Raccoo-oo-oon – Is Night People
I miss Raccoo-oo-oon. I consider myself very lucky that I was able to see them back in 2007 at the Smell. Their last official release was issued a year later, and at some point afterwards they called it a day. But, oh man, they were just an incredible force both on record and in person. I described their set that night as “obscenely loud and in your face. They had a little PA speaker that was set up behind their drummer (who had his back to the side wall, near the front of the stage) that was pointed diagonally into the crowd. The keyboard effects and vocals were sent through this little PA, and my ears still have a slight ring from the few songs I spent standing next to it…They were exactly what I expected: chirping, screaming, in-your-face, with a dual-drum attack on several songs. Stunning!”
Is Night People was a limited edition cassette tape from 2005 by the Iowa City imprint of same name, and was reissued a year later on CD by the Swedish label Release The Bats Records. I don’t know if this came before or after The Cave Of Spirits Forever, but one of these two recordings marks the first Raccoo-oo-oon recordings. Unless of course they made and sold their own recordings prior to 2005. But I don’t want to think about that, as it means there’s still more Raccoo-oo-oon ephemera floating around out there that I don’t already own.
Says Ned Raggett (via AllMusic):
“…Is Night People shows that from the start, Raccoo-oo-oon looked upon everything from gothy blues to blissout feedback to Japanoise and thought, “Let’s use it.” Which they do on this short but enjoyable debut; often extremely loudly. Starting with the short, chaotic “Brain Loot,” what Raccoo-oo-oon did at this stage most of all was work on a simple but effective formula: make things simultaneously as overloaded and as accessibly enveloping as possible. It’s not quite the kind of combination that, say, Bardo Pond have perfected; instead of an agog majesty Raccoo-oo-oon here aim at a gentle war in the head. Even when the murky voices float in towards the end of “Fluff Up Your Fur,” the effect is one of serene uneasiness rather than just plain creep-out. While the full white noise approach at the end of “Call out Your Friends” works, it’s the combinations on tracks like “Stamped from the Stump,” where there’s just enough of a processional feeling that gets complemented by the swirling collage of vocal overdubs later on. “Uh-Oh,” the album’s second cut, is also the best, started with an unexpected, beautiful fusion of crisp, martial beats and a simple but lovely surge of building shoegaze-via-Mogwai guitar. As it progresses, everything in the arrangement gets a bit busier — buried singing and shouts, more percussion hits, what sounds like a cascading screech of a dying theremin — even as the base of the song remains a solid anchor. It feels like a triumphant march into the future, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all.”
I’m very proud of the fact that I uploaded the image of the disc label for this CD to its Discogs page. You’re welcome, Internet.
Raccoo-oo-oon
Is Night People
(Night People/Release The Bats, 2005/6)
MediaFire DL Link
01. Brain Loot
02. Uh-oh
03. Fluff Up Your Fur
04. Call Out Your Friends
05. Stamped From The Stump
06. The Canyons Long Winding Words
07. The Great Horn Of The Wilderness [MP3]
