Why yes, that is Lamp of the Universe‘s Acid Mantra in full set to images from the Hubble telescope in various stages of manipulation. Thanks for asking. Truth be told, I spent so much of today with my teeth clenched that now my jaw hurts, and in looking for something to round out the week, nothing seemed heavy enough, angry enough, miserable or misanthropic enough to properly convey the sort of in-all-directions frustration in which I’ve been embroiled for the better part of the last three days. So I decided to go the other direction with it. Like, complete opposite.

And in finding the most blissed out psych I could readily think of, 2009’s Acid Mantra (review here) came to mind almost immediately. New Zealand’s Lamp of the Universe will reportedly have a new full-length out next month according to Craig Williamson, the lone figure behind the project (also bassist/vocalist for Arc of Ascent), and from where I sit that’s good news. Acid Mantra being more active than much of the Lamp material that came before it, I was kind of worried it was put to bed for good when Arc of Ascent got going. That band also rules and I would recommend their two albums to anyone who hasn’t heard them, it’s just a different appeal.

I’d have included Lamp of the Universe in that list that went up on Tuesday, but details on the forthcoming stuff are scarce and I don’t know the exact release date. Good news anyway though, and much needed. I guess I’ve been kind of burnt out. Doing posts today for Desertfest and Roadburn right in a row only underscored to me just how ready I am to punch out for a while, and while I last year managed to stay so busy for most of the trip that I actually felt like coming back home was the vacation — and I expect much the same for this year — it’s time. I wish it was this week. Gotta go, gotta go.

Russian Circles are at Radio City Music Hall tomorrow night with two bands I don’t care to see, and if I can get a photo pass, I’m going to go. Been too long since I got out and I’m starting to go stir crazy. Holly Hunt are also playing, at The Acheron, and it’s been a while since I did two shows in a night, but I might just be out of my head enough to give it a shot, and I figure Russian Circles will be over early enough to make it over to Brooklyn in good time. Some math to be done there, and it remains to be seen if I can get into that Radio City gig, but if I can, I’ll write about it Monday.

Also over the weekend I want to see if I can tackle the Devil to Pay album, which I wanted fucking desperately to review today. Got slapped with work and bullshit piled on top of bullshit related to various other site-irrelevant concerns, so by the time I would’ve been able to start — like 3PM or so — I was already so pissed at the time gone by that I couldn’t even really get it rolling. Escapist festival updates and shows happening on the other side of the country instead. There’s a hidden message in there somewhere. Whatever.

Thanks to everyone who checked in this week. As always, I hope you have a great and safe weekend however you wind up spending it, and if you’ve found yourself in the bummer kind of funk as apparently my quick-to-bitching ass has, then I hope the Lamp of the Universe record above does you some good as well. By all accounts, that’s what it’s there for. If you’re looking to kill time, hit up the forum and The Obelisk Radio, both of which kick ass more than I could’ve anticipated at the time.

Likely I’d have bought it anyway, but what really sold me on Acid Mantra, the latest self-release from prolific deep-space psychedelic traveler Craig Williamson under the one-man-band banner of Lamp of the Universe, was when I read that it had more in common with older albums like The Cosmic Union and Echo in Light than more recent work Earth, Spirit and Sky and From the Mystic Rays of Astrological Light. Not that I didn’t enjoy those records for what they were — largely instrumental slabs of tripped-out psych from the wilds of New Zealand — but since my favorite songs from Williamson (also the bassist for the underrated Datura) are “Born in the Rays of the Third Eye” and “Lotus of a Thousand Pedals,” the thought of having more material akin to that was too much to resist purchasing.

The suggestion holds true: Acid Mantra does share much in common with Lamp of the Universe‘s early output, but it’s no more of a throwback than any of Williamson‘s output as ever been. The banjo-laden “Searching for a Sign,” for example, sounds like something you might hear on a Six Organs of Admittance record, and closer “Universe Within” even has drums! Drums and fuzzy electric guitars! Hell, I couldn’t believe it.

But it’s not necessarily that Williamson is aping himself, rather he’s just writing more active songs; songs that are more structured than have been those on his more recent collections. Acid Mantra is still psychedelic folk at its heart, with plenty of the sitars, tanpura and drones those who’ve followed Lamp of the Universe have come to expect, but they appear here tempered by more earthly elements as well. If you’re going to travel through the cosmos, you have to lift off from somewhere, right?

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