With their big drum and pedal steel guitar reverberating out over the ancient treetops of the Pacific Northwest, Portland’s Abronia released their second album, The Whole of Each Eye, last Fall through Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records. As the follow-up to their 2017 debut, Obsidian Visions / Shadowed Lands (review here), the richly atmospheric and periodically sax’ed up six-song/35-minute long-player brims with a heavy Americana ambience, its percussive presence both simple — indeed, centered around beating a very large single drum — and intricate, with tambourine and shakers and cymbals and other beat-keeping whathaveyou.

A few years of lineup changes find half of the six-piece newly arrived, with Rick Pedrosa on pedal steel, Shaun Lyvers on bass and Paul Michael Schaefer on guitar joining original members Keelin Mayer (vocals and saxophone), Eric Crespo (guitar, backing vocals) and Shaver (percussion and melodica), but the songwriting is likewise coherent and avant garde, with Mayer out front in post-Grace Slick form on resonant early pieces like leadoff “Wound Site” and the subsequent “Rope of Fire,” on which her repetitions of “defender!” give way to a wash of pedal steel and melodica at the end, moving smoothly into the more straightforward guitar-led progression of “Cross the Hill,” like the opening credits of a Morricone score translated into a pop progression, something of a respite from the starker atmosphere of the first two cuts, but still definitely a ceremony.

Nalin Silva and Eric Crespo recorded analog at Type Foundry in Portland, while Billy Anderson mixed, and neither would seem to have been a minor task — getting the material down or putting it in some semblance of order in a way that captures both the variety of arrangement elements in play at any given moment (usually, but not always) behind Mayer‘s strong voice and the sense of space essential to Abronia‘s atmospheric goals. The Whole of Each Eye succeeds in this, however, and whether it’s the sax freakout in the second half of side B’s “New Winds for the Warming Sands” mirroring the louder stretches of “Wound Site” or the album’s longest piece, “Half Hail,” which follows at 6:49, taking its time unfolding through shimmering guitar into a sense of forest ritualism and near-tribal urgency in a midsection drone/percussion solo built up Wovenhand-style as the song moves into its second half to a glorious instrumental return and shouting finish.

This leaves “Cauldron’s Gold,” which begins in more subdued fashion, to close out, which it does with a nod to folkish intent in Mayer‘s gentle delivery and the slow cymbal march taking place with the patient guitar. As the track moves into its second half, it finds more volume and tonal fullness, but cuts and recedes again before making its actual last push, hitting the record’s noisiest mark before cutting quickly to silence right about at the six-minute mark, seeming to leave the meditation almost in mid-mantra, instrumentally speaking, and no doubt purposefully. The diversity of Abronia‘s approach, even as relates to hearing The Whole of Each Eye in terms of the record they put out before it, speaks to the overarching creative depth and progressive intention, as well as to the clearheaded sense of who they are that underscores the gorgeous and sometimes threatening portrayal of nature in their material.

Drawing from as vast a landscape as they do, musically and in terms of the actual landscape(s) they’re evoking, Abronia‘s will to craft actual songs is all the more admirable. Even in their wildest stretches, they never seem entirely lost any more than they want to be in the ritualism they’ve casted, and at both their most minimal and lushest reaches, they safely guide their audience across the relatively brief but memorable journey that The Whole of Each Eye becomes.

It is my pleasure to host the premiere of the video for “Half Hail” — floating orb and all — which you can find below. Abronia currently have a European tour in the works that will culminate with an appearance at Yellowstock Festival XII in Belgium early in August. More on that to come.

Until then, please enjoy:

Abronia, “Half Hail” official video premiere

The follow up to their debut, The Whole of Each Eye sees Abronia cementing its very singular place in the canon of the broader psych rock universe. A six piece consisting of two guitars, electric bass, tenor saxophone, pedal steel, and one 32” inch bass drum (no drum set here), Abronia pulls from kraut rock, spaghetti Western soundtracks, doom, 60’s UK folk, spiritual jazz, ritualistic drone, and infuse it all with the arid haze of deserts near and far.

Video by Aubrey Nehring – https://aubreynehring.com

Abronia are:
Keelin Mayer – tenor saxophone and vocals
Rick Pedrosa – pedal steel
Eric Crespo – guitar and backing vocals
Paul Michael Schaefer – guitar
Shaun Lyvers – bass
Shaver – the big drum/percussion/melodica

Abronia, The Whole of Each Eye (2019)

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Psychedelic pastoralia would seem to be the order of the day on Abronia‘s second album, The Whole of Each Eye, which is set to release next month through Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records. All the better. Their 2017 debut, Obsidian Visions/Shadowed Lands (review here), certainly had its share of soundscape-driven characteristics, and to hear the six-piece outfit transpose that onto far-out and more folkish vibes only adds a refreshing feel to what was an already individualized approach. Mixed by Billy Frickin’ Anderson, the long-player is out Oct. 25 and there’s no audio public from it yet, but it’s got six tracks, they’re post-everything, and absolutely work their own kind of moodiness into the proceedings. I dug the last one a lot. I have the feeling that as I get to know it better the situation will be much the same with the follow-up.

