https://www.high-endrolex.com/18

Snowy Dunes, Atlantis: The Power of Testimony

snowy dunes atlantis

Snowy Dunes have caught a heavy blues. They’re far from the only ones. The last couple years have witnessed a nascent surge of soul-driven heavy rock, and whether manifest in the high-order pop hooks of Snowy Dunes‘ Swedish countryfolk Blues Pills, the grit of New York’s Geezer or the dug-in jams of Australia’s Child, these worldwide examples are tied together through a blend of sonic fluidity, songcraft, open atmosphere and underlying naturalism that carries across this core sound as a next logical step forward for what in the earlier part of the decade might’ve been more straight-ahead boogie rock recorded on vintage gear.

Atlantis, which is the second Snowy Dunes long-player and sees release through HeviSike Records, follows a well-received 2015 self-titled debut (discussed here) and finds the returning four-piece of guitarist Christoffer Kingstedt, bassist Carl Oredson, drummer Stefan Jakobsson and vocalist Niklas Eisen pushing themselves creativity and refining the processes laid forth their last time out. The first album had a thrilling sense of spontaneity, and Atlantis does likewise, though the band stuck closer to home and recorded in Sweden with Anders Oredsson rather than travel as they did for the first record, which was tracked with Dead Meadow‘s Steve Krille.

Does that make Atlantis less of an adventure? Not necessarily. While there are fewer moments of left-the-tape-running-to-see-what-would-happen flourish among Atlantis‘ five songs/42 minutes, those same songs are well served by a tighter approach overall, and with its booking title-track installments — beginning with “Atlantis, Part II,” which is also the longest cut at 10:55 (immediate points) and ending with the build-into-apex-and-then-drift-away “Atlantis, Part III” — the record is not at all without a sense of journey in the front-to-back listening experience.

If anything, that sense is all the more resonant in Atlantis than it was on Snowy Dunes, because where the debut was so tied to the idea of the band jamming off the cuff in the studio — thereby keeping themselves to that one physical place even if using it as a launch point for musical exploration as they were — Atlantis comes across as roaming more freely on the whole. Between “Atlantis, Part II” and “Atlantis, Part III” — and if you’re wondering what happened to “Atlantis, Part I,” Snowy Dunes released it digitally as a single in Jan. 2016; it’s a 19-minute improv jam also recorded by Oredsson that carries some genuinely glorious moments — the band offers a three-song salvo of organic engagement. It’s up to “Atlantis, Part II” to set the scene, and the song does, with an initial strike of piano keys forward and backward that begins Atlantis on an atmospheric note and leads into trades back and forth of volume swells and psychedelic drift that are fluidly executed enough to leave little question why the band might’ve named the album after a sunken city.

snowy dunes

As a frontman, Eisen made a striking and personality-filled impression on the self-titled, and he does so on “Atlantis, Part II” as well, but shines even more on the subsequent “Testify,” which picks up directly on beat from the opener and plays off gospel traditions in an insistent heavy rock push marked by Jakobsson‘s fleet turns stamped with Kingstedt‘s wah, dropping to Oredson‘s bass to begin a wonderfully immersive middle third build and hits its peak as it rolls toward its eighth minute with Eisen speaking in tongues before the guitar leads the way back into a final runthrough of the album’s most memorable chorus and another scorching but still welcoming solo. The win is immediate, the party is a blast, but if you’re looking for a highlight in terms of vibe, centerpiece “The Trident and the Moon” answers the liquefaction of “Atlantis, Part II” with deep-running psych immersion and ballad-style storytelling in its lyrics, the vocals working subtly in layers atop the vast seascape of guitar and steady movement of drums and bass.

The second half of the song is given to another linear build answered by a late return to the chorus, but as with that midsection of “Testify,” it’s all about the dynamic and the chemistry Snowy Dunes bring to their execution of same. Both are palpable. And as “The Trident and the Moon”‘s nine and a half minutes come to an end ahead of the shorter “Ritual of Voices,” which though it features some choice vocal work beginning with spoken echoes and unfolding to spacious proclamations, is even more marked out by the wash created by the guitar and the hypnosis conjured thereby.

Casting off momentarily some of the bluesy feel — it’s never too far gone — Snowy Dunes retool the balance to emphasize the psychedelic side of their sound, and in this swirl, they find a rhythmic punch held together deftly by the drums and bass as Kingstedt utterly soars and leaves a trail of fire behind him along his way. It comes to a head and cuts out quick at seven minutes, but “Ritual of Voices” is a distinct stretch of Atlantis and demonstrates the ability of the band to emphasize multiple aspects of who they are in their songwriting. After that, the plunge into “Atlantis, Part III” feels almost like a return to solid ground, but is warm and welcome all the same. The closer is the shortest slice of Atlantis at just over six minutes long — and a decent portion of its last minute is silent — but that’s still plenty of time for Snowy Dunes to shift from the initial languid verses into a kinetic payoff that smoothly works into the roll-credits guitar line and melodic progression that ends the record with no less a consonant naturalism than it began.

So far as I can tell, “Atlantis, Part II” and “Atlantis, Part III” — and, for that matter, the prior “Atlantis, Part I” — don’t tie together in terms of actual sonic theme, but in their ambience they relate much of the same story, and it’s a narrative of continued growth on the part of the band and further development of who they are as individual players and together as a functioning unit. The signals are clear throughout Atlantis that Snowy Dunes are not finished with this evolutionary process, and frankly that only renders the songs more exciting, since even as they bask in a more complete realization than one found on the debut, they hold forth a potential no less vivid, and indeed make Atlantis a work of discovery.

Snowy Dunes, Atlantis (2017)

Snowy Dunes on Thee Facebooks

Snowy Dunes on Bandcamp

HeviSike Records on Thee Facebooks

HeviSike Records on Twitter

HeviSike Records on Bandcamp

HeviSike Records website

Tags: , , , , ,

Leave a Reply