Posted in Whathaveyou on February 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Stone Machine Electric, for most of their decade-plus tenure, have been the duo of bassist/vocalist Dub and drummer Kitchens (also of Slow Draw). Dub and Kitchens, Kitchens and Dub. Of all the times I screw-up the names in a given band’s lineup — information posted surprisingly infrequently where one might find it — I can generally be sure that if it’s Stone Machine Electric, you got Dub and Kitchens getting up to some heavy psych weirdness. I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in that.
Nonetheless, after four full-lengths — the latest of them being 2020’s The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld (review here) — William “Dub” Irvin and Mark Kitchens have welcomed bassist Erick Paxecko to the band as the third in a power trio. Adding (more) low end is surely not going to make them any less heavy, and well, if he’s weird enough for Stone Machine Electric to let him be in the band, he’s probably weird enough for you. Will they start calling him “Pax?” So many questions to answer, but the band are letting it be known they’ll record in March, even if they’re not sure yet whether they’ll end up with a full album or not. I love that, by the way.
Kidding aside, this isn’t the first time Stone Machine Electric have brought in a tertiary party to handle bass, as they never shy from trying something new. Best of luck to them and to Paxecko, who one assumes will make his recorded debut on whatever results from the sessions next month, to be helmed by Wo Fat‘s Kent Stump in Stone Machine Electric‘s own version of tradition.
They sent the following down the PR wire:
STONE MACHINE ELECTRIC: Three-piece into the studio!
Texas-based duo Stone Machine Electric, best known for their weird approach in crafting a darkened and spacious vision of psychedelic jamming, are ready to announce they have added that pesky low-end to their lineup and are now a TRIO! I’m sure you weren’t expecting that, or maybe you were already aware due to your social media addiction. Anyway, we wanted to make it official.
Erick Paxecko has been jamming with the band since mid-2023 and has expanded upon the band’s already heavy sound. Erick started playing in Mexico in the early 2000s and toured throughout the northern region. In 2012, he moved to Seattle, WA and played in several bands, including the doom band Mycon. Erick enjoys experimenting with his tone by trying out different pedals and bass rigs to work on getting his sound blended into the mix.
And with that news, we thought it worth mentioning we’ll be hitting the studio this March with Erick at Crystal Clear Sound in Dallas, Texas, with our great friend Kent Stump at the controls. Hope to get a full album’s worth of material laid down and find a way to get it to everyone’s ears.
Stone Machine Electric are: William “Dub” Irvin – Guitar/Vocals Mark Kitchens – Drums/Vocals/Keyboard Erick Paxecko – Bass
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 25th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Hurst, Texas-based ambient/psych experimentalist solo-outfit Slow Draw will release The Mystic Crib on Nov. 10. The project of multi-instrumentalist Mark Kitchens, also known for his work on drums in Stone Machine Electric, has issued a handful-plus of full-lengths and singles, etc., over the last six years, but the 11-song/56-minute collection stands out in sound and purpose, Kitchens honing a style that finds root between stonerjazz, mellow desert, acid funk, krautrock, quietpsych and ambient prog, and it’s never quite doing the same thing twice from song to song, even if it wants you to think it is.
Fair enough. As they invariably would be, Earth are a touchstone here, in “The Mystic Crib” (premiering below) and its album-closing companion-piece “Return From the Mystic Crib,” and in the shimmering cymbal splash of “I See Her,” but Slow Draw is too satisfying a project to stick to one kind of weird. “Daily Jacuzzi Weekly” puts some old funk in the keys and some dub in the drums and is still sad — call that a Grails influence, no less for its intangibility — a fitting precursor to the later loopmaking in “Soggy Chips.” “Funeral Kabob” digs with heart into a Brant Bjork-style groove, while “Legitimate Wizard” and “Embroidered Waistcoasts” mark out more psychedelic pathways, the sample-laced “Milk Carton Complex” adding urgency in its guitar turnarounds that one could liken to King Buffalo as well as Sonic Youth (a comparison drawn below). There are far fewer wrong answers when the sound is encompassing.
