Julie Mittens, The

Julie Mittens, The

Julie Mittens

Holy Mountain

The Julie Mittens are a Dutch power trio who specialize in extended improvisation at extreme volume. Inspired by John Coltrane's The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording and the knowledge that Fushitsusha has more to do with Thelonius Monk than Blue Cheer, guitarist Aart-Jan Schakenbos, bassist Michael van Dam, and drummer Leo Fabriek consistently wreak havoc with lavish, textural, speaker-blowing meltdown jams; they surge with psychedelic power and a stellar rhythm section on the four studio recordings here.  About the name--it allegedly means something to the members of the group, but they won't say what. A Dutch thing? Just don't ask the guitar player to see his pick.  "... guitarist Aart-Jan Schakenbos, bassist Michael van Dam and drummer Leo Fabriek walk a harrowing path between amplifier anarchy and balanced interaction, never failing to make the two meet. Schakenbos provides the skyscraping as he warps and mutilates single notes with the centrifugal force of massive feedback. Van Dam either drops terrifying bass bombs that fill the vacuum Schakenbos leaves in his wake, drones ominously, or dialogues. Fabriek, however, harnesses the others' energy, as he resists the urge to flail away, and instead inserts a fill when it increases tension, thumps steadily when a groove is needed, or colors when space beckons." --Matthew Wuethrich, Dusted  "A kind of spiritual anarchy surfaces through the distorted bedlam, illuminating a full spectrum of frequencies which gives their most feverish moments the effect of coma-inducing psychical bliss landing somewhere between head banging and...