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Review & Video Premiere: The Crazy Left Experience, Death, Destruction & Magic

the crazy left experience death destruction and magic

[Click play above to view the premiere of The Crazy Left Experience’s ‘Magic’ video, with footage from Georges Méliès’ 1902 film, Le Voyage dans la Lune. The Crazy Left Experience’s Death, Destruction and Magic is out now on Adamsonia Records.]

Instrumental trio The Crazy Left Experience have been jamming for roughly five years. Their first three outings are ‘sessions’ releases — 2014’s The Big Bang Sessions (In The Beginning), 2015’s Garage Sessions and early 2016’s Uranus Sessions — but from that point on, the Lisbon-based outfit began to dip into psychedelic conceptualism, working their exploratory approach around a central theme, story or idea. This led to a burst of creativity in 2016 with three more albums: Welcome to the AI, Maya’s Magic Pill and Bill’s 108th Space Odyssey (review here), as drummer/guitarist Rui Inácio, guitarist/noisemaker Luís Abrantes and bassist/flutist Tiago Machado delved into the tale of early US governmental lysergic experiments.

Trippy adventures followed, and the band’s new record, Death, Destruction and Magic — pressed to vinyl through Germany’s Adansonia Records — would seem to keep up the theme. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is comprised of three tracks — titled “Death,” “Destruction” and “Magic” — with a digital bonus cut in “AND (A Song for Rosa),” and like much of the band’s work, it is centered around the conversation happening between the instruments. There is no shortage of drift in “Magic” and “Destruction” has low end worthy of its name, while “Death” seems to howl more in celebration than mourning, but what unites the three distinct pieces is an overarching naturalism that makes all the material as real as it is ethereal.

One aspect of their sound The Crazy Left Experience bring to bear in especially vivid fashion is minimalism. They’d hardly be the first outfit with ebbs and flows in heavy psych jams, but in the second half of “Death” and in the ultra-subdued stretch of “Magic,” where watery effects-laden guitar ascends and descends over steady drum patterning, the space purposefully left open is crucial as well as the space being filled with sound. They come together and in kind with the fluid movement between more and less active parts, help form the dynamic with which The Crazy Left Experience execute their material. The album was, true to form, recorded live, and while there may be parts of it that are inherently off-the-cuff, caught-on-tape-type of happenings, there does seem to be an overarching plot.

Even in the meandering spaciousness of “AND (A Song for Rosa),” one finds a plot being followed or at least some sense of linear direction, rather than a jam simply unfolding as it will. That’s not to say that song or any of the other three before it — which run eight, 15 and nine minutes, respectively, for a total of 32; utterly manageable — sound forced. Far from it. Just that at the very least, someone among Inácio, Abrantes and Machado came into the recording process with some idea of where they wanted the songs to go. That’s more the case here than it was their last time out, but whether it’s indicative of some larger shift in approach and as to the consciousness of that, I wouldn’t speculate. Organic as it is, their sound only benefits from the sense of purpose it’s give here.

For some in the style, their mission is to present the very heart of the creative process — to capture the moment when the spark of songcraft begins. That singular “aha!” moment when it all clicks together. It’s a difficult thing to do and an admirable goal, but it doesn’t seem to be what The Crazy Left Experience are about. Their output on Death, Destruction and Magic is thrilling in the mellow vibe that persists even in “Destruction”‘s actively grooving midsection thanks to the brightness of its tonality and the patience of its execution, and it’s more about telling its story than getting lost in its own making.

the crazy left experience

That is, The Crazy Left Experience use the foundation they have in exploratory psych in order to convey a message or idea in their material. They direct the evocation their songs are making, even just with one-word titles. What does “Death” say about death? How does “magic” feel like magic, and what does magic feel like? As “Destruction” passes its 10th minute, it delves into a melodic drone that builds in the guitar but ultimately holds sway as the drums never return. Are we in the midst of an aftermath there? Was it war? You get the idea. The point is that Death, Destruction and Magic allows its audience to fill in the answers as they will, and to make their own judgment about what they think the band is telling them.

This level of atmospheric engagement is rare, and the guide the band grant on their Bandcamp page for it reads like something out of Dungeons and Dragons:

You’ve just escaped from the lava tunnel.
A pack of razor-clawed creatures are trying
to get you before the lizard men do.
These are moves you’ve never seen before.
A fire-breathing dragon carries you toward the castle.

The choice is simple…

Maybe that’s the thing — it’s all a game. If so, that does nothing to invalidate the expression happening in these passages, nor the obvious heart poured into their making. The Crazy Left Experience have their share of nebulous elements at play, whether it’s the rolling end section of “Magic” or the airy fuzz tone in “Death,” but what brings the band together is still the solid underlying connection they have between each other while playing. The live performance. It’s the reason they’re able to tell the stories they’re telling with their sound, and the reason they see so continually to be able and willing to push themselves forward.

Death, Destruction and Magic isn’t shy in tackling “big ideas,” but the language it uses seems built exclusively for that purpose, and the outward trajectory of the record as a whole should resonate with any and all of mind open enough to let it. They’ve worked quickly to get to their seventh full-length, but The Crazy Left Experience come across like veterans just the same when it comes to the chemistry and confidence with which they ply their liquefied wares.

The Crazy Left Experience, Death, Destruction and Magic

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