The word “epic” gets tossed around these days for everything from Homeric poetry to late-night burritos, so one hesitates to use it for fear it might be taken with a watered-down meaning. I’m at a loss, however, for how else to describe the monumental, otherworldly reality presented in the third installment in a trio of albums from Finnish five-piece Mr. Peter Hayden, Archdimension Now. Comprised of two hyper-extended cosmic drone-doom masterpieces and released as its predecessors were through Kauriala Society, Archdimension Now is simply in a class of its own in terms of its scope. A 2CD, limited-numbers release housed in a sort of gatefold digi-box, its bright orange cover glaring, it is a staggering work and one that lives up to its theme. The Satakunta outfit’s debut, 2010’s Faster than Speed (review here), dealt with the idea of time travel as a transcendent moment, casting off the constraints of the dimension. Their 2012 follow-up, Born a Trip (review here), was a portrayal of leaving form behind, a sort of transitional stretch laid out as a single 68-minute track. With Archdimension Now, we arrive. The title seems to be as much a notation of where as when, and yet, when one makes their way through the 67-minute first disc or the 57-minute second disc of the album, the experience is bound to be one of lost time entirely, so hypnotic and engrossing is the material the band concocts. On the most basic level, Archdimension Now makes Faster than Speed sound like the product of a simpler age, and where Born a Trip still held to some of the structure the first album worked with — wide open as it was — these two parts go beyond it altogether. They’re what’s left after the dimensions are stripped away.

It is a very, very cool concept.

Sound-wise, what Mr. Peter Hayden do is take the claustrophobic elements of post-metal and cosmic doom and turn them on their head. Archdimension Now has stretches of lumbering, noisy weight, to be sure — by about 10 minutes in, the first disc has risen to its first crest — but with the context of the drones and ambience surrounding and within these parts, they’re not oppressive nearly as much as they are life-affirming. And more than these movements of tectonic heft and psychedelic wash, what stands out in listening to Archdimension Now is the sheer impossibility of the audio. That is to say, if Mr. Peter Hayden were to attempt to recreate these pieces — either of them — in a live setting, the sheer nature of the effects barrage, the waves of drone, the crashing drums and the wah-drenched guitars makes it inevitable that they would come across differently. As much as Archdimension Now is intended to be the space outside of time, then, it is also invariably a moment captured within it. I do not know how much if any of it was improvised or built on layers in the studio, but the broad-ranging, volcanic nature of the audio feels like a painting one could never recreate. A long stretch of 40-plus minutes’ atmospherics follows that first push proves to be the heart of the work. They’re not building tension — at least not yet — but exploring an aural space even as they make it. By 35 minutes in, they’ve broken it down to guitar-minimalism backed by progressive keys, and it’s from there that the second-half build of the track begins, so patient and fluid as to be almost undetectable on a minute-by-minute scale, but definitely there when you pull back to look at the larger picture. If the record was less than two hours long, one might almost call it subtle. The final thrust of the first disc has a foundation in a slow drum progression, so there’s something binding it to the earth, but atop that is space rock liquefied into its molten prog elements. Noise, feedback, guitar effects, keys — all come together to provide a fullness of sound, and when the song begins to fade after its 65th minute, and elements start to dissipate, one gets the impression that Mr. Peter Hayden could just as easily have kept going.

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There are two reasons I’m posting about the Mr. Peter Hayden and Dark Buddha Rising tour and they are as follows: Mr. Peter Hayden and Dark Buddha Rising.

I’ve been looking forward to the new Mr. Peter Hayden album, Archdimension Now, since streaming part of their in-betweener single “We Fly High” here back in January. The third in a trilogy of outings, the first two of which were cosmically-minded, exploratory and, when they wanted to be, demolition-grade heavy, I don’t doubt that it will hit under the radar for some, but those who catch it will be glad they did. If this post entices someone to check out that single or 2012’s Born a Trip (review here), all the better.

And though Dark Buddha Rising‘s Dakhmandal got lost last year amid the mess of digital promos, I was at Roadburn 2012 when they played (review here) and so the prospect of that set coming out on tape is enticing indeed. They were among the bleakest acts I’ve ever seen at that festival, and their droning doom remains deeply individual, very much their own.

So you see, the two bands touring together, even nowhere I’ll be able to see them, is an event worth marking. The PR wire puts it thusly:

Dark Buddha Rising and Mr. Peter Hayden collaborative European tour dates for April 2014 announced

Finnish heavy-weight deep space psychedelic travellers Dark Buddha Rising and Mr. Peter Hayden will be touring Europe in April 2014. Trips will be served on eight nights, starting on April 19th in Bülach, Switzerland and ending seven nights later in Stockholm, Sweden. Prepare your minds!

Dark Buddha Rising have released four albums of their signature monolithic dark psychedelic art and gained full acceptance throughout Europe. Last year they opened for Neurosis and are now back to challenge your senses. Mr. Peter Hayden are known from their lengthy compositions and in-depth instrumental approach on sonic psychedelia. Now they are putting out a two-hour piece of music in form of a double album and returning to Europe to continue where they left off at last years Roadburn Festival.

