With their latest release, A on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label,  Sunburned Hand Of The Man from the outer limits of Massachusetts seem intent on remaining as a moving target and show no sign of slowing up on their prolific output.

Their mammoth back catalogue exists on small imprints, CDRs and cassette and on most there is  no obvious attempt to smooth down the rough edges. Quite the reverse, in fact, the ragged randomness of their sound is a large part of their appeal.

The band are fully cognisant of the fact that what is praised as spontaneous artistry by some is dismissed as amateurish noodling by others and they don’t care too much which camp you fall into.

You either get what they are about or you don’t..

Kieren Hebden gets it. Even though he has gone public over Sunburned deliberately cavalier attitude to production values, he is a massive fan of their music. This is his second infiltration into the Sunburned recording studio, the first being 2007’s  Fire Escape (Smalltown Supersound)

Hebden’s fascination with Sunburned began, as it did for me, after reading David Keenan’s ‘Welcome to the New Weird America’ article in the August 2003 edition of The Wire. This would have led him to them as well as to  the countless offshoots of what has been documented as the free folk explosion, a loosely defined movement that thankfully shows no sign of running out of steam.

In Keenan’s cover article, Sunburned’s longstanding member John Moloney explained the root of the common philosophy that he and kindred spirits shared : “We don’t adhere to any utopian concept or live by any manifestos , but it would be safe to say that we think like a load of disenchanted Americans who don’t believe what the news or the government says, don’t buy into mass consumerism and don’t eat at McDonalds”.

This ‘fuck patriotism’ principle is obvious from the fact that an earlier incarnation of the band was the trio  ‘Shit Spangled Banner’ and from the fact that they list their influences as World War II, Vietnam and The Cold War.

It has become something of a badge of honour that the band make no concessions towards commodification of their music. Mojo Magazine once labelled them as “the demon children of John Fahey” and you will find no press kits or slick publicity shots. Their official website has been ‘coming soon’ for as long as I remember so it can be regarded as a major concession to the market place that they even have a My Space page..

Largely as a result of this shadowy media presence, they have, by design or default, maintained their cult status. Over the past decade they have expanded from  a four piece (John Moloney, Robert Thomas, Chad Cooper and Rich Thomas) into a veritable mob with a rotating cast of over thirty members. Nowadays, as the My Space bio puts it, “Sunburned is whomever you see on stage”.

‘A’ is just the latest instalment in the ongoing saga and while Fire Escape was Hebden’s cut and paste job of a perfect Sunburned album his electronica sound is much more to the fore here.

Nevertheless,  the two longest tracks (Now Lift The Outer Finger and Loft At Sea) feature the slow building in quest of groove that is at the heart of Sunburned’s best albums. Loft At Sea  has the same freaky motorik of their classic Jaybird album even though the tribal glitch of Hebden widens the palette significantly.

Aside from this, Action Figure has the dance beats you know and love from Four Tet’s albums and on other tracks, the prominence of percussion calls to mind Hebden’s albums with veteran drummer Steve Reid rather than earlier Sunburned releases..

Apollo Wind and the closing track (Alpha Beta Adam) are atmospheric electro-drones that you expect to build into something grander but end after two and half minutes. I also felt short chnaged by three very short tracks (The Return of a C, Anger Icon and Sticky Wicket) sound like off-cuts from some larger piece. With a total playing time under 35 minutes, I can’t help feeling Hebden’s editing was far too rigorous, not a criticism you would ever have expected to make of a Sunburned album.

All things considered,  ‘A’ may be a poor relation to Fire Escape but is still a relative I would happily invite to a camp fire party.

(An edited version of this review also appears at Whisperin’ & Hollerin’)