There's been no shortage of national focus on Arizona of late. The president showed up, there was trouble; our disgraced former sheriff slithered back into the headlines; and a federal judge ruled racism as the main factor in a ban on ethnic studies in Arizona schools. From the outside, Arizona likely seems like a land of extremes, of extreme ideologies and extreme heat. And it is that, but for those of us listening with our ear to the ground, those extremes extend to artistic vitality and spiritual growth. From the dusty cowgirl songs of Billie Maxwell to the blistered soul of Eddie & Ernie, from the exoticism of the Sun City Girls to the fried psychedelia the Meat Puppets, from the proto-freak folk of Black Sun Ensemble to the cosmic crush of Destruction Unit, Arizona has always harbored strange musical aberrations.
The Old Arizona was weird, but so is the new. Two stalwart examples of this New Weird Arizona? Tucson combo the Myrrors and the Phoenix-based Sunn Trio. Recently, the bands released new LPs, titled Hasta La Victoria and Sunn Trio, respectively.
Their connections are more than geographical; Sunn Trio arrives via Sky Lantern Records, the label run by Nik Rayne of the Myrrors, which has released music by like-minded explorers Eternal Tapestry, Dead Sea Apes, and Kikagaku Moyo. And even though Hasta La Victoria, released by the psych-leaning Beyond Is Beyond Is Beyond label, finds the Myrrors playing an entirely discrete combination of Krautrock, ambient, and drone than Sunn Trio’s Middle Eastern/free jazz/bizzaro excursions, it’s clear a psychic connection ties the groups together, a unity that exists despite vastly different sonic frameworks.
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