ferday's Almostopster: Scientists - Blood Red River

A short album for once

It’s summer 1987.  There are tradies in the house, a kitchen renovation as is the hazy recollection.  They are listening to music on their Magnavox D8270, and they leave a briefcase full of cassettes behind each night, 24 in all.  Music is all but banned in our house, thanks to the naivety of fundamentalism.  Something drove me to explore those cassettes in the safety of my room at night, and soon I was dubbing over every open cassette in the house, replacing worship music with such classics as Master of Puppets, Pyromania, Bat out of Hell, and oddly the one that stuck with me the most, Shadowy Men from a Shadowy Planet’s Wow Flutter Hiss ‘86.  This was the ignition point for what would become a never-ending cycle of listening and collecting.

The point of that ramble was the electrifying feeling of raw discovery.  A mere few years later the rumblings of underground punk (which would become grunge) would mimic that feeling, followed by such earthly delights as black metal and hip hop.  The jolt of this would very soon wear off, however, and by the 2000’s discovery had become rote.  Accomplishment was now measured in completion of another list, another genre.  There was the occasional reminder of those heady days, the odd 9 or even 10, but it was becoming further and farther between as each year and decade passed. 

Then in 2023, I was introduced to Blood Red River, a 19-minute EP from seminal Perth band, Scientists.  It was like being transported back to that cassette carrier.  I could not only imagine, but somehow feel what this sounded like when it came out in 1983, what it would have meant to the scene, how I would have felt if this was among those cassettes that fateful summer.

What is here is pure exuberance, fronted by the absolutely legendary Kim Salmon, who howls and sleazes his way across 6 tracks of proto-sonic youth, proto-grunge, blues-influenced rock and fucking roll.  There is a special, almost greasy quality to Kim’s guitar lines and vocal delivery, which incidentally he would keep through his entire storied career. 

And finally, I suppose, why is this my pick? Especially when I had multiple 2-hour long drum n bass excursions I could have chosen for the pure suffering of it all…  And the answer is, I don’t believe in “the topster”.  I’ve heard literally too many albums in all these cruel years, I’ve heard every single album that influenced every other album we will get in this project.  So really, all of my many hundreds of 9’s and 10’s are almostopsters, fluctuating with time and fancy and nostalgia as pleases an old unicorn.  And ultimately, I’ve only spent a year or so with this record and I firmly believe that time is the most critical factor in determining what may be a true reliquary entry versus an album you just really like.

Favourite track:  Set it on Fire