Swami John Reis & the Blind Shake “Modern Surf Classics” 2015. Swami Records. Psychedelic punk styled surf instrumentals, a collaboration of Swami John Reis (Rocket from the Crypt, Hot Snakes) and the Blind Shake (one of my favorite Minneapolis bands, brothers Mike and Jim Blaha on guitars and Dave Roper on drums). Reis on the impetus for the project from an interview with Vice:

I’ve always loved surf music. I saw the Blind Shake play a few years ago and they were backing up Michael Yonkers, who is one of my favorite guitar players of all time—and even though he’s not a surf guitar player, he’s heavily influenced by the surf music of the early 60s. I became aware of the Blind Shake that way and even though they aren’t a surf band either, I heard a lot of things in their sound that I thought could lend itself to playing that kind of music. I had this idea already happening in the back of my head and when I heard them it was like, “This could be a good way to collaborate with people I don’t know and make some music just for the sake of experimentation and for fun.”

[asked if the LP was recorded in a van] We didn’t record it in a van, we used a van that had recording equipment in it. I was really inspired by these George Greenough movies that came out in the early 70s and this band called The Farm that recorded the soundtrack for one of them. I really did some musical archeology because I loved the soundtrack so much and discovered a lot of the music for that film was recorded outside actually at the beach on eight-track—and I thought that was such a cool story and it made me enjoy the music even more, you know? Since this whole thing was about experimentation and fun I just wanted to try that out so we did that for a couple of songs. We recorded at two piers in San Diego that we went to because we needed some space and non-sandy land to lay out the equipment and everything. I don’t think you can really tell [on the recording] but it was a fun thing to do.

Since the entirety of the album is instrumental surf, the songs obviously sound a lot alike. That said, it’s really great: the psychedelic punk vibe giving the often sunny surf sound a dark edge and Reis’ playing of a Bouzouki (basically a Greek lute) on Modern Surf Classics lends an exotic flair to many of the songs (see especially “Wet Greek“). My standouts: the opener “Sea Saw,” “Dune Rider” is pretty crazy as is the aptly titled “Kooks on the Face.” “Beach Leech” is hilarious, starting off with a very Adams Family Lurch-esque groaned “beach leech” which is followed by a bonkers sax-forward melody. Wish we would have had a chance to see this collaboration live – the shows looked like bat-shit crazy fun.