Tooth – Mudlarking (Soft/Fuse Distribution)

Sydney three piece Tooth create the kind of music that you can’ believe was constructed by humans. Possessing a confident, almost stately grandeur, their sounds on 2001′ Sirens From Here To Titan seemed to exist in the past, the soundtrack to a late fifties boys own nautical adventure serial. It’s scope felt huge, yet it has positively been eclipsed by Mudlarking. This double disc album is an epic, not just because it consists of eighteen tracks, but because of the way Tooth have extended their styles and approach in the interim. It’s a strange swirly mass of sound that exists like a giant fun rollicking soundtrack where you can throw around words like, Krautrock, psychedialia, downtempo, prog, and not ever get remotely close to the canvas. It’s a hard record to consciously listen to as you keep floating away. Its very groove based and it emphasises that Tooth are operating in a different time zone than the rest of the world, such is their patience and restraint. At times it verges on fourth world thanks to a few faux world music ingredients, though these are only hints that appear alongside samples or an impossibly funky bass line. It’s probably an electronic record yet it’s imbued with a vaguely cluttered sense of soul that propels these incredible tunes. It feels like it exists in the past referencing earnestly jammed out 60′ psychedelia, yet these are linked into current day beats and sample techniques, which somehow gives it an instant yet ironically somewhat dated credibility. They’ve teamed up with legendary weirdo experimentalist Daevid Allen, co founder of the Soft Machine and leader of Gong, along with members of Fourplay, Prop, Something for Kate, and Meta Bass. There is not a single misstep. Each song is an opus.