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Friday Full-Length: Samsara Blues Experiment, Demo

One has to assume Samsara Blues Experiment were eager for adventure when they toured the West Coast on the strength of nothing more than their initial 2009 demo (review here). The Berlin-based outfit were a trio at the time — they’d move to a four-piece, then back to three — and I’m not discounting the value of the demo at all. Its two songs would both become essential pieces om in the band’s catalog and highlights when they reappeared on the 2010 debut album, Long-Distance Trip (review here). But it was a demo, just the same. And a first one at that. It’s not a lot of bands that will tour internationally for that kind of release, let alone cross an ocean. Samsara Blues Experiment have yet to return to North America.

That was 11 years ago and in that time the landscape of the heavy underground has radically changed. Social media, the availability of cheap, intuitive digital distribution, and a force of word of mouth that doesn’t actually require a mouth have not supplanted traditional promotion — I still get press releases down the PR wire, including for Samsara Blues Experiment when they have news — but have added to the scope of a given band’s reach, and as they’ve released through guitarist/vocalist Christian PetersElectric Magic Records imprint, that’s been something of an advantage, though naturally there are drawbacks as well. That they’d be at the vanguard if a new generation and wave of heavy psychedelia from across Europe wasn’t readily foreseeable in 2009 — at least not to me — but in listening to “Singata (Mystic Queen)” (8:32) and “Double Freedom” (13:04), I was just stoked it sounded like Colour Haze.

Did it though? Sort of. I hear it less now than I did at the time, and perhaps less on the semi versions of these songs than the ones that came on the subsequent album, which had a warmer sound, but it still seems like that influence is there. What comes out more in hindsight though is how much of Samsara Blues Experiment‘s own personality was worked into this material. In some ways, these tracks helped set the expectation for who the band — Peters, Richard Behrens (later of Heat) on bass and Thomas Vedder on drums — would become. The use of sitar became a defining element, and the surges of fuzz tone and echoing proclamations of “Double Freedom” are at the core of much I’d what Samsara Blues Experiment did samsara blues experiment demoon releases after this one. Though only 21 minutes long, give or take, it was easy to be excited about the demo, both because the jams were fluid and hypnotic and they helped distinguish the band from much of the burlier heavy rock that surrounded in Europe. They weren’t the first heavy psych band after the likes of the aforementioned Colour Haze, or, say, Causa Sui in Denmark, but they represented the generational shift to come and the energy they brought to the songs was no less palpable than the chemistry between the players, which comes through undulled on the live-feeling recording of these tracks.

Both “Singata (Mystic Queen)” and “Double Freedom” lengthened in their final album versions, the latter to a whopping 22 minutes of righteous psychedelic jamming, setting a precedent of longform work that Samsara Blues Experiment have continued to one degree or other ever since, without ever to-this-point crossing the 20-minute line again. Even in the shorter version, though, the jam is pivotal, and that became one of the distinguishing factors particularly in the band’s work, just how much it seemed to emerge from that organic foundation of the jam between players. With layers of effects and keys and guitar swirling over Behrens‘ solid rolling bassline — the first incarnation of the track sounds like it could go forever, the second does — and Vedder‘s backbeat holding it all together, the sense of flourish and patience in the execution of the song undermines the concept of it as a demo. It’s been 11 years. You know what I’d say if it came in today? “Huh. This sounds like Samsara Blues Experiment.”

Long-Distance Trip helped establish band on the Euro circuit and beyond, with a sprawling 66-minute run that washed through its fuzz with a clarity of purpose to match its outward direction — going, boldly — and was followed on a likewise quick turnaround by 2011’s Revelation and Mystery (review here), which basked in a more barebones production but still offered essential cuts like “Hangin’ on the Wire” and its surprisingly hard-landing 12-minute closing title-track. In late 2013, after touring, they’d answer back with Waiting for the Flood (review here), comprised of four extended cuts that brought back more of the psychedelic elements of the debut and still kept some of the second album’s relative immediacy, pulling together the most effective elements of both into a moment of realization for the band that continues to make for a standout listening experience.

It would be four years of lineup changes, touring, touring, and touring, as well as Peters exploring solo work under the moniker of Surya Kris Peters before Samsara Blues Experiment came back around with 2017’s One with the Universe (review here), which was ambitious in its title and blatant in its refusal to be contained by what had been established as the stylistic boundaries of jam-based heavy psychedelia, cuts like “Sad Guru Returns” finding a niche in crunchy rhythmic turns even as the subsequent, organ-and-sitar-laced “Glorious Daze” tapped ’70s jams with a fervency not shown since the band’s earliest work some eight years earlier. The album was awesome and expansive in kind, marked by its 10-minute opener and 15-minute title-track and other triumphs along the way.

There was word a bit ago of Peters working on songs for a fifth Samsara Blues Experiment full-length, which would only be welcome upon its arrival, and in the meantime in the last 15 months has produced no fewer than four solo outings of various lengths, incorporating influences from electronic dance music and psychedelic synth while giving clues to his general mindset in song titles like, “Leaving Berlin, Always Easy,” “Berlin is Not Beautiful” and “A Nickel for Your Thoughts on Rock Music.” So it goes.

Whether and whenever the next Samsara Blues Experiment album surfaces, their discography remains a thing to celebrate, and the substantial kickoff they gave it with this demo shouldn’t be at all overlooked. I just wanted to revisit something special.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

Things kind of turned around late-Wednesday and yesterday, but by Tuesday night, I was about ready to die. Rough, rough, rough couple days. No perspective, no broader sense, just head hanging, fucking inward brutality. The tone was set last weekend, honestly. The Patient Mrs. and I spent the bulk of Saturday and Sunday getting on each other’s nerves, and this may surprise you to learn, but a screaming, newly-biting-again toddler does nothing to help ease the general level of tension in a household. Also, we’re getting a dog? Ugh.

So anyway, by Tuesday I was a mess. I popped a whole xanax — I usually take a half — to render myself unconscious for a few hours just to make the day shorter. It helped, I have to say. And things have come around since. Sometimes you rally.

Next week The Pecan goes back to daycare/preschool/whatever we’re calling it. My understanding is they’ve constructed a pandemic-free biodome for the children to play and learn in, so that should be good.

Okay, I’m asking you this as a friend. Did you listen to the Polymoon track that was premiered this week? Here’s the link, click it. That album is way better than most debuts have any right to be. You shouldn’t miss out just because you haven’t already heard of the band.

Been watching the protests, the president’s open embrace of white supremacy, and so on, word of a new spike in COVID-19 cases. All that fun stuff. I try and keep my head down and work. I try and keep up with the kid. Both are hard these days.

New Gimme Radio show at 5PM Eastern. Their app is free. It’s what I use to listen, but streaming on their site is free too: http://gimmeradio.com

And if you didn’t see the playlist, that’s here.

It’s a little after 9:30AM now. I’m gonna take The Pecan out for a long walk and give The Patient Mrs. time to work. She’s had him since breakfast about two and a half hours ago, though we had an OT session in there that was an hour that we both sat in on. She’ll work until naptime (1:30PM sharp), then we’ll all reconvene at about 4 or 4:30PM when he wakes up. Weather’s good, so it should be a decent day. I’m sure that somewhere in there we’ll look at digger trucks again.

Tia Carrera review on Monday, bunch of premieres the rest of the week. This and that. Good fun. Please be safe and have a great weekend. Even if the bastards get you down, try not to let them keep you there.

FRM.

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