You don’t need a paleogeographer to demonstrate that Goosewind and Shrimper combine and complement each other perfectly.
Curiously “The Miracle Of Tape” is the first Goosewind album on Shrimper not to be released on tape.
The story is known, a few years ago Rick Bunce found an old 8 track recorder in a pawn shop and brought it back to life, “The Miracle of Tape” and the two records that preceded it were recorded using this machine.
Right from the first song it is clear that Goosewind have no intention of compromising, the sound is unique, the same that has characterized them since their debut on Shrimper more than thirty years ago. There are no other bands that sound like Goosewind.
A large part of their catalog is unavailable, something can be found on their own bandcamp page, there are some videos on YouTube digitized from an old VHS, other more recent things were released on Almost Halloween Time Records. “Charlie Don’t Surf” is an excellent anthology of their old production, “The Miracle of Tape” is a gorgeous new album.
Listening to it for the first time, I found it very radio-like, in the sense that you have the feeling of listening to a radio program that switches between different genres one after the other. The transition from “Miracle of Tape” to “Broken Hearts Club” for example. If the first song is classic goosewind, the second is an 80s classic reinterpreted in a Goosewind key, Rick’s guitar at the end of the song is unmistakably Goosewind. Then there are also some interludes (“Murphy’s Law”) and commercials (“Transylvania Airlines”), instrumental tracks that could easily be the soundtrack to a pulp movie, a fantastic cover of “Fever Pitch”, oddities of all kinds and genres (“Tater Taunt” features the sound of Rick jumping in an empty room in Castel del Monte). The artwork, created by Melody Kriesel, is wonderful, it catches the eye and doesn’t let you go. Pangea was surrounded by a super ocean and it is Panthalassa that I seem to be looking at. Let yourself be lulled by the sound of the primordial waves recorded for us by Goosewind.