Prior to the tour Mr. Peter Hayden will release a double album entitled Archdimension Now. This will complete the album trilogy they have been working on since 2009. Album will be released through Kauriala Society on April 11th.

Also Dark Buddha Rising have a new release coming up. Live at Roadburn 2012 will be released through Future Lunch on cassette only on April 4th. Finnish masters of dark psychedelia proceed onward after their last years epic release of three 12” EP’s entitled Dakhmandal. Now their debut live recording is being released from their much celebrated performance at Roadburn Festival 2012 in Tilburg, Holland via Future Lunch. Known from their black psychedelic art and performances, the group has gained major acceptance beyond borders. They are now serving you a unique glimpse of their previous guidelines as presented in this 2012 one-of-a-kind event. An event in which minds were trembled and all mountains shook up.

Set your pre-orders here!: http://futurelunch.bigcartel.com/

Dark Buddha Rising & Mr. Peter Hayden : “Archmandal” – European tour, 19. – 26.4.2014
19.4. Guss39, Bülach, Switzerland
20.4. Doomed Gatherings, Glazart, Paris, France
21.4. Little Devil, Tilburg, Netherlands
22.4. Hühnermanhattan, Halle, Germany
23.4. Crass Pub, Chemnitz, Germany
24.4. Werk4, Magdeburg, Germany
25.4. Stengade, Copenhagen, Denmark
26.4. Püssy a Go Go, The Liffey, Stockholm, Sweden

www.mrph.net
www.varjotila.org/dbr
www.futurelunch.com

Mr. Peter Hayden, Born a Trip (2012)

Elusive Finnish psychedelic crushers Mr. Peter Hayden return with the 68-minute single-track offering, Born a Trip. The album – because, make no mistake, it is a full album – follows their 2010 debut, Faster than Speed (review here) and sees release on CD through Kauriala Society and 2LP through Mikrofoni. As a unit, the instrumental Kankaanpää five-or-six-piece continue to impress as they did last time around, though the scope of Born a Trip remains the same despite the jump in scale. Basically, Mr. Peter Hayden took what they did on the first album and doubled it, going from two tracks on either side of half an hour long each to one track on the far side of an hour. Whether or not that’s a great step in creativity, I’m not certain, but it’s an impressive jump in structuring the material and one a lot of bands fall flat making where Mr. Peter Hayden do not fall flat, instead excelling at crafting a singular work that rises and falls tidally, offering minute wave-like undulations to coincide with the larger push and pull. The band remains markedly individual in their approach to space rock, focusing more on the darkness and vastness than the rush of light or the jammed out feel present in so much latter day European psychedelia, and while the result of that is perhaps that Born a Trip has more in common with Faster than Speed than it might seem to if it also had a lot in common with other bands, there’s clear development of melodicism to complement the time increase; the record’s many ups and downs arriving heralded by a wash of melody in the double-guitars of V. Vatanen and J.P. Koivisto and the synths of Simo Kuosmanen, also of the richly creative Hexvessel and Dark Buddha Rising. Synths wind up playing a large role in filling out Mr. Peter Hayden’s sound – also enriched by a increase in production value since the last time – allowing Vatanen and Koivisto room to space out or start-stop in intricate rhythmic patterns while drummer T. Santamaa and bassist Lauri Kivelä hold the album’s single titular work together.

They cover a lot of ground in the 68 minutes of “Born a Trip” – I don’t want the previous paragraph to somehow convey that the growth here is mostly temporal – it’s not. Mr. Peter Hayden were hardly lacking for patience before, but here, it doesn’t even seem to be a question. Born a Trip breaks down into a series of intertwining movements, long progressive builds and apexes that crest one into the next as parts set each other up, play out, and then subside. Like a lot of heavy psych, one might argue enjoyment is proportional to volume, but Born a Trip is consuming no matter what level it’s played at, the initial build getting under way on a foundation of feedback, vaguely-melodic synth wash, rhythmic chug and drum thud. That initial tone-setting contorts the brain stem for a little more than the first 10 minutes, gradually solidifying the way one thinks of lava cooling off, and the next eight are given to an oddly-timed progression reminiscent of some of the quirky start-stops they worked into “Delta t=0” from Faster than Speed, inadvertently displaying some allegiance to heavy metal technicality without blatantly paying homage to Meshuggah’s inimitable internal clock — not that others haven’t tried to imitate it, they just suck at it almost entirely across the board. By keeping their own edge, Mr. Peter Hayden avoid the trap and put the djentery to work for them as part of their larger plan, building it up until just before 19 minutes in, they drop to quiet drones, echoed drums and subdued atmospherics, rife with volume-swelling guitar and ringing synth expanse. It’s another five minutes or so before they kick back in, and easy to get lost in the meantime, but when the guitars and the bombast start anew, Mr. Peter Hayden are quick to lock down one of the record’s most lasting grooves and top it with high-pitched guitar squeals that sound like some kind of far-off siren.

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