Sun City Girls - Torch Of The Mystics LP

Our Review: Originally recorded in 1988 during a time when the Bishop brothers and Charles Gocher had been making much more overtly subversive work. 1987's Horse Cock Phepner (an album that could use this reissue treatment, by the way) experimented with drug-addled spoken word, hypno-percussive vulgarity-ridden tributes to Nancy Reagan, and Urinals-esque minimalist noise-punk. This makes sense given the Bishop brothers' musical upbringing in the early '80s Arizona punk and hardcore world. But the recordings sessions that would become Torch of the Mystics had such a different result. Like we mentioned last week, due in large part to the success of labels like Bishop's Sublime Frequencies, in making the SCG's third world influences more familiar to us, this record does get the "most accessible" label, maybe even more than it seemed originally. It's still fantastically out-there, but yeah, compared to other Sun City Girls output before and after this record, this is downright radio friend