Whether that’s coming through in the drums and synth of centerpiece “Sons of the Culinary Arts” or the swirling guitar effects of the subsequent “Invisible Entities Stealing Thunder,” Kitchens sets up his pieces as finished works but does not completely depart the impulsiveness that would seem to have sparked their creation in the first place. That might be a guitar line, a keyboard line. But it’s there and it’s usually something, some foundational sound Kitchens chases down until it becomes a song. It’s the guitar on both “I See Her” and “Milk Carton Complex,” but in two different ways. The vague Sgt. Pepper reference happening in the organ or whatever that is on “Embroidered Waistcoats.” Slow Draw‘s experiments are not unconsidered, or un-built — very pointedly, these are songs with identities derived from their respective sounds — but they have that underlying aspect just the same.
One might argue that makes Slow Draw less predictable, and I’d agree with that, but that extends outside this standalone release. What Kitchens might do next with the project is anyone’s best guess, but with a stated goal that seems to have been based on atmosphere, The Mystic Crib delivers on that promise in a big way and makes even its shorter cuts feel immersive.
Please enjoy “The Mystic Crib” premiering below, followed by more word from Kitchens and the PR wire:
Slow Draw, “The Mystic Crib” video premiere
For the videos I make, they are usually based on a spur of the moment idea similar to how the music is created. The use of the masks only came up because the Mrs had ordered these for one of her art projects, but she didn’t like the masks once they arrived in the mail. So I decided to paint them all instead of sending them back. I was only going to make a few, but ended up spending a few weeks painting them all. There are about 16 total, but I don’t think all of them made it into the video. I wore a full black-out bodysuit under them to hide behind so that the masks stood out and people wouldn’t get distracted by my beady, squinty eyes or any glare off my head. I hope the “mystic” part comes through in the video, as that was the main purpose.
As for the album The Mystic Crib, I wouldn’t say I had a theme in mind as much as I just wanted the album to set a consistent vibe. That’s also the reason the song, The Mystic Crib, is split into bookend tracks on the album. I want listeners to feel like they enter into the album and it carries them through and then it lets them know the journey has come to an end. Hopefully it is the kind of journey they want to embark on again, or at least use it as background music to a chill evening or something like that. All the songs on this album use titles I’ve been collecting over the years. I have a list of “band names” or album titles that I keep on my phone. So, I just went through the list as I listened back to the recordings and named them with titles that just seemed to fit. Not like I need 50 different bands just because I came up with a cool name. There are a couple that are not from that list, one of them being Daily Jacuzzi Weekly. I saw that on the bottom of one of those letter board signs at a motel and thought it was funny because it made no sense.
Slow Draw departs from the noisy ambient improvised pieces and journeys into The Mystic Crib with a structured vibe described as a mishmash of Sonic Youth with the psychedelic side of The Beatles. There is a distinct tonal setting for this work. It provides an ambient groove meant to for one to lose themselves to, or just to simply have floating in the background to calm the mind as one goes about their day.
Tracklisting: 1. Into the Mystic Crib 2. Funeral Kabob 3. Daily Jacuzzi Weekly 4. I See Her 5. Legitimate Wizard 6. Sons of the Culinary Arts 7. Invisible Entities Stealing Thunder 8. Embroidered Waistcoats 9. Milk Carton Complex 10. Soggy Chips 11. Return From The Mystic Crib
Posted in Questionnaire on May 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Mark Kitchens of Slow Draw, Stone Machine Electric & Heavy Mash Fest
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I’ve always considered myself a noise maker, maybe even an explorer. Since I was a child, I always enjoyed sounds and music. I like to find things sonically in music or in everyday sounds.
Describe your first musical memory.