Album info follows, courtesy of the PR wire:

Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records are proud to bring to you the latest long player from ‘Abronia’ (Portland USA)

The follow up to their debut, The Whole of Each Eye sees Abronia cementing its very singular place in the canon of the broader psych rock universe. A six piece consisting of two guitars, electric bass, tenor saxophone, pedal steel, and one 32” inch bass drum (no drum set here), Abronia pulls from kraut rock, spaghetti Western soundtracks, doom, 60’s UK folk, spiritual jazz, ritualistic drone, and infuse it all with the arid haze of deserts near and far.

Recorded, as the first album was, at Type Foundry in Portland, but mixed this time by Billy Anderson (known for his work with Sleep, OM, Neurosis, and many other heavy legends), the band builds off of the solid foundation of the first album. There are still hooks and visceral, crushingly satisfying payoffs, but there’s a deeper complexity to these arrangements that rewards careful listeners and searchers.

And while almost half of the last album was entirely instrumental, you’ll find no purely instrumental tracks on this one. This time Keelin’s voice has come to the forefront–a deep and deadly force that brings to mind Nico, Grace Slick, Jarboe, Malaria’s Bettina Köster, and White Magic’s Mira Billotte. Note the dynamics–from the subdued falsetto on the first half of “Cauldron’s Gold” to the murderous scream at the end of “Half Hail.”

Another obvious change if you read the liner notes–three of the six members have switched out since the last album, which would seem like a big deal if it hadn’t happened in such a staggered and organic way. Rick Pedrosa is deeply part of the crew by this point–he joined the band on pedal steel a month after the first album was recorded (September 2016)–replacing the lap steel player–Andrew Endres, Paul Michael Schaefer replaced Benjamin Blake on guitar just after the album release show (July 2017). Shaun Lyvers is the newest member–replacing the continent roaming Amir Amadi on bass in spring of 2018.

Abronia is very much a band. Songs are written together at practice with everybody contributing.

Tracklisting:
1. Wound Site
2. Rope of Fire
3. Cross the Hill
4. New Winds for the Warming Sands
5. Half Hail
6. Cauldron’s Gold

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Abronia, Obsidian Visions/Shadowed Lands (2017)

[Click play above to stream the self-titled debut from Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember. It’s out Sept. 6 on Cardinal Fuzz.]

Sweet psychedelic salvation like that on offer throughout Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember‘s self-titled debut is rare. It’s rare, period. Never mind rare for a first album. Or rare for a first album as a 2LP. Rare. Picture yourself in a boat on a river, except the boat is a dragon and the river is lava and you’re not so much you as some kind of mix between Dennis Hopper and Gimli from Lord of the Rings. The Cardiff-based six-piece — listed as Luke, Gaz, Grant, Ropey, Tim, and Owen, and that’s fine — have some semblance of consciousness at work throughout the fully-blazed 66-minute offering, but it is the stuff of expanded minds. The low-end fuzz of “Walk with the King” and motorik thrust accompanying, the mood-setting drift in LP1 intro “Strange Flotsam on the Rising Tide” and the manner in which each platter’s second side — that’s B and D for those playing along at home — is consumed by a massive sprawl, be it the just-under-17-minute glory of “Great Vibrating Seasons” or the multi-movement build into cacophony that precedes the quiet finish of “Sun God Grave Goods,” the 14:31 capper for Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember as a whole.

These cuts represent a pinnacle — and one from which “Walk with the King” (12:38) and post-intro opener “Sub-Sonic Dreamer” (9:31) aren’t far off, by the way — but anywhere the band goes, freakitude follows like some kind of mushroom-added cultist, be it the blowout of “Sub-Sonic Dreamer,” the relatively straightforward “Surely They Know?” with its maddening and catchy hook, or the we’re-just-gonna-take-four-and-a-half-minutes-and-commune-with-the-universe drone of the penultimate “From the One Comes the Many,” which is missing only a warning that too much listening will expose the lizard people. All of these come together to make a killer set of charge-up, melt-down and burn-baby-burn, the band easing and oozing their way through subdued float and full-on warp drive push with an ease that belies it being their debut and every bit earns the yellow and black starkness of the cover that adorns it.

And just in case the point hasn’t been made, it’s gorgeous. Gorgeous and raw and expansive, sun-baked in gazing style but never trying to be anywhere or anything it’s not. Cohesion doesn’t just happen in the moments of solidified verses, either. One can hear it in the age-of-Aquarius chants of “Strange Flotsam on the Rising Tide” and subsequent post-The Heads blower guitar in the early going and latter reaches of “Sub-Sonic Dreamer,” the interplay of harmonica and dreamy jazz guitar in the midsection of “Sun God Grave Goods” and the various washes of synth between them. To be sure, Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember are functioning with a third-eye-open creative sensibility, but it’s worth emphasizing that these tracks aren’t just jams and that there’s a plan at work. “Sub-Sonic Dreamer” and “Surely They Know?” emphasize this with priority on side A, but even the when-Hawkwind-met-Floyd triumphalism of “Great Vibrating Seasons” works with motion in mind beyond barebones exploration.

