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Born in the industrial music scene of Los Angeles, Pressurehed will emerge as
the leading voice in the American space-rock universe.
Pressurehed was formed in 1987 in Hollywood (California) by vocalist Tommy
Grenas and keyboardist Len Del Rio and for a while produced limited-edition
cassettes. The band grew a cult mainly because of its live performances,
where they used spectacular gothic/cyberpunk videos and slide projections.
Joined by Belgian bassist Marc Collignon, the duo made their first
album, Infadrone (Cleopatra, 1992).
A grandiose and futuristic synthpop, propelled by an arsenal of
drum-machines, as in Turbo Pause
and Dark Runs Deeper, oppresses the album,
while the alien melodic talent of the leader
surfaces only in Audio Energy.
Neither seems to be the band's true voice:
the drilling heavymetal of Hedstrap
and the driving progression of Wired For Sound follow in the steps of
Hawkwind e Helios Creed and better show the leader's vision and the band's
ferocious sonic assault.
Collignon was replaced by Death Ride 69 guitarist Doran Shelley and
Paul Fox of Trash Can School.
With help from Helios Creed, the band recorded music for a
spoken word album Sphynx by Hawkwind's Nik Turner.
Sudden Vertigo (Cleopatra, 1994) was born out of this line-up.
Guitars take over keyboards, thereby resurrecting Chrome's nightmarish
maelstroms and directing them into thundering and torrential jams.
Spiral Realms are Hawkwind's Nik Turner and Len Del Rio,
who recorded Trip To G9 (Cleopatra, 1994) and
Crystal Jungles of Eos (Cleopatra, 1995), two albums of cosmic music.
Anubian Lights are Turner, Simon House, Del Rio, Helios Creed and others.
They debuted with the ambitious The Eternal Sky (Cleopatra, 1995).
The 55-minute EP The Jackal And Nine (Cleopatra, 1996), including three
new tracks and remixes, increased the
doses of world-music and ambient music.
Del Rio continued the project on
Let Not The Flame Die (Hypnotic, 1998) and
Naz Bar (Crippled Dick, 2001), concocting an entertaining fusion of acid-rock, sci-fi kitsch, and world-music.
Len Del Rio also launched his solo project, Zero Gravity, with
Space Does Not Care (Cleopatra, 1995).
Tommy Grenas then started another space-rock band, Farflung,
and an electro-acoustic project a` la (late) Pink Floyd called The Brain, a collaboration with
Paul Fox, whose first album was Access and Amplify (Hypnotic, 1996);
Doran Shelley played with the Outsideinside.
Tommy Grenas and Paul Fox toured with the reformed Cluster
(Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius).
Pressurehed went beyong space-rock with the monumental 16-track
Explaining The Unexplained (Cleopatra, 1997).
Tommy Grenas on keyboards, guitars and vocals, Len Del Rio on drums, keyboards
and samples, Doran Shelley on guitar, keyboards and vocals, and Paul Fox on
bass, guitar and keyboards crafted a magnificent merry-go-round of
cosmic and earthly sounds.
Electronics rules, whether it is propelling a techno locomotive or drowning
a distorted jam.
Their panzer marches (Berezovka, Valiant Thor),
their industrial orgies (the anthemic and pounding Altitude,
the gothic Incubus), and their techno excursions
(the robotic locomotive of Oxygen Mask,
the triumphal polyrythmic feast of Transgression)
proceed in parallel, flanked by more abstract experiments that mix acid-rock
and ambient music (Time Stops Breathing, The Great Orm).
An element of world-music aligns a couple of tracks to the
"transglobal dance" movement (the eight-minute Black Mantra and
the tribal Mokele-Mbembe).
Best is Bluff Creek And Beyond, that starts slowly as a
psychedelic raga and then suddenly explodes with a burning guitar riff and
thundering percussions.
Ditto for The Long Count, that boasts an infectious melody, space-rock
riffs of the Hawkwind-ian kind and brisk tempo.
The album successfully integrated
electronic dance music, psychedelia, pop melody, industrial music and hard-rock.
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