I can’t remember exactly, but it seemed to involved looking at catalogs and picking out albums. It may have been the whole Columbia House thing or something like that. I remember picking out 8-tracks since we had that style player back at that time. I think I picked out The Best of the Statler Brothers because I thought it was funny the cover had women on it and thought they were the musicians. I was 6 or so years old at the time.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Seeing Phish in 1998 or so. You’d think I’d remember the year, but I don’t. It was an outdoor concert in Austin, Texas. I ended up leaving my group of friends and got to one side of the soundboard area. I just remember getting lost in the sea of people and just enjoying the music and the back and forth between the crowd and the band. It was a communal type energy, and it was fun and mentally freeing.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Nothing comes to mind. I’ve had people test my beliefs in who they are, which is greatly surprising when you thought you knew them. As far as beliefs is general, I try my best to keep those based on experience or first hand knowledge so when something does get tested, I have an easier time accepting it. I don’t want to hold onto something based on what I want it to be if it is not what it is. I hope that makes sense.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Artistic progression leads to many things. For me, most of the time it seems to lead to a refined or more distinct path or art. On the other hand, I have had it take me back to where I started, and it becomes cyclical.
How do you define success?
Being happy with the result of my art and music. For my music, if it makes me listen to it over and over because I have captured some sort of memory or emotion in it, then I have succeeded.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
My wife’s internal organs. Our children were both C-section babies. On my first born when the nurse took the baby out, they had me follow them. As I walked towards them, I looked back at Lynda, and all I saw was them putting her parts and pieces back in. That was surreal and gross at the same time. [Hard relate to this. It’s medieval. — ed.]
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I’ve started saving dumb little phrases in my phone that I’d like to eventually run into songs. I’m talking 5-10 second long songs. I could see it being an album of about 20-25 songs, and it might top like 5 minutes of play time. I imagine it would sound more like a ton of shitty jingles than anything else. Maybe I could title it “Songs for the Internet” or something stupid like that.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Communication and community. Almost everything can be considered an artform in some fashion, and that brings people together, or at least within the same vicinity. This creates communities and communities that overlap.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Guess there are two things. Looking forward to celebrating 23 years of marriage in the next couple of weeks with the Mrs., and kind of still musical as we’ll be seeing The Cure on our anniversary. That’s her all-time favorite band.
Slow Draw will release Yellow & Gray (review here) on May 7. And amid the joyously weird seven tracks that surround it, “A Heavy Snack” precisely what the title leads you to believe — a 91-second snippet of riff-based heavy rollout nestled into the 24-minute experimentalist whole of the album. Mark Kitchens, who doubles as the drummer of Hurst, Texas, heavy-jam-jazz-psych duo Stone Machine Electric, is no stranger to weird as a sonic concept, and Slow Draw is a vehicle for further exploration. That Yellow & Grayopens with “The Project” via manipulated samples and headphone-unveiled wub-wubs before moving into the live-drums and wistful rainy ’70s keyboards of “Stumble” and the ambient-but-also-still-drummed “Spacethunder” ahead of “A Heavy Snack” should be telling. As with Kitchens‘ past outings under the moniker, as well as his various snippets posted through Slow Draw‘s Instagram page, the idea here is to find a creative whim and see where it leads.
In “A Heavy Snack,” that’s to sonic weight. He acknowledges below some kinship with what the piece might have become — or still might, as one never really knows — as a Stone Machine Electric track, but there’s no question it’s a standout on Yellow & Gray, leading into the spacious guitar and deep-mixed toms and cymbals of “Stranded” and the foreboding jazz bass ‘n’ strum of “Sylvia.” It is in fact the shortest song on the record — “Sylvia” is the longest at a relatively meditative 4:40 — and as the Beck homage “Turntable” leads into closer “A Slow Move,” with a blend of acoustic and electric drone in a manner that recalls Earth‘s Hex era, “A Heavy Snack” would seem to find a two-minute complement in those empty spaces. The two works, similarly titled, are of course working toward different ends, but there’s a kinship just the same in drawing from something atmospheric and creating breadth in a limited amount of time.
One has to wonder if “Sylvia,” “Turntable” and even “Spacethunder” aren’t leading toward Slow Draw finding its way into a drone-jazz open/experimentalist vibe, but one of the album’s — and yeah, at 24 minutes, it’s a full-length — strengths is in its lack of established rules. It keeps you listening because you don’t know where it’s going next or how it’s getting there. And by the time you find out, it’s over.