Nothing against that, you understand, but the direction Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember bring to the proceedings make them feel all the more like kosmiche gatekeepers, holding open fuzz-covered doors of perception so that all might pass through into the ocean of effects beyond. Vocals in harmony or at least melodic unison are no less of an instrument than anything else that beeps, boops, beats or strums, and the feeling of fullness in the mix does nothing to undercut the spaciousness of the entirety in which that fullness resides. The volume dynamic in “Great Vibrating Seasons” alone is worth the price both of your soul and international shipping, never mind the manner in which the song rips itself apart at the end to let an acoustic guitar and residual effects subtlety take the helm for the inevitable fadeout. You gotta be kidding me with this stuff. Who the hell are these guys and why the hell haven’t they put out a second record yet? Yeah, I know the first one isn’t out, but no way you can listen to “Walk with the King” or “From the One Comes the Many” and make the argument that linear time matters.

Tell a friend, space-children. Tell two friends. Make new friends and tell them too. Tell your cousin Chuck. There’s beauty in the universe and coffee in that nebula and neither will go un-harvested in the meditations and rush of Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember‘s Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember, and while the rest of the world such as it is debates who’s-who’s cool enough to be neo-this or that, you’ll know that the more important thing is that feeling of your existential being leaking out of your eyeballs in rainbow teardrops of joy as “Walk with the King” pushes over the line between oblivi-off and oblivi-on, propelled from one to the other by a snare that pops like neurons firing, flourish of keys and bass, bass, bass that holds filthy sway while at least seven or eight guitars shred themselves and whatever else happens in an engrossing swell that’s even kind enough to arrive with its own comedown leading into “From the One Comes the Many” and “Sun Gods Grave Goods,” which even with a side flip between them feel no less born for each other.

This is where it’s at. Make no mistake. I’m not saying it’s a one-band revolution, because it’s not trying to be, but for a band to come around on an initial release with such utter and unflinching mastery of these uncontrollable-seeming sounds is not something to be taken lightly. It’s to be taken heavily because it is thusly administered, with patience for patients and intensity when it needs it most to create that feeling of hitting escape velocity, these sweeping builds that every bit demand not just the second platter but the listener attention throughout it. I don’t know much about this band’s circumstances, if they’ll tour, if they’ll put out five records a year or never do anything else, but they’re beginning to dig into something special here. What I said at the outset was true. It’s rare. And if Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember in any way pay off the promise that this debut shows, then all who encounter them can only consider themselves lucky. Double LP? Shit. Make the next one a triple.

Infinity Forms of Yellow Remember, “Surely They Know?” official video

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Since their inception over a decade ago, Melbourne’s Hotel Wrecking City Traders have consistently — which is not to say relentlessly — pushed themselves to grow as artists. They have also been consistently — which is not to say relentlessly — undervalued for the fruits of this effort. Since the first cacophonies of their 2008 full-length debut, Black Yolk, and through 2010’s Somer/Wantok (review here) single, their 2011 collaborative work with Yawning Man guitarist/desert rock figurehead Gary Arce (review here), 2012 splits with Sons of Alpha Centauri and WaterWays (review here) and Spider Goat Canyon and their more recent long-players, 2014’s Ikiryo (review here), 2016’s Phantamonium (review here) and the newly-issued Passage to Agartha (review here), brothers Ben and Toby Matthews have been on an outward sonic journey that has remained unafraid to take on psychedelic tenets even as it maintains the semi-mathy crunch of its roots.

To listen to Passage to Agartha in particular, it is striking just how far Ben (drums) and Toby (guitar) have come. Their sound on the Cardinal Fuzz/Evil Hoodoo and Bro Fidelity 90-minute offering is more expansive than it’s ever been — so much so, in fact, that they recently recruited Spider Goat Canyon‘s Josh Beagley to play bass, making them a trio for the first time — and whether that’s manifest in the 20-minute, drone-backed bonus exploration “Oroshi” or in the crunch-meets-post-rock of “Quasar” and the massive rolling low end of “Kanged Cortex” at the outset, the instrumentalists continue to revel in their adventure in a way that few bands can make sound so genuine. Passage to Agartha, no less huge in concept than runtime, was recorded in mere days and largely improvised, only further emphasizing the musical language the brothers have built between them over time and how fluid their execution has become across their years.

As advice goes, it seems counterintuitive, but if you’re unfamiliar with Hotel Wrecking City Traders, start with Passage to Agartha and work your way back. I know an hour-and-a-half-long record is a lot to dig into at an inexperienced outset, but I think by the time the siren wails backing the flow of the title-track roll around, Passage to Agartha tells a lot of the story of how Hotel Wrecking City Traders have become the band they are — or the band they were when they tracked this material, anyway; again, they’re a trio now and one looks forward to how their dynamic might shift as a result — and with the surrounding push in “Chasing the Tendrils” and the dream-coated-in-noise wash of “Ohms of the Cavern Current,” the richness that Toby and Ben are able to convey has never come through with such exciting and entrancing resonance.

