Review: Cigar for Castro – S/T

Typically a prospect of listening and describing extra-long tracks/jams fills me with dread – an hour of unvaried harsh noise, anyone? Not so much in the case of this peculiarly named New Jersey trio – information on the band is minimal and this self-titled LP might well end up being their first and last recording, but that hardly matters since the end product works so well.
Imagine, if you will, a blend of classic krautrock a-la Neu! / Hawkwind, space rock and drone and you’d get a good idea of the kind of cosmic mayhem that CfC came up with on their debut. All three cuts on this record seem to be improvised, but there’s also an organic feel to them, so they might as well have been composed rather than created on the fly.
All three tracks presented within also differ in terms of character –  “Fourteen Dollars”, the opener, with its slow build-up leading into more propulsive/Neu-sque grand finale, “Exploding Cigars” with its choppy, bizarre rhythm and, finally, the 30+ minute sludgy closer “Reel One”. In short, there’s a little bit of everything to be found there, yet the record never seem suffers from incohesion in spite of all the stylistic detours on display – certainly no small feat considering that all this was created by a little-known trio from NJ.