I can’t claim to get the reference in the video for “A Heavy Snack,” but if you do, please, let me know in the comments. In any case, the clip is hilarious and I hope you enjoy.
Thanks:
Slow Draw, “A Heavy Snack” official video premiere
Mark Kitchens on “A Heavy Snack”:
A Heavy Snack is really just a morsel of the song it could be, and if it was performed by Stone Machine Electric it would easily be ten times longer. Thankfully it is not because this video would not work for that long of a song. For this video, I wanted to pay a little homage to how I spent my childhood – watching MTV non-stop and absorbing all the music I could. If you can figure out where my shitty rip-off is taken from, then you probably know about how old I am if the MTV reference didn’t tell you.
Slow Draw is an apt descriptor for its own relaxed presence. This project provides ambient soundscapes, lightly steeped in exploratory psych and the meditative drawn-out cadence of drone.
Friday morning and the Spring 2021 Quarterly Review draws to a close. It’s been a good one, and though there are probably enough albums on my desktop to make it go another few days, better to quit while I’m ahead in terms of not-being-so-tired-I’m-angry-at-everything-I’m-hearing. In any case, as always, I hope you found something here you enjoy. I have been pleasantly surprised on more than a few occasions, especially by debuts.
We wrap with more cool stuff today and since I’m on borrowed time as it is, let me not delay.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Sonic Flower, Rides Again
Like Church of Misery‘s groove but feel kind of icky with all those songs about serial killers? Legit. Say hello to Tatsu Mikami‘s Sonic Flower. Once upon a 2003, the band brought all the boogie and none of the slaughter of Tatsu‘s now-legendary Sabbathian doom rock outfit to a self-titled debut (reissue review here), and Rides Again is the lost follow-up from 2005, unearthed like so many of the early ’70s forsaken classics that clearly inspired it. With covers of The Meters and Graham Central Station, Sonic Flower makes their funky intentions plain as day, and the blowout drums and full-on fuzz they bring to those cuts as well as the five originals on the short-but-satisfying 28-minute offering is a win academically and for casual fans alike. You ain’t gonna hear “Jungle Cruise” or their take on “Earthquake” and come out complaining, is what I’m saying. This is the kind of record that makes you buy more records.
With Viscera, Copenhagen’s Demon Head make their debut on Metal Blade Records. It is their fourth album overall, the follow-up to 2019’s Hellfire Ocean Void (review here), and it continues the five-piece’s enduring exploration of darker places. Dramatic vocals recount grim narratives over backing instrumentals that are less doom at the outset with “Tooth and Nail” and “The Feline Smile” than goth, and atmospheric pieces like “Arrows” and “The Lupine Choir” and “A Long, Groaning Descent” and “Wreath” and certainly the closer “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” further the impression that Viscera, though its title conjures raw guts, is instead an elaborate entirety — if perhaps one of raw guts — and meant to be taken in its 36-minute whole. Demon Head make that LP-friendly runtime a progression down into reaches they’d not until this point gone, tapping sadness for its inherent beauty.
Next time someone asks you what the future sounds like, you’ll have a good answer for them. Combined into a six-piece band, Brazilian outfits Rakta and Deafkids harness ambience and space-punk thrust into a sound that is born of a past that hasn’t yet happened. Their Live at Sesc Pompeia LP follows on from a 2019 two-songer, but it’s in the live performance that the spirit of this unity really shines through, and from opener/longest track (immediate points) “Miragem” through the semi-industrialized effects swirl of “Templo do Caos,” into the blower-noise dance party “Sigilo,” the weirdo-chug-jam of “Forma” and the space rock breakout “Flor de Pele” and the percussed buzz and echoing howls of “Espirais,” they are equal parts encompassing and singular. It is not to be ignored, and though there are moments that border on unlistenable, you can hear from the wailing crowd at the end that to be in that room was to witness something special. As a document of that, Live at Sesc Pompeia feels like history in the making.
