Review & EP Premiere: Lammping, Stars We Lost
Toronto freewheeling fuzz purveyors Lammping release their new EP, Stars We Lost, on March 4 through We Are Busy Bodies. And look, I know full well that my say-so holds about as much sway as two or three cotton balls against the barrage of noise in universes both digital and actual, but I’ll tell you again these guys are onto something special. With the songwriting of Mikhail Galkin as their foundational element, backed by the solid push of Jay Anderson‘s drums, they’ve nestled their way into an aesthetic that’s nostalgic in purpose and takes a forward thinking route to get there. Consider Stars We Lost, the title. It’s of the moment — loss is everywhere, all the time, in plague and war and famine and life — but it calls out to the ridiculous notion of popular culture pedestal-making too. “Stars.” They got it from the tabloids. It’s grocery-store pulp. Laughing at the notion of its own triviality on the cosmic scale it implies. Fucking genius.
I’ve been out here for a couple years now talking up their shit — I’ll spare you other links, but last year’s Flashjacks (review here) was rad rad rad and also pretty rad — and Stars We Lost is another sub-20-minute reminder why. “Everlasting Moor,” “Never Phoenix,” “Home of Shadows,” “’21 Interlude” and “Beyond the Veil” bring hooks and remember-good-times vibes from the outset, but there’s so much more happening underneath. In the quote below, Galkin talks about sound-collage as an aspiration, and you can absolutely hear that taking shape in “Never Phoenix,” with the ’90s hip-hop bounce to its rhythm and starbursts of melody, and “’21 Interlude,” which is executed with maybe-purposeful irony in a manner retro enough to have been a lost backing track for Beastie Boys. Meanwhile, in the hall of justice, “Everlasting Moor” runs a thread of fuzz out in its first verse that never seems to disappear, and that’s only to the EP’s great strength, as even the acoustic-led “Home of Shadows” finds space for space through its electric-wah flourish and smooth vocal melody.
The sunny fuzz indie of “Beyond the Veil” wraps some version or other, but the master I got has another track too, in “Golem of Garbage Hill” that’s no less wonderfully catchy than “Everlasting Moor” or “Never Phoenix” or whichever track you want to set it against, even if the mood is a little more severe in the chorus. If it’s not actually on the physical version of Stars We Lost, I’m hoping it gets released as a standalone 7″ with a B-side that sounds completely different but is no less awesome. Lammping make such things sound easily crafted, organic, and righteously humble. I don’t know what the sample is at the end of “Beyond the Veil,” but it clearly means something to someone, probably Galkin, as it’s too purposefully placed to just be random. At this point, I’m willing to trust these guys don’t do anything without good reason, even if occasionally that good reason is just screwing around.
Let me bottom-line Lammping for you: I’ve never been cool. Not one day in my life. When I listen to Lammping, I feel cool. Like I’m in on all the jokes. Like sometimes things are rough but you can just roll over all that and it doesn’t matter anyway because if you’ve got a good song in your head, that’s enough. Bonus points to “Everlasting Moor” for being both an immigrant story and for the Beatles reference in the second half.
If you want the critical appraisal, you can absolutely hear Lammping pushing their sound forward on Stars We Lost, and more important, they know they’re doing it and it still doesn’t sound forced. I would expect and hope that whatever full-length might follow — and it’s worth noting that these songs might indeed show up on a next LP; that’s what happened last time — to continue along this path, because what’s ultimately happening is that, with Galkin‘s craft as the base they’re working from and the experimentalism laid overtop, they’re finding their style in an honest swath of influences. This is life, or some vision of it, and if you can’t get down, it’s your loss. Me, I’m on board with wherever they go next. I’ll probably be begging to stream it just like I was with this. Like I said, never been cool.
But we can pretend:
Mikhail Galkin on Stars We Lost:
Everlasting Moor begins with “See a man, he’s popping and locking in a parkette gazebo”. I saw a dude in an afternoon doing just that, at a small parkette close to my house, where I bring my daughter to play. He brought a boombox and was just breakdancing by himself in this little gazebo, with no one around. For whatever reason, that sparked a stream of consciousness song that was about finding our place in the world, and if unable to, creating a world in your mind you feel at home in. I’ve always wanted to write a song about my own immigrant experience, and after the first line, the words just spilled out.
Our first records were more traditional Psych/Stoner Rock albums, propelled by guitar riffs and solos, but we ultimately always wanted to reach beyond that. We love Sleep and Sabbath and King Gizzard but we also love De La Soul and Madlib, for example. The approach for this record was much closer to 3 feet High and Rising (De La), where we look at all the ideas and sounds we have in our minds almost as samples. Once you approach the recording process in that way, where you’re almost building a sound collage around a song you wrote with just a guitar, the world opens up musically. The end result is still under the psych umbrella, but we hope it translates to something that transcends cliché and categorization.
Jay came up with the idea for the record cover. When people ask us to describe our sound, its kind of difficult to nail down, so an artistic representation speaks louder sometimes. Jay was like “imagine a surfer dude wearing a black hoodie under his outfit – that’s our sound!” It made sense to me right away. The melodic and heavy and pretty and rugged all in one pot. So we played off the early Beach Boys imagery and came up with that. Jay’s pal Kagan McLeod, who does illustration for like GQ and Wall Street Journal and Newsweek was nice enough to help us out and bring our vision to life.
The name “Stars We Lost” comes from the classic tabloid headlines of when celebrities pass. I thought it sounded like a good album title and thematically reflected some of the record and Jay was down.
The foundation of Lammping’s sound is rooted in Jay Anderson’s heavy drumming and Mikhail Galkin’s melodic riffs, but with the addition of samples, drum machines, and a variety of instrumentation, the band’s sonic palate is just as indebted to Stereolab, De La Soul and Kraftwerk as it is to Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and Sleep.
Stars We Lost, is a new EP from the band is due to come out on vinyl and digitally on March 4 2022 via We Are Busy Bodies.
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