With so much squeezed onto a 7” white vinyl single it’s hard to know where to begin. At the beginning I guess, for ‘Festival of Lights’ – a floaty instrumental which (and I think I read about this in a previous issue of itm?) was recorded in a down-the-phone-line collaboration with Damo Suzuki from Can. The German-based art-rock legend provides heavily distorted vocals which sadly don’t add much to the tune as they’re a bit too distorted. Nice idea though. As is the Pilot’s remix of ‘Crystals’ which is, we’re told, the last tune to be recorded in Busby’s Riverside Studios before its relocation (which may mean something to the indie kids of West Lanarkshire, if not the reader). It’s a morass of feedback and low thrumming just disguising a pretty rocking tune. St Deluxe’s version proper of ‘Crystal’ opens the flipside, a headbanging shoegazing neckwrenching piece of dirty distorted rock in the Mary Chain/MBV vein. St Deluxe get in on the remixing act too, adding some messed-up loops to what is presumably the first Pilot track, but rendered unrecognisable but still far from unlistenable.