Ben was kind enough recently to take on discussing his relationship with his brother, the processes by which Passage to Agartha came about, bringing in Beagley and more.

Please enjoy the following Six Dumb Questions:

Six Dumb Questions with Hotel Wrecking City Traders

—

Tell me about putting together Passage to Agartha. How did these massive tracks take shape, and was there anything specific you were trying to bring to the material coming off of Phantamonium? How much of your writing is born of improvisation and jamming?

We had no pre-written ideas prior to day one. It was all improvised over the two days we were in the studio, with two days of overdubs for the bass and synth parts. A fairly typical approach for us, really, though this time the added instrumentation took a little longer. We didn’t really have Phantamonium in mind when we did this one we kind of left the way Toby approached the main guitar parts open for additional parts. We always record live together and rarely do overdubs but this time we felt we wanted to try to broaden the scope of sounds and tried to create a more full and layered tapestry of sounds. Playing synth was a first for us on a record and I just did one pass over each track and what you hear is what you get.

What was your time in the studio like? Was it enough? How much were the songs fleshed out in the studio? Was there something particular you wanted out of the sound of the album this time around?

We had a lot of fun this time around. The engineer who also owns the studio, Max [Ducker] and his two dogs were there for the recording. The size of the room we recorded in was smaller than places we have gone in the past but Max really knows his gear and we trusted that he would be able to capture what we were after. He has mixed the band as a live engineer many times and is a good friend of the band so in terms of a working relationship it was super-relaxed and he brought some nice gear for us to use and has a golden working knowledge of his studio and its capabilities so we felt very relaxed the whole time.

The songs were 100 percent improvised over the two days so we just rolled with it and allowed the songs to dictate how we would approach the next one. For example, amp settings, pedals, tempo and those sorts of things but we have always been a very cerebral pair, Tobz and I, and we just got into a certain headspace and let the songs evolve completely naturally and of their own will.

We try to make each record we do different and I think this one kind of has elements of old approaches and also newer ideas as well as a real mixture of melody and sheer volume and velocity. It’s a double album, which was not our intention going in but once we were done and we had the labels in place to release it we knew it had to be a double as the songs were so long that we could really only fit one per side of vinyl.

Where does the space theme come from and how does it tie into the material for you? Is there a narrative taking place in the tracks? If so, what’s the story being told?

It’s certainly an expansive record in its length and also the sonic elements from one track to the next so it was the final version of the record that lent itself to a space themed sort of idea. The passage to Agartha being the mythical city in the centre of the Earth’s core. We’re nerds and love sci-fi and horror and it seemed like the right fit. Whilst there is no specific story, the songs definitely go from a faster, more melodic place and end up in a slower and more molten space by the end of the record.

“Oroshi” cuts off suddenly past the 22-minute mark. Was that actually the end of the piece? You’ve done longform jamming before, of course. Does a song like that just happen, or do you go into it with the intention of doing something more extended?

Yeah that was a single live take over a loop that Tobz made and we just went for it. I used mallets to play that track but we did not EQ the drum mics any differently. It has a sort of Steve Shelley/Sonic Youth vibe to the drums and we were limited only by the 22 minutes of guitar loop! Haha! So yeah, we had a timer counting down as we were against the clock. Lots of nods for that one. We deliberately made that one far looser and more soundscape based than the others and I believe it was recorded midway through the recording late on day one.

You’re past a decade now working as Hotel Wrecking City Traders. How do you feel about how the band has grown in that time, and how has your relationship changed as brothers and as bandmates? How much of the communication between you at this point is unspoken on a musical level, and how clear a picture do you have in your head of what each other wants to do with the band?

Tobz and I are super good friends and playing together for this long has cemented that. We’re probably more tolerant of each other from doing tours in Japan, Europe and New Zealand together on a budget.  Continuing to want to create together and do this has always been important to us. Most of our communication is unspoken to be honest. Musically we say very little to each other verbally and communicate via the music as it seems to be more pure that way and less preconceived. It seems to work quite well.

We recently added a bass player to the band and played our first show as a trio last month. His name is Josh [Beagley] and is from the band Spider Goat Canyon. We’ve been friends for a decade and played tons of shows together. We realized we wanted to play these songs off Passage to Agartha and knew we needed that extra component. We’ve been getting together every week and jamming and reworking this set of new songs so our sets can be half those and half improvised and expansive.

We were very happy to have this new album come out as a co-release between Cardinal Fuzz and Evil Hoodoo (who we worked with previously on Phantamonium). We sell way more records in Europe than we do in our own country and it made sense to do it that way. In terms of a clear picture of what we wish to continue doing – more records, more Aussie shows and definitely getting back to Europe next year is high on our list. We are also looking at NZ shows and Japan shows as well as it’s been four years since we were last there and we’d absolutely love to go back and hit up some new cities and towns.

