KING BUZZO - THIS MACHINE KILLS ARTISTS + GIFT OF SACRIFICE

Released: 26/07/24

What an absolute treat: both LPs to date by King Buzzo – AKA the Melvins’ frontman Buzz Osborne – reissued together in one meaty package. While both LPs are more low-key compared to Osborne’s output with Melvins, it is 2014’s This Machine Kills Artists (a wry nod to the famous sticker on Woody Guthrie’s guitar that bore the legend ‘This machine kills fascists’) that is the more stripped-back. Putting the acoustic guitar at the centre of things, with no distortion or overdrive pedals in sight (and no other instrumentation to speak of), both Osborne’s formidable musicianship and his inimitable voice take centre stage in a raft of remarkable tracks that veer between drone-y Led Zeppelin-esque mystical desert-psych and no wave/avant-folk, that at its weirdest brings to mind the wonderful Harry Partch.

More expansive and experimental is Gift of Sacrifice, from 2020, which is variously augmented by double bass, strings and tape loops. Osborne’s open-tuned acoustic is the only six-string in evidence (which is occasionally fed through some gentle guitar effects), and again many of the tracks are desert-psych adjacent, or perhaps better described as ‘warlock blues’; while at points the guitar is jettisoned all together, as on ‘Junkie Jesus’, which sounds like Scott Walker circa Bish Bosch singing over an improv set by Okkyung Lee – ie, brilliantly bananas.