Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power - Pleasure Before Business

There are some who class Dave Cloud a warped genius, a man whose musical vision is so beyond the beyond, that most simply cannot get him. But when they do - if they do - well, he'll blow their mind. The simple fact is that Dave Cloud sounds as though he's fallen drugged and ailing from the arse-end of the '60s into a stack of old samplers, breaking his guitar and his head in the process. Cloud's freestyle philosophy leads him lyrically into the asinine; instrumentally, to the simply ridiculous. 258 seconds of abstract guitar slapping and mistimed tambourine hits on Lightning Surf is thankfully as low as we go, but so absolute is the tragedy of such moments that any glimmer of hope, as found on the good-by-comparison Orgy, is firmly stamped on and ground down. Pleasure before business on Dave Cloud's terms? Forget it. You'd be well advised to work night and day. [Paul Neeson]