Posted in Whathaveyou on June 4th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Not to contradict Craneium or anything, but if Europe could possibly have been killed by fuzz, presumably from some manner of overdose thereof, wouldn’t it have happened already? Rather, the continent seems — at least from my position across an ocean from it — insatiable when it comes to saturated tonality and heavy groove. Still, you gotta call the tour something, right, so if they’re setting goals for themselves, it would seem only admirable they’d reach for the stars, as it were, even if those stars were, you know, devastating the populace all around.
Whatever the survival rate will ultimately be, I dug Craneium‘s 2018 third album, The Narrow Line (review here) — which you can stream below — and I’m glad enough to have an excuse to revisit it by posting these tour dates. They kick off in the Netherlands and wrap in Germany and kick around for over a week between.
Have at it:
We just added a show in Czech Republic 22.6! Just a few more weeks now and we will kill Europe with fuzz.
15.6 MFC Festival Coevorden (NL) 16.6 MTs /Oldenburg (Ger) 17.6 Club Kinky Star /Ghent (Bel) w/ Fire Down Below 18.6 STELPLAATS /Leuven (Bel) 19.6 Mandril Culture & Political Center /Maastrich (NL) w/Lacertilia 21.6 Zille/Göppingen (Ger) 22.6 Magic place /Louny (CZ) 23.6 Toast Hawaii /Berlin (Ger) w/The Trikes, HEAVY HEAVY
Bio:
Craneium is a stoner/desert/fuzz rock band formed in Turku late 2011 and has sweated themselves through an intense live schedule since then!
Craneium released their first album “the Slowerdrive Tapes” on green cassette 2013, a split 12″ record with 3rd Trip 2014 and a their full-lenght “Explore The Void” in through Ripple Music december 2016.
Tune Down, Turn Up and Fuzz Out with Craneium. Worshippers of amplifiers, weird tales, fuzzboxes and mindexpanding rock can have a taste of the band here:https://craneiumband.bandcamp.com/
Craneium is: Andreas Kaján – Vocals & Guitars Martin Ahlö – Vocals & Guitars Joel Kronqvist – Drums Jonas Ridberg – Bass
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 23rd, 2018 by JJ Koczan
This digital release for Craneium‘s second long-player, The Narrow Line (review here), will be followed in a couple weeks by the physical version of the album. The band premiered the rocker “I’m Your Demon” here and tap into more stretched-out vibes on other songs, but the occasion is worth making either way, and so here we are. They talk a little bit about the recording process — six months in the making — and the work that went into getting the songs ready through preproduction and so on, and I think the finished product is pretty emblematic of the effort that went into building it from the ground up.
That finished product, by the way, is streaming at the bottom of this post.
Happy release date to Craneium, and enjoy:
Craneium – The Narrow Line
We are really happy to finally share our second album “The Narrow Line” with all of you. It has been a long time coming since our first one in 2015. We found ourselves without a bass player two times since then, so finding a band member, rehearsing, getting to know each other, write new material and move on to the stage when we finally had everything in place and ready to hit REC took a while. But we’re back and we’re stoked about the new album, and we’re really hoping you all will dig it too!
We recorded it with the same guy who worked with us on the last record, and we did it here in our hometown of Turku. Took about 6 months from start to finish. This time we put more effort into the pre-production and tested ideas. The main different being that we’ve learnt how to do things better and how to do things right. Recording it was a blast and many ideas came about in the studio, like the intro solo on “I’m Your Demon”. For this record we had it mastered at Studio Underjord in Sweden and we think the overall sound is so much better this time with more low-end and punch in the songs. The artwork was done by the Talented Dominic Sohor from Bolton, UK.
The album consists of 7 tracks exploring various styles within the genre of fuzzy-rock. From fuzz rock, stoner and desert influences via doom, space, psychedelia and heavy music in general. We’d like to think this is the sound of the band, not really able to stick it in one category, but instead a mishmash of everything we like which in turn makes us into the band we are. Metal Temple put it quite well in their review: What CRANEIUM present here is not so much an album but an adventure, escapism for the listener, there is enough talent and invention throughout the recording to keep you hooked, however, their greatest achievement is in how they seemed to throw off the shackles of staying within the perimeter of conventional stoner, desert rock and still appeal to that genre.
We don’t like to be conventional, we like being Craneium!
