Please, three minutes of your time. I promise it’s for a good cause. Among the best causes, actually, as I can think of few hills as much worth dying on as that of the willfully weird, and Athens’ Chickn — no Google, I didn’t forget the ‘e’ — will issue their third album, Bel Esprit, through Inner Ear Records on Oct. 18. The new outing follows last year’s Wowsers! (discussed here) and their 2016 self-titled debut (discussed here), and it brings “Infrared Panda Club” as the first audio to be officially released to the public. And yes, it’s three minutes, and yes, it’s a strange and hypnotic delight, the kind of thing you can’t quite look away from and you’re not sure why. An earworm in the classic sense but with a sound likewise indebted to P-Funk and Talking Heads that I expect in no way represents the full scope of the album, as the band at this point have a history with a swath of genres at their disposal. They are a blast, and “Infrared Panda Club” is a blast, and for everyone who might be in one of those “everything-sounds-the-same” ruts, I guarantee that whatever you’re listening to, there’s at least a 93 percent chance it doesn’t sound like Chickn. Take three minutes an play those odds.

One doesn’t want to generalize, but I consider Chickn emblematic of the more adventurous side of Greek’s heavy rock underground in general, particularly in their willingness to incorporate beyond-genre influences into an experimentalist approach that still keeps its structure intact. They are downright gleeful on “Infrared Panda Club” — which is meant to make no more sense than it does — toying with different layers of rhymes amid funky keys and percussion and lyrics worthy of the lyric video you can see them in below. It’s hyper-stylized, and again, I wouldn’t think the whole album functions the same way, but it definitely works for this three minutes, and as a first teaser for Bel Esprit to come, it for sure makes me curious what the hell other shenanigans Chickn might be up to this time around. Guess we’ll find out in October.

Good times.

You can check out “Infrared Panda Club” on the video embed below — again, it’s only three minutes, and it’s so weird; just make it happen — and dig into more info from the PR wire beneath that.

Please enjoy:

Chickn, “Infrared Panda Club” lyric video premiere

Chickn are happy to announce a new album. “Bel Esprit” is due out on October 18 via Inner Ear Records. The follow-up to last year’s “Wowsers” sees the Greek psych-heads exploring a variety of different styles. From garage-blues to synth-prog and beyond, “Bel Esprit” will generously provide you with all the touchy – feeliness you’ll ever need. It will be hidden inside intimate voices telling distant stories, cosmic whistles or even in the form of cadenced grooves from outer space.

“Bel Esprit” was recorded between March and June of 2019 in Athens, Greece engineered by Nikos Triantafyllou and Iraklis Vlahakis, produced by Angelos Krallis & CHICKN.

“Infrared Panda Club” is the first offer of CHICKN’s third LP “Bel Esprit”, track-listed third on the album. A truly bizarre yet uplifting song that popped Angelos, the band’s guitarist and vocalist, out of a nightmare some months ago and furled into the smallest club into this world. It’s nothing more but an Infrared, meaning when not using a filter the club behaves like a normal club with no special characteristics. Alike Panda bears, it involves gallons of water. Feel free to join the Club!

Chickn are:
Angelos Krallis – Vocals, Guitar, Synthesizers
Pantelis Karasevdas – Drums/ Percussion
Chris Bkrs – String Machine, Guitar
Axios Zafeirakos – Bass
Don Stavrinos – Trumpet/ Percussion

Chickn on Thee Facebooks

Chickn on Instagram

Inner Ear Records on Thee Facebooks

Inner Ear Records on Instagram

Inner Ear Records website

Tags: Athens, Bel Esprit, Chickn Bel Esprit, Greece, Inner Ear Records

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 18th, 2019 at 4:22 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.