Rev up those wah pedals and crank the bass amp up to 11. Threading acrobatic jazz fusion guitar solos through a tunnel of frenetic math-rock rhythm, Texan psych outfit Sun Dream Gun provides a jittery, ornately-crafted take on the wiry indie rock peddled by mid-90s acts like Built To Spill or Pavement. The project’s debut record, ΩΩ, is a turf war between the aggression of its technical, occasionally black metallic, improvisations and the syrupy ceiling of reverb/distortion that blunts its force of impact. Powering your way through a few Sun Dream Gun tracks is akin to standing in a Nerf machine gun’s line of fire — the band sounds a steady stream of angular riffs and fills at the listener, their spongy shoegaze textures bouncing off a forearm shield, a satisfying sting left in their wake.
“i need headphones” is ΩΩ’s most powerful round of dream-prog ammunition, laying down splashy post-rock percussion beneath monsoonal six-string precipitation. It’s the climactic burst of the ominous supercell stormclouds that loom on the horizon during the record’s first half. ΩΩ is the summer’s death throes - a humid eruption of mid-September gloom, the beauty of a soup-green sky.
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