Artist: Crazed Farmers
Label: Radio Študent
Release: 2009
Length: 42.57
Rating: 3.5/5
The local misfits known as Crazed Farmers are back after three years with the album “Far Ma”. The band’s third chapter puts old warhorse Simon Vene up front as the “farmers'” lead voice, replacing Žiga Jenko in the role of chief vocal sadist. Either way, Crazed Farmers aren’t experimenting with any big changes in style. They stay true to the tried-and-tested formula of inimitable musical nagging, one whose full torture potential would probably only be unleashed in the hands of some Dr. Mengele type.
Crazed Farmers go quiet and then strike again just when you least expect it. The band’s main weapon is the desperate noisiness of an organic rock n’ roll pulse, which swings from primal one-beat massacring of a snappy punk rock dictate to spontaneous outbursts of cacophonous, almost free-jazz-leaning melodic flourishes that know neither order nor any tangible musical shape. Crazed Farmers seem to veer off in every possible direction with zero control. The old boys, riding mainly on the uncompromising bass lines of Boštjan Benčič and the untamed pounding of Mirko Nežmah, keep sniffing their way through the grimy sewers of the rock underground. They draw from all sorts of subgenre backgrounds and, in one stroke, mold them into their very own orgy of guitar distortion and screeching vocals. Then there’s the annoying presence of a suspiciously sounding, woodwind-like contraption of oriental origin, which drills into your ears with undiminished determination across most of the album and gives tracks like “HC” and its sibling “One Two Ex Yu” a heaping helping of primal out-of-tuneness. Through the lens of this schizophrenic musical craft, there’s truly no shortage of excess here. Riding on a worrying mental state of vocals, “Uč” sows horror, and after some clumsy whirling it doesn’t budge an inch despite plenty of choleric twists. So that the whole thing doesn’t come off as just the raving musical delirium of a sextet of country bumpkins who lost their last crumb of sanity while dutifully shoveling cow dung, “Far Ma” finally gets constructive too, with tracks like “You 2”, “Let It Beat” and “Dead Gun” devoting themselves to a peculiar reconstruction of basic punk and stoner musical forms.
“Far Ma” is an album that will keep Crazed Farmers on the radar of those rare lucky souls with refined musical taste. 18 chosen motifs will bend you over the knee in a good 42 minutes, and after this, I have no doubt, one-of-a-kind musical experience, a visit to the nearest psychiatric ward is surely on the cards. Guantanamo, here we come!
Lineup
Simon Vene: vocals
Dario Cortese: vocals, woodwinds
Mihael Kunčič: guitar
Borut Benčič: guitar
Boštjan Benčič: bass
Mirko Nežmah: drums
Production
Bojan Babić
Tracklist
1. Ok
2. 2 4 8
3. Hc
4. One Two Ex Yu
5. Uč
6. Nirvana
7. 80’s
8. Uni Verse
9. Dead Gun
10. You 2
11. Odsev Kovine
12. Born In The Day
13. Let Iz Beat
14. 5 Seconds
15. Impro Four
16. Run
17. Helmet
18. Easy M
