I didn’t really need an excuse to wish I was going to be in Europe come September, having already failed to get that Fulbright to Sweden I tried for last fall, but hey, why not toss another installment of the Up in Smoke tour on the pile? Indignity loves company.

This time around, it’s recent Napalm signees Monkey3 and Glowsun teamed up with German upstarts Grandloom. Good stuff. Sound of Liberation sent over dates and info on the PR wire:

UP IN SMOKE VOL IV
Monkey 3 (CH) — Glowsun (FRA) — Grandloom (GER)

The Psychedelic Roadfestival goes into the next round! From September 14th until September 29th, the Up In Smoke Roadfestival offers you finest heavy psychedelic rock music.

MONKEY 3  from Lausanne, well known for their outstanding live performance, will headline the evening. The ones among you, who have already seen the band live, know what we are talking about. Monkey 3 are constantly creating an excellent mixture of heavy, psychedelic, stoner and space rock. Atmospheric and emotional!
http://www.monkeythree.com/

For almost 15 years GLOWSUN has been on a journey through sheer endless distances of the musical cosmos. Consequently, the trio from Northern France continues their psychedelic trip. Swirling and heavy riffs meet the intelligent and playful foundation of the tight rhythm section, thus transforming the songs into compact sound clouds which surround and finally transport the listener into a completely new world. Glowsun will present their new CD “Eternal Season” during the UP IN SMOKE Tour.
https://www.facebook.com/Glowsunmusic

GRANDLOOM from Cottbus in Germany have already established their sound in the german underground scene. Their great mix of ‘70s rock, stoner, and psych leading them to trippy super jams…heavy, bluesy and always groovy.
http://www.grandloom.de/

Up In Smoke VOL IV – The Psychedelic Roadfestival on Tour:
14.09. CH Winterthur, Gaswerk
15.09. CH Yverdon, Amalgame
16.09. A  Salzburg, Rockhouse
17.09. Wuerzburg, Café Cairo
18.09. Munich, Feierwerk
19.09. A  Wien, Arena
20.09. Jena, Rose
21.09. Muenster, Amp
22.09. BEL  Brussels, Magasin 4
23.09. F  Paris, Glazart
24.09. Cologne , Underground
25.09. Frankfurt, das Bett
26.09. Berlin, Magnet
27.09. Hamburg, Molotow
28.09. Dresden, Groovestation
29.09. Esslingen, Komma
http://www.soundofliberation.com/up-in-smoke-vol-4.html

Closing out with Swiss psychedelic instrumentalists Monkey3 covering Ennio Morricone (because why not) and signing off early this week. I’m heading out in a few hours to go to the Saint Vitus Bar in Brooklyn to see Droids Attack, and I don’t know why, but I have the feeling it’s going to be a really good night. Most shows at this point I’m kind of here or there on actually leaving the house to go to, but this time I’m legitimately psyched. I’ll probably get hit by a bus on my way into the venue.

Droids Attack tonight starts off a pretty busy couple weeks of show-going. On Monday, Radio Moscow and The Dirty Streets hit the Brighton Bar in Jersey, Sons of Tonatiuh play Brooklyn next Thursday, and next Saturday, Halfway to Gone will be at the Brighton. I have an interview in the can with bassist/vocalist Lou Gorra from Halfway that’ll be up the week after next (want to get pics to go with). That show is the same night as Mike Scheidt in Brooklyn, so I was thinking maybe I’d drive south to see him in Philly the next night (could be tricky on a Sunday), but later that week, The Company Band are coming through, and I can’t make the Brooklyn show, so could be another trip to Philly for it. Everyone decided to hit at once, and most of them decided not to hit Jersey. What else is new?

I’ll sort it all out and get to as much as I can get to, and in the meantime, next week I’ll also have that free Mos Generator download posted. The band has taken some new press shots and there’s a press release to go with now, so we’ll do it up. I’ll also have an interview with Bathory obsessives Ereb Altor about their new and more blackened third album, Gastrike, that’ll be posted, and I’ll be picking and announcing the winners of the Kadavar giveaway, we’ll have another album of the summer of the week, and a new column either from Tommy Southard or Woody High, as well as (presumably) the explosion-filled finale of the Kings Destroy European tour diary. One can only assume even more tires will be destroyed in the making of it.

Much to come, and of course I’ll be working all weekend as well, but I’ll let Tomorrow Me worry about all the shit that he has to do tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to go out, watch a good band, have a beer or two and enjoy myself in as bullshit-free a manner as possible. I’ll keep you posted Monday on how it works out.

As always, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. I’ll be kicking around periodically on the forum, zapping spambots like I do. Hope to see you there and back here Monday for more whipped cream, also other delights.

I included it with the Greenleaf review yesterday as well (because they were recently added to the increasingly kickass lineup), but wanted to put it here too, because, looky looky whose logo got put on the bottom of the Desertfest Berlin poster! Yeah, that’s right. It’s The Obelisk‘s. Don’t worry, I’ll try not to let it go to my head, even though it already has. I’ve gone mad with relevance.

Thanks to Sound of Liberation for making that happen. Here’s the poster and the latest from their camp, including the news that Swiss instrumentalist stalwarts Monkey3 will be playing:

Time’s flying now and we are all looking forward to celebrate with you the Desertfest Berlin from 19-21 April. Three days of rock with 30 bands/artists from 13 different countries.

The already outstanding line p was upgraded last week by the announcement of Switzerland’s psychedelic wizzards Monkey3.