Any other plans or closing words you want to mention?

Just a thanks to your good self for covering this release and all the support you have shown us over the years. We truly appreciate it. Other than that, please check out the record and shoot us a message if you would like to help us organize anything in Europe or anywhere for that matter. We always enjoy being able to travel as a result of the music we create and see new places.

Hotel Wrecking City Traders, Passage to Agartha (2017)

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[Click play above to stream Hotel Wrecking City Traders’ Passage to Agartha in its entirety. Album is out Sept. 25 through Cardinal Fuzz, Evil Hoodoo and Bro Fidelity Records.]

It might not always seem like it, but there’s a delicate balance at play at any given moment for Hotel Wrecking City Traders. Yes, the Melbourne duo proffer just under 90 minutes of new material on the six tracks of their fourth album Passage to Agartha — released through Bro Fidelity, Cardinal Fuzz and Evil Hoodoo — but on an aesthetic level, the two-piece of brothers Ben and Toby Matthews (drums and guitar, respectively) tread a line between crunch-tone noise derived from a punk influence and an expansive take on space rock and heavy psychedelia that they’ve developed over the course of their decade together in the band. Each of their releases has been a step forward in a process of refining and individualizing this approach, and Passage to Agartha follows suit in expanding the mindset of early-2016’s Phantamonium (review here) and adding for the first time overdubs of synth and bass to the live-recorded, mostly-improvised root tracks of guitar and drums.

Thus, on opener “Quasar” (11:04) and the subsequent “Kanged Cortex” (11:55), Hotel Wrecking City Traders not only immediately cast their listener into this ocean of intensity and flow, but they do so with their core energy intact and with new elements put to use in making them fuller in their arrangements — they recently added Josh Beagley (also of Melbourne’s Spider Goat Canyon) to the lineup to handle bass parts live — even as the beginning stretches of “Chasing the Tendrils” (17:00) course through proggy nuance that offerings like Phantamonium, 2014’s Ikiryo (review here), their 2012 splits with Sons of Alpha Centauri and WaterWays (review here) and Spider Goat Canyon, 2011’s collaboration with Gary Arce of Yawning Man (review here), the 2010 single, Somer/Wantok (review here), and their 2008 debut, Black Yolk, have been building toward in one way or another.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s taken Hotel Wrecking City Traders 10 years to “arrive” as they shift into cymbal wash and amp noise passing the midpoint of “Chasing the Tendrils” and come off the harder-thrusting reaches of “Kanged Cortex” with a fluid motion building on some of the more post-rock airiness of the earlier going, just that Passage to Agartha finds them at the to-date pinnacle of their stylistic development. And while it’s easy to be consumed by the length of the thing — I started off talking about balance for a release that’s nearly an hour and a half long; worth noting that the closer “Oroshi” (22:57) is listed as a CD/digital-only bonus track — it’s the progressive will that becomes so palpable throughout these extended cuts that is even more striking. One can still hear the underlying turns of Black Yolk in their sound, in the angularity of some of Toby‘s guitar parts or the shifts in Ben‘s rhythm, the forward push of his playing, but with a number of experimentalist releases behind them at this point, Hotel Wrecking City Traders have never sounded freer than they do in these explorations.

The way they move through the crashing, keyboard-laden ending of “Chasing the Tendrils” and into the more serene launch of “Passage to Agartha” (14:43) — arguably the record’s most purely psychedelic cut and a telling moment as the title-track with its siren-esque background synth and hypno-repetitive guitar lines — is their own, and it’s the result of an organic growth captured on Hotel Wrecking City Traders releases long or short. As they make this particular “Passage,” amassing volume and patience of roll as they go en route to midsection churn and an eventual wash that seems to swallow the song entirely before cutting out circa the 12:30 mark to let Toby‘s guitar and synth drift to the finish, it only seems right to think of Passage to Agartha as another landmark in their ongoing creative journey, part of a timeline and a larger process rather than a stopping point in itself.

At least that’s the hope, because while Hotel Wrecking City Traders remain considerably undervalued even in the crowded sphere of the underground in their hometown, their work has proven vital time and again, as it does here. “Ohms of the Cavern Current” (11:40) closes the album proper with a focus on more rumbling low end and a somewhat more plodding march than that of the title-track before it, rounding out by settling into a crash-propelled last push that cuts out to fade on a repeating guitar line. When it comes to it, “Oroshi” is an album unto itself, or an EP perhaps, but either way a definite standalone focal point correctly positioned here as a bonus track. It shares its overarching hypnosis with the preceding material, but centers around a single background drone for its 22-plus minutes and so clearly has its own experimentalist intentions as well, drifting as it does over a fullness of wash that comes to life and shifts toward one last run of intense prog noodling before cymbal washes take hold at about 19 minutes in to signal the end stage of what’s ostensibly a captured-live piece created as it happened.

