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Review & Full Album Premiere: Ecstatic Vision, Elusive Mojo

Ecstatic Vision Elusive Mojo

[Click play above to stream Elusive Mojo by Ecstatic Vision in full. It’s out Friday, May 13, on Heavy Psych Sounds.]

Not that fucking elusive, apparently.

Maybe you’ve ripped a hole in the spatial-temporal fabric and aren’t sure what to wear to the celebratory Timebreakers Ball later. Maybe you’ve just hit the green button on your quantum slipstream drive and discovered that artificial gravity glitched off and your body along with everything else nearby has been pushed to the back wall and crushed by a level of gravity that should be impossible in terms of physics into a puddle of so much space-traveling goo. Maybe an insectoid alien showed up on your doorstep and, when you opened the door thinking it was pizza, he said, “Take me to your boogie.” In these cases and many others, Ecstatic Vision have you covered.

The central ethic of Ecstatic Vision‘s fourth album, Elusive Mojo, is found on side A’s “Time’s Up” as guitarist/vocalist Doug Sabolik gruffly declares over Ricky Kulp‘s motorik shuffle, “Take it easy/Enjoy the ride/But you gotta go fast/There’s not enough time.” Take it easy but you gotta go fast. With seven songs and 35 minutes, the Philadelphia-based four-piece of SabolikKulp, guitarist/saxophonist/flutist Kevin Nickles and bassist Michael Field Connor do precisely that. This is Ecstatic Vision‘s second LP for Heavy Psych Sounds, following 2019’s triumphal For the Masses (review here) and the 2018 covers EP, Under the Influence (discussed here), as well as their Relapse-issued first two full-lengths, 2017’s Raw Rock Fury (review here) and 2015’s Sonic Praise (review here). And while it’s true that their mission has remained largely unchanged for the seven standard Earth years that have comprised their tenure, their hard-edged space-madness rock sounds all the more ready to fire up the big engines and leave this dimension behind with the live recording by returning engineer Joe Boldizar and Bob Pantella of Monster Magnet at the helm, with mastering by Tim Green.

In terms of timing, their restlessness is well met. Kulp joined the band in time for Under the Influence, but as this is the second record he’s played on with them, the effect he’s had on the band’s dynamic is all the more resonant. It is a fervent shove. Momentum begins in the first second of the minute-long takeoff “March of the Troglodytes,” amid Nickles‘ howling echo-sax, synthesizer swirl and turning, maybe-looped-but-hypnotic-either-way guitar and bass. And as they crash into the title-track like nothing so much as a city-sized asteroid shredding an atmosphere en route to a devastating collision, Kulp can be found on the toms and the kick, wailing away, always moving, the fuel burning behind the punch-in-face wah of Sabolik‘s guitar and his buried in mix vocal declarations. I’m not saying there aren’t moments of comedown — there is, after all, the penultimate inclusion here, aptly-titled “The Comedown” — just that even among Ecstatic Vision‘s four long-players to-date, Elusive Mojo feels geared toward the physical motion within the music itself.

ecstatic vision

Made for the stage, maybe, where Connor‘s bass most reveals itself as the secret component holding everything together while sax is traded for guitar is traded for sax throughout the set, as “Time’s Up” burns its hole in the sky, as centerpiece “The Kenzo Shake” lands its surprisingly hard-edged riffs amid a rhythm set to elicit whatever the hell dance they’re talking about, as, as, as “Venom” spits through each head-whirling measure and troglodyte treads on any number of sacred grounds, be it Stooges or Hawkwind or whoever, building, tense, rising and receding to allow “The Comedown” its fluidic transition, the four-piece shapeshifting albeit momentarily via the fading noise of “Venom” and daring a mellow moment of standalone guitar that reminds just how ready they stand to present the lessons inherited from Monster Magnet on how to rock faces, shake asses and blow minds. “The Comedown” is a bluesy cosmic trip, its first half stood out through a lead guitar still cutting in tone but not necessarily as frantic as some of the other solos. The full breadth is uncovered at 2:48 and soon enough Sabolik offers some rough-edged spoken parts, slurred like someone who’s not so much in any kind of altered state but just tired from all their recent non-lucidity. To say it fits would be understatement, whatever the hell is actually being said.

The next solo is the one that really bites down, and there’s some more echoing stretch, but they’re on the tail end of the surge and they drop it as quickly as it arrived, entranced by the steady progression beneath in a way that could jam out on it probably for at least another 20 minutes or so and see where it ends up, but doesn’t, instead “The Comedown” doing as its told by capping with an edge of regret. This turn is key (pun intended, screw off) as it brings about the scorching 3:55 closer “Deathwish 1970” and Elusive Mojo‘s landmark hook, wrapped around lines about being the devil and an all-go skullrattler of an instrumental push. Somewhere in there, it’s coherent, it’s controlled chaos, and it’s structured, but on the outside, it’s a plasma fire and the only way to put it out is open the airlock and vent the atmosphere, which is basically what Ecstatic Vision do as they careen and sax-blast through the last chorus and sudden, cold finish. Did you take devil’s hand? Would you remember if you did?

As compares to For the MassesElusive Mojo is both clearer in its intent and fuller in its execution. Apart from the into and the closer, the songs are more evened 0ut in terms of length on either side of six minutes, and each one finds a way to imprint itself on the audience such that, if it was a show, you’d come out of it afterward likewise dizzy and energized, excited and falling over. That may or may not be what Ecstatic Vision were shooting for, but their mojo has never been more present despite its apparently fugitive nature, and their execution of this material is kinetic and rife with the chemistry of undiscovered elements. There’s a lot of psych out there right now, but I’m hard pressed to think of another band who wield it with such righteous viciousness. Feel free to fuck around and find out.

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4 Responses to “Review & Full Album Premiere: Ecstatic Vision, Elusive Mojo

  1. SabbathJeff says:

    I can’t wait to hear these songs live! Hitting the release party at Kung Fu Necktie with Heavy Temple on the 26th later this month. I am by my genetics a curious creature; I positively must find out. Thus, sometimes, I’ve got to fuck around. That’ll be one of those nights. My neck will hurt an equivalent amount from bangin’ my head to my face from smiling. Stupid fun band, go see them live. And Heavy Temple, while we’re at it.

  2. […] Listen to new album »Elusive Mojo« in full via The Obelisk […]

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