We are honoured to announce the presence of Monkey3 at Desertfest Berlin! The Swiss quartet from Lausanne is very well known for being one of the most cosmic, ultra-psychedelic and hypnotic acts of the stoner scene… Get ready for those monkeys to whirl you up into a trance! It has been a long time since the band played in Berlin and we can’t wait to see and enjoy their performance!

Interested ticket buyers please hurry up:

We throw in the ring the last bunch of two-day tickets. There are less than 200 available! Get them here.
One day tickets for Friday or Saturday are here.

We’re also working on the details of the Saturday 21 April aftershow party… Stay tuned!!!

http://www.desertfest.de/

Marking a decade of existence in 2011 after one of their most successful years yet – 2010 found them appearing at both Roadburn and Hellfest – Swiss psychedelonauts Monkey3 follow-up 2009’s covers EP, Undercover, with their third full-length, Beyond the Black Sky. Released via Stickman Records with art by Malleus, the eight-track LP runs just over 42 minutes, and on it, the four-piece Lausanne band delves into a range of atmospheres, keeping their instrumental songs memorable and grounded with a foundation of heavy riffs. The vibe is vaguely stoner, but there’s more going on with Monkey3 (either written thusly or Monkey 3 with a space between the name and number; I’ve seen it both ways) than simple riff-driven instrumentality, and where an act like Karma to Burn has clearly had some influence, Beyond the Black Sky pulls from synth-inclusive space rock and heavy jamming, resulting in a feel generally more atmospheric, as they show in the low underlying rumble of the short “Tuco the Ugly.” These are songs, and they’re accessible on that level, but each piece also has a character of its own and a progression playing out.

For that alone, that Monkey3 manage to achieve that balance, Beyond the Black Sky is a win. They open the album with “Camhell,” which finds guitar and synth affecting a repetitive hypnosis while drummer Walter (first names only, all around) keeps the build moving. And it is a build. The song peaks once, drops down, and peaks again in its six-plus minutes, ending at a noodling guitar apex that cuts off as though the low-end effects that open “One Zero Zero One” are a wall the band has just pushed you into. “One Zero Zero One” – which doesn’t actually translate from binary to anything in text – is more patient all around, guitarist Boris and keyboardist dB working well together as the former offers a memorable rhythm line in the song’s final moments. That interplay between the guitar and keyboards runs throughout Beyond the Black Sky, lending the record as a whole a progressive air, but Monkey3, despite being a heavy psychedelic band given to lengthy jams like that in Side A-highlight “Black Maiden” (8:52), are never fully lost in self-indulgence. The structure of “Black Maiden” isn’t so different from “Camhell” or that which shows up later on closer “Through the Desert” (another high point of the record), but through diversity in their riffing style and complexity of the parts they’re playing, Monkey3 avoid sounding samey or repetitive where they’re not meaning to be. “Black Maiden” brings bassist Picasso and dB for hits and ringouts during a lengthy midsection of mostly guitar and synth, and it works tremendously well setting up the build of the song’s latter half.

“Tuco the Ugly” is more of an interlude at 2:13; a well-placed comedown from “Black Maiden” that provides afterthought to the breadth of that track while also closing out the first half of the record, but more interesting about it is how it plays next to “K.I,” which follows. Where “Tuco the Ugly” relies on acoustic guitar and a foreboding Western ambience perhaps inspired by their take on the theme from Once Upon a Time in the West from Undercover, “K.I” is practically industrial, with Boris’ start-stop riffing, the mechanical-sounding rhythms behind and wash of synth. Since both cuts are the only ones on Beyond the Black Sky under three minutes, and since they’re paired right next to each other, one can’t help but compare them, and though I’m more partial personally to the relaxed, open-country style of “Tuco the Ugly,” there’s no denying that “K.I” grooves and leads well into the organ-ic “Motorcycle Broer,” which finds Picasso at his most present yet, mix-wise, and Boris moving the guitars into atmospheric volume swells when not playing up straightforward rock riffing or – as later in the track – busting out the best solo on Beyond the Black Sky.

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I decided to end this week with some Monkey3 because they’re a band about whom I know dick-all other than they’re instrumental and they’re European. When it comes to their members, discography or just about anything else, I couldn’t tell you, but I looked up this video and the song is killer, so apparently I’ve got my work cut out for me. There’s always more music out there. People who say nothing’s good these days are just wrong.

Well friends, as I stare down the barrel of a much-welcome long weekend, I’ll wish you a happy Labor Day if you’re in the States and a happy socialized medicine (which really makes every day a holiday) if you’re not. I look forward to spending the next couple days waiting for an alleged hurricane to not show up, then laughing when it doesn’t. It’s the little things.

If you didn’t see the response George from Las Cruces (the band, not the city) left to the live review post’s previous commenter, it rules.

One last order of business: tonight on 89.5FM WSOU here in New Jersey they’re reviving a show called Blurred Visions that plays stoner rock and doom, and to which I have sentimental attachment because I started it back when I was an undergrad at Seton Hall. If you’re around and looking for something to listen to at 1oPM Eastern, check it out here.

Otherwise, as always, I wish you the best and safest of weekends.

I think by now there are enough of these live streams so that anyone who didn’t actually make it to the 013 Popcentrum in Tilburg can reenact their own Roadburn festival, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop posting them, because they sound great. Special thanks as always to Walter for the permission and for sending over the links. Enjoy:

Monkey3 live at Roadburn 2010

Russian Circles live at Roadburn 2010

Orange Sunshine live at Roadburn 2010

Darkspace live at Roadburn 2010

Dive live at Roadburn 2010

Noneuclid live at Roadburn 2010