In the time it takes Titan to traipse through one of their songs you could get a haircut. Or you could read the ‘A’ section of your dictionary. Thrice. Or you could bring about world peace, get reparations for the Comfort Women of the ’40s, and even organize your collection of Wolf Eyes CD-Rs. But if you have a large chunk of life to kill and don’t mind guitar solos so broad and lengthy they’ve got their own weather system A Raining Sun of Light & Love ... is For You. & You. & yes, even You.
Rest assured, if you give A Raining Sun the chance to peek through your window it’ll offer the world in return. That is, if your world consists of myriad genres including garage/stoner/psych-rock, doom, metal and prog. Anyone not already thrilled to the gills with any of the above genres should avoid this monstrosity with furious abandon. Titan are about as close to delivering a verse/chorus ditty as your local pizza place is to bringing sauted eel to your door. They mean business when they launch into their extended instrumental freakouts, and if you’re not TOTALLY down you’ll end up having one of those bad trips where you swear off your possessions and convert to christianity the next day out of sheer confusion.
That said, these Brooklynites really know how to swing a fookin’ axe, bring the fookin’ bass, clamp down on the fookin’ keys, and drape the fookin’ drums. There’s a lot of fookin’ around afoot, to be sure, and the only element saving Titan from their own wankery is the fact that they’re screwed into each other tighter than an atomic lugnut. Seriously, the HUGE sound the quartet manage is impossibly tubby, the result of a series of homemade basement CD-Rs and improv sessions.
How they render their diddling more interesting than most is a matter of sheer size, velocity, and savvy. Whenever the listener is ready for a new passage, Titan pivot, turn, and jump head-first into a whole new bucket of jam sauce. Another factor is the presence of Kris D'Agostino, whose keys are a cut above the rest. They serve as a consistent reel of sound when all else dips above and around the surface, and the bassery of Dan Bates — though it often gets lost in the mix — is even more uncommonly LARGE, his tricks floating Titan’s boat time and time again with lines that retain rhythm while reaching for melodies you wouldn’t assume one could cram into a single bar.
It would be a travesty if those zing-zang’d by Avatar didn’t wet their beaks in Titan’s wellspring of creativity. A Raining Sun is as invigorating as it can be considering its built-in limitations — no vox save an opening tryst, no ‘song’s — and natural proclivity for the extreme. You’ll hear better albums this year, but superior free-form just ain’t gonna happen unless an impromptu comet falls from the sky.
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