Toby and Ben, as brothers and as bandmates, have so clearly developed a musical language between them that Passage to Agartha almost seems to communicate in patterns beyond the construction of its riffs and various (and varied) parts, but it doesn’t at all fail to engage its audience either through the subtlety of its reach or the balance of influences it sets in motion across such a formidable span. Even for a group so much on their own wavelength, the sense of achievement Hotel Wrecking City Traders bring to their craft is easy to perceive, and as Passage to Agartha finds them at a new stage of maturity, the patience they demonstrate when they choose to in “Quasar,” or the title-track, or “Oroshi,” is yet another tool to be put to use alongside the fervency that can be so propulsive elsewhere. One never likes to speculate what the future might bring especially for a band so prone to outside collaborations and one-offs, etc., but as they move forward in a three-piece incarnation with Beagley on bass, it seems all the more like Hotel Wrecking City Traders are still just beginning to discover where their passage is taking them. All the better.

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Californian head rockers White Manna, who’ve already been confirmed for Desertfest Belgium 2017, will be releasing their third long-player, Bleeding Eyes, via Agitated Records and Cardinal Fuzz on Oct. 6. Since Desertfest is happening from Oct. 13-16 and the album is out the week before, I kind of assume that means they’ll be sticking around Europe once they finish the UK tour that will find them at Liverpool Psych Fest on Sept. 23 and continue through to Sept. 28. That’s an awful lot of air travel, otherwise, especially with a record coming out in between.

Bit of a gap then to fill in as regards tour dates, but in addition to what’s listed here, the band has a few others in Croatia and in the Netherlands listed on their Thee Facebooks page for the time between, so maybe there’s more to be announced or that I just missed because I suck at this. Either way, here’s the info I got, which came down the PR wire:

Announcing new WHITE MANNA album ‘Bleeding Eyes’ on Agitated/Cardinal Fuzz Records

Artist: White Manna
Title: Bleeding Eyes
Label: Agitated / Cardinal Fuzz
Format: LP/CD

Release date: 6th October 2017

Following on from an incredible one-two brace of releases on Holy Mountain, a release on Valley King, a limited Live album (Live Frequencies) on Cardinal Fuzz, and then their last sonic attack (PAN) on Cardinal Fuzz in 2016, White Manna release their new studio album as part of a joint venture between Cardinal Fuzz and Agitated Records.

Unleashed at the end of September in Europe to tie in with a UK/EU tour that features another sure to be main stage storming appearance at Liverpool Psych Fest, Bleeding Eyes is the sound of White Manna soaring and searing with riffs and grooves that float their own take on SIKE ROCK! To a higher plane. The 8 tracks herein deliver serious motorik action along the way, with some lo-fi pop glaze over the top of solid rhythmic pummel. Riffs? You got it, great rafts of guitar interplay blitzing your ears in a dronesome scree, ricocheting through space and time to transport you to a sonic enlightenment.

Recorded and mixed at El Studio San Francisco, Ca and The Compound, Manila, Ca by Phil Manley and White Manna. Mastered by John McBain at JPM Mastering San Francisco.

Fans of Hawkwind, The Heads, Loop, Mugstar, White Hills, Spacemen 3 and Amon Duul will thrill to this. Northern California has never sounded so spaced out and visceral, plug in, turn it up and drone out?

Tracklist
1. Bleeding Eyes
2. Vimanas
3. Trampoline
4. Invisible Kings
5. Speed Dagger
6. English Breakfast
7. You Are The Movie
8. Freak

UK Tour Dates 2017
22 Sept UK Newcastle- Cumberland Arms
23 Sept UK Liverpool- Psych Fest
24 Sept UK Leeds- The Library
25 Sept WAL Cardiff- Full Moon
26 Sept UK Brighton- Hope & Ruin
27 Sept UK London- Victoria Dalston
28 Sept UK Bristol- The Crofters Rights

https://www.facebook.com/whitemanna/
https://whitemanna.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AGITATEDRECORDS/
agitatedrecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/CardinalFuzz/
cardinalfuzz.bigcartel.com/

White Manna, PAN (2015)

We’re only slightly overdue for a batch of adds to The Obelisk Radio. I need to start setting a reminder or something. By the time this post goes up, my hope is that we’ll actually be off the backup server and back on the full or at least mostly-full playlist. It’s been a long road, as the terrible opening theme to Star Trek: Enterprise once said, but I think Slevin has it ready to roll, and there’s still some rebuilding to do, but I think it can be an ongoing thing working on the new hard drive. We’ve worn the crap out of that backup playlist. It would be nice to not have to use it for a while. Fingers crossed, anyhow.

Whichever server these files wind up on, they’ll be joining some playlist as soon as humanly possible. Let’s do the rundown in the meantime.

