After over 20 years together, Mudhoney sound nowadays as loud and unrestrained as ever, if not more. The proof is in this live album, recorded in Madrid in July 2007, where the band played many of their most defining songs in full frontal sonic attack mode. It was probably some kind of omen. Arriving at my Berlin hotel in the October of 1988, a badly dubbed version of Russ Meyer’s Mudhoney came on TV. A couple of days later I was watching the European debut of the band named after that very flick. “Superfuzz Bigmuff” had pretty much just come out and Sub Pop was in its infancy. I don’t remember too much about the show other than it seemed that the noise they emitted was being channelled from outer space. It wasn’t grunge or hardcore or even punk rock, what they wrought seemed like something entirely new, at least in the context of what had gone before. They had very long hair and looked like four Linda Blairs with their heads spinning in time with the massive swathes of guitar. Visually they reminded me of what I perceived Redd Kross to look like. It was all fairly mind-blowing. They came on late and we were all very drunk. The hypnotic psychedelic onslaught had traces of Detroit in its bloodstream and my own take on it all was that these guys were The Damned to Nirvana’s Sex Pistols in that respective “scene”. All the late 80s/early 90s Pacific Northwest bands were different in some way but connected in the sense that the media feeding frenzy turned it into a movement even although it never actually was. I never ever got Cobain’s mob like I got Mudhoney’d that fateful night. The next time I saw them, they’d cut their hair but still managed to shred Sonic Youth in Glasgow. Fast forward 20 years then to here and now. Recorded at the fine Madrid establishment El Sol in July of 2007, their recorded works always made a lot more sense after you saw them. I’m not sure that any such equipment exists that could adequately harness the unbridled horsepower of this combo, but this release comes mighty close. Mudhoney were never lumpy like so many of their peers, their defining noise always headed in several directions, often at the same time. They took a traditional garage band framework and pushed the boundaries to fashion entirely new and ear-splitting frequencies. Last time I caught them was maybe a year before this was captured for posterity. The band curated the ATP shindig that included The Scientists and The Flesheaters. Evidently they have excellent taste in addition to being able to kick up onemother of a sonic ruckus. Sometimes it’s good to fly by the seat of your pants and this crew do that thing better than most. You might come out a little pummelled but a little subliminal bruising never really did anybody any harm. The urge to experience an actual gig is a realistic side-effect which may occur during or after listening. Bear that in mind. Lindsay Hutton