Atomic Rooster are a new British trio that serve as a prime example of Rock Nouveau at its most elaborately pretentious. Vincent Crane, the keyboard man, is an alumnus of Arthur Brown's band, wrote the global smash "Fire," and plays Rooster's bass lines "through a combination of strong left-hand and foot pedal techniques, coupled with special sound reproduction devices specially fitted into his Hammond." What's more, guitarist John Cann is ambidextrous and double-jointed! And if that don't get ya, folks, chew on the fact that drummer Paul Hammond has had a special giant bass drum kit made, which it sez right here is the larges! on the whole fuckin' planet! Blasting off with all this super-technology, the band has already had a top ten hit in England, and if their hype is any indication, they should go over big in an America already having barking fits over the current death of a true Supergroup.

What it all adds up to, unfortunately, is a lot of hyperthyroid noise. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with noise, but the best rock noise is usually built on simple riffs and a big, booming sound. Atomic Rooster are predicated on a kind of techniqueflaying that's seldom modest enough in its aims to be eloquent and ends up just generally shrill. Most of the compositions come either out of strained scale exercises or mediocre riffs of the Grand Funk-Black Sabbath genre whose potential for battleaxe effectiveness is blunted by the tangles of manic solo breaks running around them like barbed wire. Crane is comparable to Keith Emerson in flaunted abilities as an organist, but his already overdone solos are jarred repeatedly by fisty spates of pointless psych-off gibberish. Cann is obviously a talented guitarist, but the hysteria and lack of direction in most of his solos just make him difficult without the redemption of truly challenging ideas behind those dustbowls of notes. And Hammond's drumming, though consistently excellent, just isn't supporting enough real music, like a rock-solid foundation for a house of slapped-together sheet metal.

The final caution is that the combination of stylistic heebee-jeebies and mundane production have left the album as a whole and especially the vocals with a dense, even muddy texture that's not helpful at all. I listened to it on an elaborate Garrard stereo system with giant speakers spanning the room, and still it clotted in the air between. I don't even want to think about what it would resemble on the little $30 stereo in my room.

Then again, that and some Tuinol might be just the fuel for all that technology. (RS 85)

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