A madcap, weighted-but-anti-genre sensibility comes to life in supernova-experimentalist fashion throughout the four songs of Timo Ellis‘ Death is Everywhere. The lockdown-era EP from Ellis (Netherlands, Yoko Ono, Cibo Matto, on and on) makes post-modern shenanigans out of apocalypses inner and outer, and from lines like “this bridal shower is bumming me out” in the unabashedly hooky “Vampire Rodeo” to “the earth will still breathe fire without you!” in “Left Without an Answer,” the stakes are high despite the flittering-in-appreciation-of-the-absurd mood of the tracks themselves. The title-track and “Evolve or Die” blend sonic heft and the experimental pop movement that “Vampire Rodeo” sets forth — the third cut is positively manic and maniacally positive — while “Left Without an Answer” almost can’t help but be consuming as it rolls into a long fade leaving intertwining vocals lines as the last to go, telling the listener to “learn to say goodbye” without making it easy. Won’t be for everyone, doesn’t want to be. Is expression for itself. Feels genuine in that, and admirable.
With not-at-all-subtle nods to Humble Pie and Ennio Morricone in its opening tracks, Heavy Feather‘s second LP, Mountain of Sugar, has boogie to spare. No time is wasted on the 38-minute/11-track follow-up to 2019’s Débris & Rubble (review here), and true to the record’s title, it’s pretty sweet. The collection pits retro mindset against modern fullness in its harmonica-laced, duly-fuzzed title-track, and goes full-Fleetwood on “Come We Can Go” heading into a side B that brings a highlight in the soft-touch-stomp of “Rubble and Debris” and an earned bit of Southern-styled turn in “Sometimes I Feel” that makes a fitting companion to all the bluesy vibes throughout, particularly those of the mellow “Let it Shine” earlier. The Stockholm outfit knew what they were doing last time out too, but you can hear their process being refined throughout Mountain of Sugar, and even its most purposefully familiar aspects come across with a sense of will and playfulness.
Don’t tell him I told you so, but Slow Draw is starting to sound an awful lot like a band. What began as a drone/soundscaping project from Stone Machine Electric drummer/noisemaker Mark Kitchens has sprouted percussive roots of its own on Yellow & Gray, and as Kitchens explores textures of psychedelic funk, mellow heavy and even a bit of ’70s proggy homage in “Sylvia” ahead of the readily Beck-ian jam “Turntable” and acousti-drone closer “A Slow Move,” the band-vibe is rampant. I’m going to call Yellow & Gray a full-length despite the fact that it’s 24 minutes long because its eight songs inhabit so many different spaces between them, but however you want to tag it, it demonstrates the burgeoning depth of Kitchens‘ project and how it’s grown in perhaps unanticipated ways. If this is what he’s been doing in isolation — as much as Texas ever shuttered for the pandemic — his time has not been wasted.
Freak! Out! The 66-minute Nuclear Candy Bar from Hungarian psychedelicists Pilot Voyager might end mostly drifting with the 27-minute “23:61,” but much of the four tracks prior to that finale are fuzz-on-go-go-go-out-out-out heavy jams, full in tone and improv spirit however planned their course may or may not actually be. To say the least, “Fuzziness” lives up to its name, as guitarist/founder Ákos Karancz — joined by bassist Bence Ambrus (who also mastered) and drummers Krisztián Megyeri and István Baumgartner (the latter only on the closer) — uses a relatively earthbound chug as a launchpad for further space/krautrocking bliss, culminating in a scorching cacophony that’s the shortest piece on the record at just under seven minutes. If you make it past the molten heat of the penultimate title-track, there’s no turning away from “23:61,” as the first minute of that next day pulls you in from the outset, a full-length flow all unto itself. More more more, yes yes yes. Alright you get the point.
Sit with The Ginger Faye Bakers‘ Camaro EP for a little bit. Don’t just listen to the first track, or even the second, third or fourth, on their own, but take a few minutes to put it all together. Won’t take long, the thing’s only 17 minutes long, and in so doing you’ll emerge with a more complex picture of who they are as a band. Yeah, you hear the opening title-cut and think early-Queens of the Stone Age-style desert riffing, maybe with a touch of we’re-actually-from-the-Northeast tonal thickness, but the garage-heavy of “The Creeps” feels self-aware in its Uncle Acid-style swing, and as the trio move through the swinging “The Master” and “Satan’s Helpers,” the last song drawing effectively from all sides, the totality of the release becomes all the more sinister for the relatively straight-ahead beginning just a short time earlier. Might be a listen or two before it sinks in, but they’ve found a niche for themselves here and one hopes they continue to follow where their impulses lead them.