Craneium is: Andreas Kaján – Vocals & Guitars Martin Ahlö – Vocals & Guitars Joel Kronqvist – Drums Jonas Ridberg – Bass
Posted in audiObelisk on October 30th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
Finland’s Craneium will release their second album, The Narrow Line, Dec. 7 via Ripple Music. The Turku four-piece were picked up by the label in 2016 ahead of the release of their debut, Explore the Void, and with the seven tracks of their sophomore outing, they bring together psychedelic adventurousness with clarity of songwriting and a healthy dose of fuzz. Their songs work to find a niche in heavy rock that’s neither overly weighted so as to lose sight of its focus on melody nor so tripped out that the existence of any kind of focus at all is a contradiction. While seemingly based on jams, songs like “The Goat” and “The Soothsayer” have been carved into structured pieces, and with the rolling fuzz of opener “Manifest” as a forward first impression, the dual vocals of guitarists Andreas Kaján and Martin Ahlö complement as an immediate distinguishing factor that the subsequent, heavier chorus of “I’m Your Demon” only reaffirms. With Jonas Ridberg on bass and Joel Kronqvist on drums, “I’m Your Demon” is able to evoke boogie rock without losing itself into retroist cliche, and as with so much of the album surrounding, a pace is maintained that keeps the feel laid back when it wants to be but still able to push ahead when it wants to.
You can listen to the premiere of “I’m Your Demon” on the player below, and while it’s the shortest song on The Narrow Line at four and a half minutes, it nonetheless stands as an example of Craneium working in the space they’re making their own throughout the album, culling influence from desert rock and heavy psych, doom and a full swath of other whatnots in order to strike the balance between wall-o’-fuzz and the solo that cuts through in the second half. Dig that mix. Then the vocal harmonies return. There’s some underlying grunge thrown into the stylistic palette as well — it’s the brown you’ll hear in the guitar tone — but Craneium emerge clean from “I’m Your Demon” and continue to build momentum in “Beyond the Pale” while bringing to bear a more patient delivery as led by the guitars, moving into a dynamic interplay between lead guitar and Ridberg‘s bass in the second half that only feeds into the electric surge happening as they make ready to close out side A with the aforementioned “The Soothsayer,” the groove no less paramount there than it has been all along.
I’ll admit I keep wanting closer “Man’s Ruin” to be about the defunct record label headed by Frank Kozik that did so much to break ground for heavy rock in the late ’90s, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s about space and hubris, which is fair enough. The finale reinforces the fuzz of earlier cuts “Manifest” and “I’m Your Demon” while answering a bit of the funk that shows itself early in “The Soothsayer” and following Side B slabs “Redemption” — the longest inclusion at 6:44 and a highlight of Kronqvist‘s drumming in meter, cymbal splash and tom work — and “The Goat,” which is as languid as Craneium get, with a dreamy meandering at about four minutes in that offsets the more weighted shove that accompanies. “Man’s Ruin,” as it should, brings the various sides together in a last display of all of it as the band’s own pastiche and the expanding ground on which they’re continuing to work to coalesce their approach — so much as they want it to coalesce; some aspects here are definitely intended to remain liquefied — and to refine the balance of structure and space in their craft. They strike that balance well throughout The Narrow Line — one doubts they titled the album thinking of the thin borders between heavy subgenres, but it applies nonetheless — and emerge from the other end of “Man’s Ruin” having not at all succumbed to tragedy as a result of their ambitions.
“I’m Your Demon” is on the player below, and Kajántook some time to talk about The Narrow Line and the song itself, so you can read what he had to say beneath that. The album is out Dec. 7 on Ripple.
Enjoy:
Andreas Kaján on “I’m Your Demon”:
Our second album has been a long time coming. After releasing “Explore The Void” back in 2015 digitally we got signed by Ripple Music and the physical album was out in 2016. Since then we’ve had some bass players come and go which have made it difficult to move forward and write new material. We finally found a guy and got around to writing new material and by summer of 2017 we had 8 new tracks. We recorded the album during the spring of 2018 and it will be released by Ripple Music December 7th this year. This time around I think we learned a little something from recording our first album and applied that while recording “The Narrow Line”. I think we have listened to the critics and tried to put more time and effort into the production this time. Lets hope you think so too!
The new songs highlight the Craneium sound like the last album, but we’d like to think it has evolved since and that we have refined it. A lot of clean and mellow parts rounded off with heavy grooves and hooks.
A few words about this second single release: “I’m Your Demon” was actually the last song that we wrote for the new album. Most of the other songs we had been working on a couple of months before this one came along. It’s a bit of an oddball for us since it’s the first song that isn’t in a 4/4 time signature, so we’re calling it our prog-song — justified, right? The guitar solo in the beginning of the song came about in the studio while recording it. We decided to play the clean part a little longer before the vocals come in, so we went ahead and threw a solo in there. Really fun to play with a cool breakdown part that culminates in a guitar solo and then on to a modulation of the last chorus. If it weren’t for all the fuzz we might even make the European Song Contest!
The album is called “The Narrow Line” and will be out on Ripple Music worldwide December 7th 2018.
Craneium is: Andreas Kaján – Vocals & Guitars Martin Ahlö – Vocals & Guitars Joel Kronqvist – Drums Jonas Ridberg – Bass
