Shit & Shine - New Confusion (2022)

Every single psychonaut worth their salt can remember a moment,
midway through some chemically-assisted voyage into the unknown,
when someone in the room had the sheer gall to utter the immortal
words that strike terror into the heart of everyone present: “Hey,
imagine what it’d be like if we stayed this way forever?”

Wonder no longer. Existing permanently stranded at the dizzying peak
of a nightmarish hallucinatory travelogue, Shit & Shine are here to
make that moment a reality. Yet thankfully, as always in this absurdist
and electrifying realm, they’re notable for offering a different vision
from the third eye whenever they make themselves manifest. What’s
more, with New Confusion they’ve usurped their own outré
paradigms yet again, resulting in a demented heat-haze panorama of
delirious beat-driven abandon and elucidated neural pathways.

As ever the brainchild of Texan king of outlaw brinkmanship
Craig Clouse, these nine abject and glorious meditations exist in an
alternate dimension whereby a loop-driven exploratory framework is
joyridden with alacrity offroad by a moonshine-swigging convict, a
zone whereby aural scrap metal is alchemically transformed into
gleaming, abstract and intimidating structures and sculptures anew.

It may not have occurred to the average head that the sound of
Tropicália melting gleefully in the sun (as here essayed on ‘Miami’)
might be to their satisfaction, nor that the image of J Dilla trapped in a
K-hole with Butthole Surfers would do anything but make them mildly
anxious. Similarly, the prospect of Ming The Merciless screaming with
rage at his internet service provider (see ‘Robbed’) may not be
something that immediately appeals to music listeners around the
globe, and nor could most folk imagine an in-the-red floor-filler being
quite as pulverising and irresistible as the motorik mangler ‘Annoyed’,
which kicks off this album in incendiary style - no less than the sound
of ‘Hallogallo’-in-hell.

Yet if the parallel universe of Shit & Shine exists for anything, it’s to
map out new frontiers of wrong and righteous beyond your wildest
expectations. Meet the new end-of-level boss.