If you’re not yet keeping an eye on Regain Records offshoot Helter Skelter Productions, Rome’s Neromega are a fervent argument for doing so. The initials-only cultish five-piece are Italian as much in their style of doom as they are in geography, and across their four-song Nero Omega debut EP, they run horror organ and classic heavy rock grooves alongside each other while nodding subtly at more extreme fare like the death ‘n’ roll rumble in closer “Un Posto” or the dirt-coated low end that caps “Pugnale Ardore,” the drifting psych only moments ago quickly forgotten in favor of renewed shuffle. Eight-minute opener “Solitudine,” might be the highlight as well as the longest inclusion on the 24-minute first-showing, but it’s by no means the sum total of what the band have on offer, as they saunter through giallo, psychedelia, doom, heavy riffs and who knows what else to come, they strike an immediately individual atmospheric presence even while actively toying with familiar sounds. The EP is cohesive enough to make me wonder what their initials are.
Some of the made-even-bigger-by-echo vocals from guitarist Craig Kasamis might remind of Maurice Bryan Giles from Red Fang, but Ventura, California’s Tung are up chasing down a different kind of party on 2020’s Bleak, though Kasamis, guitarist David Briceno (since replaced by Bill Bensen), bassist Nick Minasian and drummer Rob Dean have a strong current of West Coast noise rock in what they’re doing as well in “Runaway,” a lurcher like “Spit” later on or the run-till-it-crashes finisher “Fallen Crown,” which the only song apart from the bookending opener “Succession Hand” to have a title longer than a single word. Still, Tung have their own, less pop-minded take on brashness, and this debut album leaves the bruises behind to demonstrate its born-from-hardcore lineage. Their according lack of frills makes Bleak all the more effective at getting its point across, and while they’d probably tell you their sound is nothing fancy, it’s fancy enough to stomp all over your ears for about half an hour, and that’s as fancy as it needs to be. Easy to dig even in its more aggressive moments.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 1st, 2021 by JJ Koczan
I know what you’re thinking: But wait, isn’t the version of this song on the album live?
Yes, it is, and that’s exactly the kind of head-screwery I’d expect from Texas two-piece Stone Machine Electric. Indeed, the version of “Free Thought” that appears on Dec. 2020’s just-cut-and-paste-it-because-you’ll-never-get-it-right-otherwise Desert Records long-player The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld (review here) is the same one that is being played in the video below, captured at the Freetown Boom Boom Room in Lafayette, Louisiana, shortly before live shows evaporated in the face of global pandemic — timing, as ever, is everything.
Accordingly, much as Stone Machine Electric blurred the line between a live and a studio album, they’re here doing the same to the line between live and official videos. Just like they’ve been blurring the lines between jams and songs, psychedelia and doom and jazz, and so on and so forth all throughout their tenure, now past the decade mark as it is. Some bands fit easy categorization. That’s a line of which Stone Machine Electric are solidly on the other side.
At nine minutes, “Free Thought” — presented in its entirety in the video — is the shortest track on The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld by a substantial margin. And if you haven’t had a chance to get acquainted with the record yet, it’s streaming in full below.
Have fun:
Stone Machine Electric, “Free Thought” official live video
Free Thought off the album The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld on Desert Records.
[Click play above to stream Stone Machine Electric’s The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld in its entirety. Album is out Dec. 4 on Desert Records.]
Texas-based duo Stone Machine Electric are not by any means the first to put together a fusion of jazz and psychedelia, but they do it with a deceptive intricacy of purpose. Over the last decade-plus, guitarist/sometimes-vocalist William “Dub” Irvin and drummer/sometimes-noisemaker Mark Kitchens have explored the outer reaches of heavy rock and managed to capture a heavy psychedelic nuance that is both expansive and weighted. Perhaps most of all on the cumbersomely-named The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld, which is the three-song follow-up to 2019’s Darkness Dimensions Disillusion (review here), the underrated two-piece lean toward their make-heavy-things-float sensibility.
