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Review & Full Album Premiere: Stone Machine Electric, The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld

stone machine electric the inexplicable vibrations of frequencies within the cosmic netherworld

[Click play above to stream Stone Machine Electric’s The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld in its entirety. Album is out Dec. 4 on Desert Records.]

Texas-based duo Stone Machine Electric are not by any means the first to put together a fusion of jazz and psychedelia, but they do it with a deceptive intricacy of purpose. Over the last decade-plus, guitarist/sometimes-vocalist William “Dub” Irvin and drummer/sometimes-noisemaker Mark Kitchens have explored the outer reaches of heavy rock and managed to capture a heavy psychedelic nuance that is both expansive and weighted. Perhaps most of all on the cumbersomely-named The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld, which is the three-song follow-up to 2019’s Darkness Dimensions Disillusion (review here), the underrated two-piece lean toward their make-heavy-things-float sensibility.

Positioned longest to shortest with the 20-minute “Journey on the Nile” leading off as the longest cut (immediate points), followed by “At Crystal Lake” (15:36) and “Free Thought” (9:07) rounding out, the band’s maybe-fourth full-length — it depends on what you count as an album vs. an EP, etc. — the album finds them working in three separate contexts and recording situations as they remain united in their atmospheric purpose.

The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld is instrumental in its entirety and arguably the “jammiest” work Stone Machine Electric have done since 2014’s Garage Tape (review here), which preceded 2015’s The Amazing Terror EP (review here), which begat 2016’s ah-ha moment of self-discovery, Sollicitus es Veritatem (review here), which begat the 2017 live album, Vivere (review here), etc., but it stands in line with impulses Dub and Kitchens have followed since their 2013 self-titled debut (review here) and the prior 2010 demo Awash in Feedback (review here) in terms of finding their place within the material itself and, even if they’re working with an overarching plan, doing so in an engaging and unpredictable way.

Effects play a larger role here than they sometimes do, but the spontaneity that feeds into the overall vibe of the record — the improvised-sounding nature of some of its stretches — is easily worth the minimal buy-in the band ask on the part of the listener. That is, they hypnotize, and whatever level of self-indulgence is inherent to an offering like this, it’s easy to follow where one is lead.

The destination, incidentally, is ethereal. Though “Journey on the Nile” enters a chugging progression at around 16:30 and from there rides a post-C.O.C. “Albatross” riff with duly respectful roll and nod, the bulk of the track brims with lysergic ambience to a degree that by the time they get there, they’ve set such a mood for the remainder of the offering that even the most straightforward of shifts feels like one is stepping on soft wax. Recorded in May 2019 with Josh Block at Niles City Sound in Fort Worth, “Journey on the Nile” also gives the first hint of how the titles play a role in telling the story of the album. There are no lyrics, and yet each track seems to capture something different in the overall sphere of Stone Machine Electric‘s sound.

“Journey on the Nile” references both the river itself and the studio in which the piece was put to tape, so what one takes away from that is that Dub and Kitchens are looking to show a process of cascading along with the underlying currents of the music itself. They do precisely that in the song, whether a given change is planned or not. Accordingly, “At Crystal Lake” nods at Crystal Clear Sound in Dallas, where it was helmed in July 2018 by Wo Fat guitarist/vocalist and regular Stone Machine Electric producer Kent Stump, and also references Camp Crystal Lake from the original Friday the 13th movie.

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It is especially poignant that Stump recorded “At Crystal Lake” (he also mastered the entire LP), since although Stone Machine Electric have worked under Wo Fat‘s influence throughout their tenure, it’s arguable that’s never been less the case than with the initial unfolding of the 15-minute track itself, the title of which would also seem to lean toward the cinematic atmosphere of the keys at its outset. Once again, a heavier guitar emerges as Kitchens and Dub move through the runtime, but they never lose that underlying line of melodic, almost whistling drone, and the effect is to make “At Crystal Lake” not only its own statement, but also a push farther-out than “Journey on the Nile” on stylistic terms, adding to the flow of the The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld on the whole.

What, then, about “Free Thought?” The last and briefest of the album’s inclusions was recorded in Feb. 2020 at Lafayette, Louisiana’s Freetown Boom Boom Room, which is a statement all on its own when it comes to the preservation of live music in a post-COVID world. But “Free Thought” refers both to the name of the locale and the spirit of the track itself, which is open in terms of structure and not quite as avant garde as one thinks of free-jazz as being, but decidedly unhindered in its readiness to go where it wants.

It goes toward a more driving push in a linear build and then spends its last few minutes in an at-first-mellow freakout — cymbal wash and guitar noise leading to a solo, a wild tempo pickup, then finally a chugging comedown, which Dub and Kitchens manifest with the kind of chemistry that only stems from artists able to have a genuine musical conversation. And that turns out to be what unites these three songs recorded over a span of three separate years in three separate settings: the conversation. It too is called out by the band, as one suspects that’s what The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies… is about, while …Within the Cosmic Netherworld is the molten soundscapes that each song manages to create in its own way.

It’s not surprising that Stone Machine Electric would be conscious of what they’re doing in terms of putting an album together, but the multifaceted nature of their intention is emblematic of what makes them so undervalued as artists. They jam, sure, and they do it well. But though its title is long enough to be over-the-top, The Inexplicable Vibrations of Frequencies Within the Cosmic Netherworld offers interpretive depth for those willing to dig into it as well as spacey nodders for those looking for a bit of zone-out mental escape.

Dub and Kitchens are able to serve varied purposes while staying united in their own mission, continuously avoiding predictability and forging a progressive creative identity through tone and rhythm alike. Tuning into their ‘frequencies’ can only highlight the strengths so readily on display here.

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