worth it and it catapults you through the end of the album.

This CD also gets a nod because if anyone ever asks you to name something cool that came from Iowa, you can say Radio Moscow (to go with Dan Gable and Bloodworm).

If you like blues riffs, if you liked 70s music and if you think awesome guitar solos rule, you will like this album.

I am telling you - Radio Moscow is THE best band ever in the world. And this is their best album (so far of course)...
Do yourself a good favor - listen to this on the vinyl.

It's like he's asking himself this on every song and getting it wrong.
I love the era/style the band is trying to recreate but you have to ask yourself
Are they doing anything original with the genre? NO
Do they do it in a way that sounds fresh? NO
I know that everything under the sun has been done with the guitar, bass, drums format, but you can still make it sound fresh or that it's coming from a real place.
The Black Keys, for example, have a retro sound yet succeed at making their influences into something their own.
I'm surprised Dan Auerbach was involved with this band, maybe the first album is better.
Two stars because there are moments they almost get it, but there is way too much mindless guitar wankery, and a drum solo, no thanks.