Positioned longest to shortest with the 20-minute “Journey on the Nile” leading off as the longest cut (immediate points), followed by “At Crystal Lake” (15:36) and “Free Thought” (9:07) rounding out, the band’s maybe-fourth full-length — it depends on what you count as an album vs. an EP, etc. — the album finds them working in three separate contexts and recording situations as they remain united in their atmospheric purpose.
The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld is instrumental in its entirety and arguably the “jammiest” work Stone Machine Electric have done since 2014’s Garage Tape (review here), which preceded 2015’s The Amazing Terror EP (review here), which begat 2016’s ah-ha moment of self-discovery, Sollicitus es Veritatem (review here), which begat the 2017 live album, Vivere (review here), etc., but it stands in line with impulses Dub and Kitchens have followed since their 2013 self-titled debut (review here) and the prior 2010 demo Awash in Feedback (review here) in terms of finding their place within the material itself and, even if they’re working with an overarching plan, doing so in an engaging and unpredictable way.
Effects play a larger role here than they sometimes do, but the spontaneity that feeds into the overall vibe of the record — the improvised-sounding nature of some of its stretches — is easily worth the minimal buy-in the band ask on the part of the listener. That is, they hypnotize, and whatever level of self-indulgence is inherent to an offering like this, it’s easy to follow where one is lead.
The destination, incidentally, is ethereal. Though “Journey on the Nile” enters a chugging progression at around 16:30 and from there rides a post-C.O.C. “Albatross” riff with duly respectful roll and nod, the bulk of the track brims with lysergic ambience to a degree that by the time they get there, they’ve set such a mood for the remainder of the offering that even the most straightforward of shifts feels like one is stepping on soft wax. Recorded in May 2019 with Josh Block at Niles City Sound in Fort Worth, “Journey on the Nile” also gives the first hint of how the titles play a role in telling the story of the album. There are no lyrics, and yet each track seems to capture something different in the overall sphere of Stone Machine Electric‘s sound.
“Journey on the Nile” references both the river itself and the studio in which the piece was put to tape, so what one takes away from that is that Dub and Kitchens are looking to show a process of cascading along with the underlying currents of the music itself. They do precisely that in the song, whether a given change is planned or not. Accordingly, “At Crystal Lake” nods at Crystal Clear Sound in Dallas, where it was helmed in July 2018 by Wo Fat guitarist/vocalist and regular Stone Machine Electric producer Kent Stump, and also references Camp Crystal Lake from the original Friday the 13th movie.
It is especially poignant that Stump recorded “At Crystal Lake” (he also mastered the entire LP), since although Stone Machine Electric have worked under Wo Fat‘s influence throughout their tenure, it’s arguable that’s never been less the case than with the initial unfolding of the 15-minute track itself, the title of which would also seem to lean toward the cinematic atmosphere of the keys at its outset. Once again, a heavier guitar emerges as Kitchens and Dub move through the runtime, but they never lose that underlying line of melodic, almost whistling drone, and the effect is to make “At Crystal Lake” not only its own statement, but also a push farther-out than “Journey on the Nile” on stylistic terms, adding to the flow of the The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld on the whole.
What, then, about “Free Thought?” The last and briefest of the album’s inclusions was recorded in Feb. 2020 at Lafayette, Louisiana’s Freetown Boom Boom Room, which is a statement all on its own when it comes to the preservation of live music in a post-COVID world. But “Free Thought” refers both to the name of the locale and the spirit of the track itself, which is open in terms of structure and not quite as avant garde as one thinks of free-jazz as being, but decidedly unhindered in its readiness to go where it wants.
