I've often seen talk of drum machines in surf but it usually seems like a solution for bedroom composing and the inability to form a band. I gotta say that most of the music I've heard with them is... eh. But there are some bands that have fused surf with synth and drum machines very well, such as earlier Messer Chups and Matorralman. Galactic Gold sounds like neither and pulls it off well.
I think the success lies in the trashiness. A lot of these surf tunes are played with trashy punk distortion, and the drum machine follows suit, often using clipped, distorted kick drum sounds. A lot of the drum sounds, especially the cymbals, sound sampled from real kits. I could be wrong about that, but it keeps it feeling robotic and bombastically analog at once. And often that ultimately means the results are pretty damn danceable. Guitar mostly serves that purpose -- it's a slave to the beat and does its job pretty well.
Two tracks on here that really stand out to me are forays into exotica. "Moon Ludes" is a nice little guitar lullaby with a subtly stompable hand-clap drum beat. I think it works surprisingly well! "Nuggy Foot Truck" keeps the trashy drum machine and distorted guitar with strings probably lifted from an exotica record, eventually leading to a great loud moanin' guitar bit. This one really sounds unique: lots of disparate elements at play that work well together.
I'm not sure how many of these will stick in my head, but Galactic Gold managed the most important thing: trying an experimental sound that I appreciate first for the feeling, not for the experiment.
