The arrival of a new release from Sunburned Hand of the Man is hardly an uncommon event, but seldom is it an unwelcome one. Consisting of one uninterrupted performance, The Mylar Tantrum is far from the collective's bulkiest document, yet it still appears as a noteworthy addition to their sprawling catalog. The piece was created as an alternate soundtrack to Ira Cohen's legendary 1968 psychedelic film The Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda. On the album the Sunburned crew take a few cues from the film's original soundtrack, which was performed by a pioneering drone/trance ensemble that featured Angus MacLise, Tony Conrad, and Henry Flynt. Despite these few respectful allusions, however, SHotM manage to quickly to fill the room with their own peculiar and addictive form of oxygen, shaping The Mylar Tantrum with exactly the sort of casual economy that suggests an endless beatific abundance.
For the occasion, Sunburned have assembled themselves as a streamlined septet, although with their free-flowing assortment of wheezing keys and ceremonial percussion, it becomes pretty impossible (and ultimately immaterial) to determine who is playing what. The album's title makes reference to Cohen's extensive use of reflective Mylar in his sets and photography, a production design that helped give his film its distinctive refracted shimmer. Although Sunburned's soundtrack suitably matches the film's opiated, image-splitting bacchanalia, several passages also seem fit to accompany more traditional narrative structures as well. In fact, the opening sequence of melodic harmonium and guitar sounds like it could be an appropriate backdrop for any suspense-filled European crime caper, the ominous heartbeat of the drums punctuating the tension with a quickening pulse as the whole savage gang assembles at the docks to prepare for one final score.
It isn't long, however, before a primal cry is heard from the wilderness, triggering the group to immediately lumber into an ecstatic, closely woven percussive trance. As with MacLise's work on the original Thunderbolt Pagoda soundtrack, Sunburned's polyrhythmic improvisations here seem to be issued from some indefinite exotic source, with pan-ethnic echoes volleying invisibly between rural New England, Morocco, and the Himalayas. And while the men of Sunburned are certainly no strangers to free-form drum-circle jams, here their communal playing sounds precise and controlled, their increased focus giving these rituals an added degree of seismic density. Soon this central pulse too dissolves away into an extended outro of disembodied chanting and fluttering hand percussion, with a stray guitar quietly scavenging through the tribal wreckage in search of any stray fuel that might keep the fading embers aflame.
Compared to epic-length albums like 2005's Wedlock, the 22-minute running time of The Mylar Tantrum might make it seem rather skimpy. This music is also available on the Bastet label's recent DVD release of Thunderbolt Pagoda, so perhaps it might be most sensible to experience this work in its full multi-media splendor. But even when taken on its own, The Mylar Tantrum can serve as an extra-potent distillation of Sunburned Hand of the Man's nefarious black arts, with a shamanic utility too broad to be restricted to any one film's soundtrack.