The Obelisk Radio Adds for May 22, 2017:

Big Kizz, Eye on You

Some who take on the debut single from Swedish trio Big Kizz will find the band reminiscent of some of the rawer moments of long-running Danish garage-psych rockers Baby Woodrose, but for many, an additional draw to the three-track/eight-minute offering (delivered via Tee Pee Records) will be the lineup, which features bassist John Hoyles (Spiders, ex-Witchcraft), guitarist/vocalist Pontus Westerman (also of Lady Banana), and perhaps most notably, drummer Axel Sjöberg in his first recorded appearance after splitting with Graveyard. Turns out he’s still a fantastic drummer. His play in leadoff cut “Eye on You” and the push he brings to “Baby Boy” and the closing Roky Erickson cover “White Faces” will surely lead some to relate Big Kizz to Sjöberg‘s former outfit, if only in their earliest going (which was also on Tee Pee, remember), but the truth is the trio show themselves to be on a different trip throughout Eye on You, as they bring the aforementioned garage stylization forward amid classic boogie and, particularly in “Baby Boy,” nod toward mid-’60s psychedelia in a quick but fluid bridge. The Roky Erickson cover could hardly be more fitting, handclaps and all, but it’s the sense of movement in the two originals that shows the most potential here as Big Kizz seem to set their eyes on establishing their dynamic and building from there. Will be interested to hear what they do with the context of a full-length and if some of the psych in “Eye on You” and “Baby Boy” is relegated to flourish or if it comes to the fore as they develop, but they’re off to a rousing start.

Big Kizz on Thee Facebooks

Big Kizz at Tee Pee Records

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Mt. Mountain Dust

Devotees and pilgrims of longform psychedelia will no doubt and should rejoice at Dust (on Cardinal Fuzz), the maybe-second long-player from Perth, Australia, five-piece Mt. Mountain, which from its 17-minute titular opener and longest track (immediate points) unfolds a ritual of superior immersion and conscious trance inducement. Over the course of four songs/37 minutes total, Mt. Mountain unfold a sprawl reportedly intended to capture the atmosphere of the Australian Outback — and maybe they get there, I don’t know; I’ve never been — but either way, the balance of repetition and depth in “Floating Eyes” and the shimmer of the nine-minute “Kokoti” speak to a varied ecosystem that, indeed, one might get lost in, never to return. Mellotron, organ, djembe and percussion play a central role in the overarching sense of mind-expansion along with the guitar, bass, vocals, drums, etc., but it’s the combination of elements, the variety between tracks — they’re jam-based, but distinct songs, to be sure — that really stands Dust apart from much of drift-minded modern heavy psych. One advises patience with the drones of the opener and the cautious first steps that the fading in percussion seems to be taking, as the rewards are considerable when it comes to the front-to-back experience Mt. Mountain offer, which is stark, striking, marked by underlying threat and casts a feeling of the infinite that no doubt was the very intent behind its making.

Mt. Mountain on Thee Facebooks

Cardinal Fuzz webstore

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Mage, Green

Self-released in a six-panel digipak with decidedly grim artwork courtesy of Dominic Sohor, Green is the third full-length from Leicestershire, UK, heavy rockers Mage. Last heard from with 2014’s Last Orders (review here), they retain the blend of heavy rock groove and metallic aggression that’s become their signature sound, and continue the march forward in finding a space between post-Down/Orange Goblin dude-rockery and doomlier fare. Vocalist Tom blends harsh growls and a cleaner approach on opener “Nowhere to Nothing” and the later “Primitive Drive” while mostly avoiding sounding like Phil Anselmo, and as guitarist Woody, bassist Mark and drummer Andy dig into the slower roll of “Eclipse King,” Mage seem to hit the mark they’re shooting for in terms of style and songcraft. The centerpiece title-track has a little more head-bob to its central progression — and then there’s that wah; always fun — but they’re right to mess around with the proportion of stylistic elements throughout to add variety, and the 10-minute closer “Vultures Mass” does well in taking the punch of “Nowhere to Nothing” and “Heroic Elegy” at the album’s start and pushing it outward into a satisfying apex. Straightforward in its intent, given a sense of mass via a recording job at Skyhammer Studios and executed with a clean conscience, Green is the work of a band who know what they want from their sound and know how to make it happen, which, thankfully, they do in these tracks.

Mage on Thee Facebooks

Mage on Bandcamp

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Hypertonus, Tidal Wave

Tidal Wave is the self-issued debut full-length from German instrumentalist three-piece Hypertonus, and it lands some six years after the band first got together, preceded by a semi-eponymous 2013 EP, HPRTNS. If the more-than-half-a-decade stretch seems like a while for a group to get to their first long-player, it might be, but one suspects the Bremen-based troupe comprised of guitarist Patrick Büch, bassist Arne Staats and drummer Hannes Christen spent a significant amount of that time in the jam room developing their sound, because what they cast over this nine-track/45-minute outing is a keen progressivism and chemistry that feels not at all happenstance. With shifts into and out of technically-minded parts that seem to be driven by Staats‘ bass, Hypertonus reportedly tracked Tidal Wave live, and I have no reason not to believe it, particularly given the eight-minute closer “Phantasmagoria (Improvisation Jam),” which departs from the quick psych-meditation of “Aeropause” and the almost jazzy rhythms and post-rock guitar of “Expect the Sky Below” to bring the band’s style even more to life for the listener to take on. It’s a heady release, and some of the changes come across as willfully choppy — playing with expectation in a “now we’re over here!” kind of way — but there’s a marked sense of accomplishment throughout that’s nothing if not well earned.

