Modern Rock in Motion reviews The Red Step, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Josh Caterer, Hypnosonics and Junk Ranchers
Old faces turn up in strange and different places in this edition of Modern Rock in Motion.
Author:
By Peter Lindblad
Old faces turn up in strange and different places in this edition of Modern Rock in Motion. It appears that The Black Heart Procession’s Tobias Nathaniel has opened a separate branch in Serbia with The Red Step, while the Smoking Popes’ Josh Caterer visited The Hideout in Chicago to amplify songs of his grandparents’ generation with a whole new band and never-before-released records from a beloved side project of Morphine’s Mark Sandman finally see the light of day. Sunburned Hand of the Man pushes the boundaries of New Weird America in a heady, thrill-seeking masterpiece, and the Junk Ranchers’ sparkling debut LP arrives about 34 years late. Let’s dig in.
Prior to Treat Her Right and Morphine,
Mark Sandman, the father of “low rock,” formed Hypnosonics. Often referred to as his “secret band,” Hypnosonics remained a favorite side project until his untimely death in 1999.
On April 6, Modern Harmonic will release two never-before-heard Hypnosonics albums:
Drums Were Beating: Fort Apache 1996 and
Someone Stole My Shoes: Beyond The Q Division Sessions available on CD, LP and digital.
In 1996, the same year that Morphine recorded Like Swimming at the legendary Fort Apache Studios, Hypnosonics taped a live-in-studio radio broadcast on beloved local rock station WFNX. Drums Were Beating contains much of that session. Known for their unpredictable live shows, this collection features the band stretching out a bit, as well as some choice snippets of Sandman s witty stage patter.