KYUSS, DARKTHRONE, SLINT AND MORE: 6 MUSIC SPECIAL

What’s this? Demon Cleaner by Kyuss is the opening track of a Freakier Zone 90s spesh?

GET. IN. Who’d have thought that Maconie would go anywhere near Gar-Homm Bjo-Ree’s desert rumble, unique though it is? Not as though he shuns the heavy and the extreme, far from it, it’s just that their downtuned wide open riffology lacks the fusion prog experimental thing that tends to make the FZ tracklist … Kyuss just rock, but in a way that no-one else ever did: a band that make you FEEL it every damn time. True behemoths of the pre-millennial decade.

So yeah, they start the hour, and in their dusty trail are benchmark 90s names like Darkthrone and Slint, plus other notables from the avant end of the alternative – Souls at Zero-era Neurosis, Scott Walker on a Tilt, you get the gist. Do I hear…21? 21? 21? Sure do.

Check the show right here. Not as extreme as the Greg Anderson playlist from a few weeks back – no Mortician for starters (what???) or Asschapel (fair enough) – but it’s a solid hour for exploratory rock heads, and the following day’s Freak Zone looks at IDM with Warp Records and Artificial Intelligence (all part of the My Generation: the 1990s thing at the beeb/6 Music –  worth a dig, there are stacks of programmes that swerve well clear of unplugged Live Forever sheee-ITE from 1994. And plenty that really, really don’t).

THE NINETIES. Formative music years over here, and sure to inform future reviews… what about you?