It goes toward a more driving push in a linear build and then spends its last few minutes in an at-first-mellow freakout — cymbal wash and guitar noise leading to a solo, a wild tempo pickup, then finally a chugging comedown, which Dub and Kitchens manifest with the kind of chemistry that only stems from artists able to have a genuine musical conversation. And that turns out to be what unites these three songs recorded over a span of three separate years in three separate settings: the conversation. It too is called out by the band, as one suspects that’s what The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies… is about, while …Within the Cosmic Netherworld is the molten soundscapes that each song manages to create in its own way.
It’s not surprising that Stone Machine Electric would be conscious of what they’re doing in terms of putting an album together, but the multifaceted nature of their intention is emblematic of what makes them so undervalued as artists. They jam, sure, and they do it well. But though its title is long enough to be over-the-top, The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld offers interpretive depth for those willing to dig into it as well as spacey nodders for those looking for a bit of zone-out mental escape.
Dub and Kitchens are able to serve varied purposes while staying united in their own mission, continuously avoiding predictability and forging a progressive creative identity through tone and rhythm alike. Tuning into their ‘frequencies’ can only highlight the strengths so readily on display here.
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 13th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
I don’t even know how many times I’ve said this since 2009, but you know why I like Stone Machine Electric? Because I genuinely don’t know what’s coming next. Of how many bands is that true 11 years later? I’ve heard two of the three tracks on the upcoming album, cumbersomely titled The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld, and yeah, there’s a sense that William “Dub” Irvin and Mark “Derwooka” Kitchens are going to be jamming at this point — they certainly were on last year’s Darkness Dimensions Disillusion (review here), but as to what shape that’s going to take was still a mystery going into the new material.
“Journey on the Nile” tops 20 minutes and “At Crystal Lake…” is over 15, so Dub and Kitchens are plenty dug in here, but even between the two pieces there’s a decided shift in atmosphere. I’m keeping my fingers crossed to review before December comes, and there’s no audio from the record out yet, so I won’t spoil it more than I have, but the way I see it these guys remain way undervalued in their loyalty to their own creativity over genre or other concerns.
They’re a good fit for Desert Records, which has signed the band and sent along the following:
Stone Machine Electric – The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld
Record Label: Desert Records Release Date: 12/4/2020
Stone Machine Electric is a Texas-based stoner rock duo best known for crafting a dark and spacious brand of psychedelic jamming that they have dubbed Doom Jazz. Formed in the summer of 2009 by Mark Kitchens and William (Dub) Irvin, the duo began to unleash their Wo Fat and Earthless inspired sonic explorations upon the earth. Since their inception, the band has self-released a demo, an EP and four full lengths, the most recent of which, Darkness Dimensions Disillusion, came out on Sludgelord Records. On top of this they have a live record, Vivere, which was released with Off The Record Label.
“Be prepared to experience the COSMIC NETHERWORLD,” warns Desert Records’ Brad Frye. “I don’t know what strain those dudes are smoking in Texas, but Stone Machine Electric is about to drop a psychedelic juggernaut. Wait ’til you hear the song Journey on the Nile. Stoked to have these guys on board!”
SME have toured throughout the Lonestar State and even made it out to Arizona, Oklahoma and Louisiana. Along the way they have played alongside groups like Mothership, Wo Fat and Jucifer as well as having performed at a variety of Texas festivals including End Hip End It, Fuzzed Out Fest and Heavy Mash.
Tracks: 1: Journey on the Nile Recorded by Josh Block at Niles City Sound, Fort Worth, Texas on May 19, 2019 Mastered by Kent Stump at Crystal Clear Sound, Dallas, Texas
2: At Crystal Lake… Recorded by Kent Stump at Crystal Clear Sound, Dallas, Texas on July 28, 2018 Mastered by Kent Stump at Crystal Clear Sound, Dallas, Texas
3: Free Thought Recorded live at Freetown Boom Boom Room, Lafayette, Louisiana on February 22, 2020 Mastered by Kent Stump at Crystal Clear Sound, Dallas, Texas
Artwork: Front Cover and Layout: Joshua Mathus
Photography: Lynda Kitchens
Stone Machine Electric are: Dub – Guitar/Vocals Kitchens – Drums/Vocals/Keyboard
