Motorpsycho - You Gotta Hang On To The Trip You're On...

Review of Trust Us taken from the
Dutch e-zine
STEREO #7 / 1998-06-18.
English translation done by Paul Caspers.

MOTORPSYCHO - TRUST US (stickman/sonic rendezvous)

Norway. Not a land one would associate with good rock music. And yet, Trondheim harvests one of the most remarkable bands in today's music around the world: MP. A band with a productivity only equalled by Guided by Voices. Whereas with GBV the quality tends to suffer from the quantity, MP delivers good records time and again. Their new cd Trust Us is a double one, with a total playing time of 80 minutes.

MP makes rock of the old-fashined, dirty, fat sort (Stooges, Led Zep), however the instruments include (besides guitar, bass and drums) among others a saw, harmonium, mellotron, glockenspiel and a reindeer antler. You could regard MP a stoner-rock band and fans of bands like Fu Manchu, Monster Magnet and Kyuss will enjoy Trust Us immensely.

But MP is more than that. For the band can make a nice pop song as well, or deliver some spastic trash-noise (Sonic Youth old style). However, on Trust Us, they manifest themselves most of all as a shameless drugs band. With pop musicians you know what the score is when the inlay says "Space is the Place". "I'll smoke anything that I wanna smoke", you can here already in the opening track Psychonaut. Most tracks are stretched a lot; 6 minutes seems to be the minimum (on stage they go even further and no song lasts shorter than 10 minutes). But by stretching the songs so much, the band succeeds in giving the album the desired "trip-effect". Trust Us is therefore a hallucinogenic musical inferno, perhaps MP's best album. The only complaint is the price, almost 60 guilders at my local (usually not expensive) record store.

Mark Vluggen


[record reviews: trust us]
	Motorpsycho - Trust us Review of Trust Us taken from the Dutch e-zine STEREO #7 / 1998-06-18. English translation done by Paul Caspers. MOTORPSYCHO - TRUST US (stickman/sonic rendezvous) Norway. Not a land one would associate with good rock music. And yet, Trondheim harvests one of the most remarkable bands in today's music around the world: MP. A band with a productivity only equalled by Guided by Voices. Whereas with GBV the quality tends to suffer from the quantity, MP delivers good records time and again. Their new cd Trust Us is a double one, with a total playing time of 80 minutes. MP makes rock of the old-fashined, dirty, fat sort (Stooges, Led Zep), however the instruments include (besides guitar, bass and drums) among others a saw, harmonium, mellotron, glockenspiel and a reindeer antler. You could regard MP a stoner-rock band and fans of bands like Fu Manchu, Monster Magnet and Kyuss will enjoy Trust Us immensely. But MP is more than that. For the band can make a nice pop song as well, or deliver some spastic trash-noise (Sonic Youth old style). However, on Trust Us, they manifest themselves most of all as a shameless drugs band. With pop musicians you know what the score is when the inlay says "Space is the Place". "I'll smoke anything that I wanna smoke", you can here already in the opening track Psychonaut. Most tracks are stretched a lot; 6 minutes seems to be the minimum (on stage they go even further and no song lasts shorter than 10 minutes). But by stretching the songs so much, the band succeeds in giving the album the desired "trip-effect". Trust Us is therefore a hallucinogenic musical inferno, perhaps MP's best album. The only complaint is the price, almost 60 guilders at my local (usually not expensive) record store. Mark Vluggen *annotations:* The translator does not subscribe to the author's point of view but rather thinks that this review is "the biggest load of bollocks" he ever read about 'Trust us'. Back to the Record Reviews page...