Hypertonus on Thee Facebooks

Hypertonus on Bandcamp

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Lee Van Cleef, Holy Smoke

Pressed to gorgeous-sounding vinyl by White Dwarf Records last November, the five-track instrumental Holy Smoke is the debut LP from Naples, Italy, jammers Lee Van Cleef, and aside from its righteously striking cover art, one finds primary impressions in the gotta-hear-it bass tone of Pietro Trinità La Tegola, the molten lysergism in Marco Adamo‘s guitar and the grounding-but-not-too-grounding effectiveness of drummer Guido Minervini in anchoring a jam like the 13-minute “Banshee,” which takes the best lessons of groups like Germany’s Electric Moon and Portugal’s Black Bombaim and brings them to methodical, engagingly rumbling fruition. Nod persists through the more uptempo, Tee Pee Records-style centerpiece “Hell Malo,” but the three-piece seem even more comfortable dug into the post-Sleep riffing of the subsequent “Mah?na,” finishing that track with a standout wash of a guitar lead ahead of the brighter-feeling closer “Towelie,” which underscores an otherworldly vibe that turns out to have been in Holy Smoke all along. Lee Van Cleef have already followed Holy Smoke up with a single titled “Everyone Should Kill an Old Hippy” (discussed here) — it’s worth noting that this album starts with “Heckle Yuppies,” so they’re not fans of them either — and one can’t imagine it will be long before they answer back with another full-length offering. The question is how they’ll ultimately distinguish themselves from the crowded European jam-based heavy psych underground, but there’s nothing in these tracks to give the impression they can’t or won’t do so as they continue to grow.

Lee Van Cleef on Thee Facebooks

White Dwarf Records on Thee Facebooks

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As it turns out, the 17-minute opening title-track (which you can stream at the bottom of this post) is also the longest cut on Mt. Mountain‘s Dust. Immediate points for that. In true psycheprolifidelic form, the four-song outing is the latest in a bundle the Perth, Australia-based five-piece have issued over the last half-decade — they had the full-length Cosmos Terros out last year, preceded by three shorter offerings going back to 2013, if their Bandcamp discography is anything to go by — but as it’s my first exposure to the band, I’m finding it easy to get stoked for the coming April 24 release date. “Dust,” as well as “Floating Eyes,” “Kokoti” and “Outro,” which follow, cover a formidable swath of ground and prove fluid and immersive in kind, jam-based, but with a sense of underlying purpose as well. It’s just about where my brain is at these days, if you want to know. So yeah, definitely a welcome arrival.

Preorders are up for swirl and black LPs, and in the UK/EU, it’ll be out via respected purveyor Cardinal Fuzz, as the PR wire informs:

Mt Mountain – Dust

‘Dust’ Out April 24 Via: Cardinal Fuzz (UK)

Pre-sales for the limited edition black/copper swirl (pictured here) & standard black 12″ LP’s both available here: https://mtmountain.bandcamp.com/

**UK/EU pre-orders available here: http://cardinalfuzz.bigcartel.com/product/mt-mountain-dust-gold-black-swirl-vinyl-cardinal-fuzz-pre-order

Cardinal Fuzz are proud to announce the release of the epic “Dust” via Perth quintet Mt. Mountain. Since forming in 2012 Mt. Mountain are already lauded and revered in Australia where they have built a reputation as one of the most compelling live bands, a distinction that has seen them share stages with myriad Australian and international heavyweights including Sleep, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Thee Oh Sees, Endless Boogie, Tortoise, Bardo Pond and Boris. On “Dust” Mt Mountain have laid down 4 tracks that capture the atmosphere of the red/orange landscapes that consume the Australian Outback.

Opening with the mini slow burn epic “Dust” which builds with an incessant drone and flute to form a ghostly menacing and meditative rhythmic and repetitive throb that builds and builds before the release comes and the bands shatters into a heady and thunderous elliptical crunch. Over the entire LP Mt Mountain capture, a dreamlike mood of shimmering dust filled landscapes where slow strummed guitars and single note organ lines ebb and flow and bring to mind Dylan Carson’s ‘Earth’ as played by mushroom ingesting elf’s. ‘Dust’ is psych rock meditation music and It is utterly entrancing.

Mt. Mountain is:
Stephen Bailey: Organ, Whistle, Guitar, Vocals
Derrick Treatch: Guitar, Mellotron, Vocals
Brendan Shanley: Bass
Glenn Palmer: Guitar
Thomas Cahill: Drums, Djembe, Percussion

https://www.facebook.com/mtmountainperth/
https://mtmountain.bandcamp.com/
http://cardinalfuzz.bigcartel.com/
https://www.facebook.com/CardinalFuzz
https://twitter.com/cardinalfuzz