This Saturday, Sussex, UK, weirdos Codex Serafini bring their otherworldly oddity mélange to Lewes Psych Fest alongside The Lucid Dream and Melt Plastic Group, among others. The far-far-gone troupe issued their four-song Invisible Landscape EP (review here) in 2021, and if sugar rots your teeth then I’m pretty sure Codex Serafini melt your brains. The band, originally from Saturn, dig themselves a temple in the alien dirt of Earth on “Organismic Thought” and the partially-mellowed-out-but-still-volatile “Crawling Space,” imbuing kosmiche vibes with existential threat and an experimentalism that comes across like it’s working from a plan, you just don’t speak the language the plan was written in. Because, chances are, you’re not from Saturn.

They say that if you put Saturn in a giant bucket of water, it would float. Well, “Mendoza’s Memory” does a bit of that as well, but its ritual grows more winding and chaotically percussed in short order. It’s hard to know where one instrument ends and another begins — no question that’s intentional — and though I could fill your head with pitter-patter drip-dropout gobbledygook about the exploration, the otherworldly ambience and the presence of mind if not personhood within it, and I might even have fun doing so, it’s really the band’s job. As “Mendoza’s Memory” spins in 10 precise circles and hands itself off to “Time, Change and Become,” all rumblefuzz and shouts, a final cacophony built in paean to who knows what gods, the Invisible Landscape has never felt more of either. Or both. Or whatever.

You can fill your head and feast your eyes at the fest if you’re lucky enough to be in that part of the multiverse this weekend. For the rest of us, the clip right down there for “Mendoza’s Memory” is like a well-earned shiner around the eye of what you used to think songs could do.

Cha cha cha:

Codex Serafini, “Mendoza’s Memory” video premiere

Taken from Invisible Landscape (2021)
https://codexserafini.bandcamp.com/

Video produced by Tom Daniel Moon

Halmeltedbrain Records
https://halfmeltedbrainrecords.bandcamp.com/
Ceremonial Laptop
https://ceremoniallaptop.bandcamp.com/

Codex Serafini, Invisible Landscape (2021)

Codex Serafini on Facebook

Codex Serafini on Instagram

Codex Serafini on Bandcamp

Halfmeltedbrain Records on Facebook

Halfmeltedbrain Records on Bandcamp

Ceremonial Laptop on Facebook

Ceremonial Laptop on Bandcamp

Tags: Codex Serafini, Codex Serafini Invisible Landscape, Invisible Landscape, Sussex, UK

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 27th, 2022 at 7:58 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.