Music: Ttotals "Silver on Black" 10" EP

Ttotals' guitarist, vocalist, and de facto leader, Brian Miles, takes a heavy Jim Morrison tip on the first side ("Special A") of this 45 RPM 10" record. It's the first time I've noticed the similarity between BM's and the Lizard Queen's voices, but it makes a lot of sense.

Both Ttotals and The Doors deal/dealt in pop songs, abstracted beyond their logical purposefulness, to the point that they become almost-ambient, mind-wrapping art pieces, in which the listener's subconscious becomes a character in an exploratory world of reverb-drenched, stoner-rock dream-environs.

I mean, it's seriously easy to imagine Martin Sheen's head slowly rising from the steaming Cambodian river to these tunes.

Ttotals, at their best, get at the Punk-dream. They are, after all, two dudes with a guitar and a few drums, (OK, and a lot of FX pedals.) The raw primacy of punk is imbedded in their being. They're all id, man.

Side 2 gets into mushroom-punk territory with "Flowers Follow", and "Over the Years". It's still the classic Ttotals tones. They're secure and it's damn alright with me.

Really nice packaging: sparkly silver silk screen on semi-recycled black sleeve, (Art by Tim Norton, ex-of Holy Spirit Suckers.) Self-released by the band. Jam it.