Sun City Girls – Torch of the Mystics

One of the most singular, stubborn and inscrutable bands of the post-punk/hardcore/indie 1980s, the Sun City Girls exploded out of the Phoenix hardcore punk scene but took a hard left turn into a genre-less mess of global experimentalism almost immediately. They were a trio of two brothers — Richard and Alan Bishop — and an insane drummer named Charlie Gocher, and drew on influences ranging from Ornette Coleman to Captain Beefheart to Folkways field recordings to ancient throat-singing chants. Released in 1990 after they moved to Seattle, Torch of the Mystics was the result of years spent traveling the world and absorbing and synthesizing influences. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever heard, featuring chants and wails where “vocals” and “lyrics” should be and moving musically from the haunting, organ driven “Cafe Batik,” to the woozy, relatively direct guitar instrumental “Radar 1941,” to the wicked guitar work of Richard Bishop (who, with Alan, owns the label Sublime Frequencies) in “The Vinegar Stroke” to the cavernous throat-sung benediction that is “Burial in the Sky,” which sounds like a ritualistic funeral service for a martyr-king of a secretive religious sect. Though they disbanded after Gocher died in 2007, the trio released dozens of full-length tapes, records and CDs while they were a unit, and continue to issue archival records from time to time. – Randall