Crucial Blast Releases

TOTIMOSHI ¿Mysterioso? enhanced CD re-issue
CBR46
$8.98

track listing
1.Float
2.Screwed
3.Cellophane ::MP3 sample::
4.The Bleed
5.Dirt Farmer
6.Vitreol-A
7.Oblivian
8.Horselaugh

¿Mysterioso? , the second full length from Oakland, CA-based trio TOTIMOSHI, intersects earthquake-heavy rock and wicked sludge riffage with the wiry hooks and dynamics of 80's post-punk / new wave, Spanish melodies, and an adventurous, occasionally improvisational fuzz attack. It's like someone gave an old Beggars Banquet band a cocktail of steroids, huge amps, and battered copies of Melvins' Stoner Witch and Mainliner's Mellow Out. Heavy, crunchy, catchy,hypnotic - ¿Mysterioso? winds, grinds, and explodes every step of the way. This re-issued, re-tooled version features enhanced CD-ROM extras, including video , photos, and more.

from Lollipop Magazine:
"...an on-fire kick-ass power trio utilizing metal range and tones and the lessons in dynamic groove’n’riff of many of the finer units that’ve littered the Touch & Go/Amphetamine Reptile ’80s and the rocker part of the Skin Graft/Relap.03se ’90s. If you need a quick and dirty tag, call’m a heavied out ...Trail Of Dead, and put’m on your next party mix between The Jesus Lizard and High On Fire and eject all complainers. The mating of heavy groove riffs and berserk Japanese PSF-style free-rock energy keeps the deal anchored and ballistic. These guys could gig with damn near anyone "in the culture" and come out with new fans. Their new record’s called Mysterioso?. Only problem? It’s too short. 35 minutes just ain’t enuff of the good stuff."

from Deadtide Webzine:
These guys take me back more than a few years. I've never heard this album before but they do remind me of a few old noise rock bands I used to love, namely Big Black and The Jesus Lizard. The guitar has an unholy amount of distortion on it, though it still sounds like a guitar, unlike Big Black who got sounds of their instruments that were not meant to be. The rhythm section is heavier than an elephant with a piano on its back, especially the bass and bass drums which were cranked way up in the mix. You don't so much hear them as feel them. This is not to say that they aren't catchy as all hell though as the bass lines tend to end up in your head for hours at a time. The vocals are pretty good with a mix of clean singing and mad screaming that sounds like a slightly sober David Yow. Adding to this outburst of retro noise is the fact that it was produced by former Fudge Tunnel guitarist/vocalist Alex Newport. This is a slow, turgid, heavy beast of a sludge record. If the aforementioned bands and others such as Unsane, Shellac, and Slint are your cup of tea then you need this record. Steve Albini would be proud.

from Ventrilocution Webzine:
Soaked in the elegance of a rusty production, with gritty basses and uneven highs aplenty, Totimoshi ooze groove by the tone as if nothing were the matter, leaving their immediate surroundings in such a state of laid-back inertia one would be hard-pressed to recoil from an imposed state of uncaring drowsiness. Oddly enough, there are plenty of agitated moments within these bass-driven songs, which become understandable if pictured as part of a broader whole, but the prevalent mood is undoubtedly a contemplative one.Retrieving the core of their sonority from the entrancing mannerisms of psychedelic stoner rock, Totimoshi do not fear to quote frankly more thunderous influences and that is clearly visible in the metallic demeanour adopted throughout the entire record, in what rapidly becomes a successful confluence of marginally diverging approaches whose already heterogeneous character provides ample ground for the band to explore odd tendencies. Still, one is chiefly attracted to ¿Mysterioso? (silly album title, apropos) because of its dazzling homogeneity - as opposed to dullness - wherein vertiginous experiences tampering with one's mind through techniques of an unwholesome nature are held. Were it not so and they would not be able to merge sensations such as anger, deception, carelessness and satisfaction into a single irrepressible urge to wallow repeatedly in its lulling, comforting tones. Taking "Horselaugh" as the ultimate statement of intents, it becomes painfully evident just how eventful and meaningful this particular brand of hypnotising sludge-rock can be without resorting to elements extraneous to their core minimalist approach, which is given enough leverage to expand on itself to the point of reaching a theoretical peak (or climax, whichever) wherein the desired emotional effect is empirically maximised. And while many prefer to define that inflexion point a priori rather than allowing it to naturally come to being, in what is necessarily a gigantic failure, Totimoshi are sufficiently mature and talented to avoid such perilous traps and deliver exactly what they mean to, which is, coincidently, the only thing we could come to expect.