Friday Full-Length: The Machine & Sungrazer Split LP
What a moment this was for these bands. Consider that in 2013 when this split full-length (review here) was released, Netherlands-based heavy psych rockers The Machine and Sungrazer were both signed to Elektrohasch Schallplatten, and were the spearheads of what seemed to be the next generation of European heavy rock, both working off influences from weighted fuzz and trippy jams while offering a personality of their own in that. Neither sounded precisely like the other, despite shared elements and basic construction — both were guitar-led three-pieces with an affinity for tonal warmth and mellow-psych exploration — but they were both young, exciting bands who took the work of those who came before them like their label head in Colour Haze and pushed it to places it hadn’t yet been.
By 2013, Sungrazer‘s 2010 self-titled (review here) and 2011’s Mirador (review here) — the only two albums they’d ever make — had established them as a significant presence in the European heavy underground. Supported on club tours and throughout the then-emergent Euro heavyfest scene, the band’s melodic approach, penchant for drift, and sheer tonal depth made them a standout. The Machine were the longer-standing band, having debuted in 2007 with Shadow of the Machine and issued Solar Corona (discussed here) through Nasoni Records in 2009, been picked up by Elektrohasch for 2011’s Drie (review here) and 2012’s Calmer Than You Are (review here). The worlds of each of these trios seemed to draw them together — they toured in 2013 around this release as well — and though then-Sungrazer bassist Sander Haagmans (also The Whims of the Great Magnet) would eventually join The Machine for a brief period, this split was nonetheless the payoff for the toward-each-other momentum they had to that point built.
The Machine — led by guitarist David Eering, with Hans Van Heemst on bass and drummer Davy Boogaard — would take side A and earn it almost immediately. If “Awe” wasn’t named after the effect produced by its central riff, then it should’ve been. Pure worship. They knew it, you certainly still feel it while listening, and they ride that groove from the moment the “the eagle has landed” sample ends well past the 10-minute mark in a glorious celebration of rhythm, vibe and repetition. If this release had nothing else in its favor, you would nine years later listen to the entire thing and call it stunning for that lone riff, and they give it its due space as part of a three-song showcase of who The Machine were at
that point and who they were en route to becoming, with the subsequent hooky “Not Only” cutting to (less than) a quarter of the runtime a two and a half minutes of punkish burst.
Careening in a way that was prescient of where they’d head on 2015’s Offblast! (review here) and 2018’s Faceshift (review here) — the latter issued through the band’s own imprint uncoincidentally called Awe Records — “Not Only” perfectly cleaned the slate before the also-north-of-10-minutes “Slipface” took over with its early fuzz twist and going-and-not-coming-back jam later, a final two minutes of residual drone and drift, organ or effects hum and swirl wrapping up because what is their possibly left to say? They took about 23 minutes to showcase who they are, where they’d already been on their first four records, and where they were headed on the ones to come. One doesn’t like to throw around words like ‘perfect,’ but certainly their efficiency and the sureness with which they executed these three songs is to be lauded, all the more in hindsight.
If The Machine presented a challenge in not delving into hyperbole, certainly that’s another shared aspect with Sungrazer. This would be the swansong for the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Rutger Smeets, drummer Hans Mulders and the aforementioned Haagmans on bass, as they broke up at the end of 2013, thereby denying their audience a third full-length and leaving a hole that even now feels unfilled. Their ability to take massive fuzz and roll it out with a touch that could feel both heavy and delicate was something that no one else had yet brought to heavy psych, different from just melody, jazzy in a way but more open than pretentious. They began their stretch with “Dopo,” meeting the nod of The Machine‘s “Awe” head-on with a landmark riff of their own while saving a crescendo melody for the song’s second half.
Sungrazer‘s three inclusions, “Dopo,” “Yo La Tengo” and “Flow Through a Good Story,” all sat comfortably around seven or eight minutes, and demonstrated precisely how welcoming their craft was at its best while “Yo La Tengo” offered hints of their maybe pushing the balance more into the psychedelic and “Flow Through a Good Story” took what would’ve been a hodgepodge in less capable hands and turned it into what the title promised: a sonic narrative of their growth and being able to run fluidity across bumpy shifts and rougher feeling terrain. They were a band who could’ve gone anywhere after this and simply didn’t.
Nine years after the fact — not an eternity but certainly long enough for a revisit — and amid so much vibrant creativity from both these bands, that remains sad. Smeets and Mulders joined the more folkish Cigale and would release a self-titled (review here) in 2015 before the former passed away that October. That tragic ending to one of heavy psychedelia’s brightest lights.
That’s it. That may be half a sentence but that’s the sentence. That’s exactly how it felt when Smeets died. Like a story left unfinished. So there. Cigale never did a second record, no Sungrazer reunion, which would’ve been otherwise inevitable. Done.
In that context, this split, yes, has a surrounding bittersweet aura. I’d encourage you to listen to it in the spirit not just of what could’ve been but also what might still be. The Machine have a new album in the works, and I’m not going to say too much about it, but those who found themselves engaged by this era should perk ears to what they’re up to these days. And Haagmans and Mulders both remain active to some degree, but this split represents exactly what I said at the outset: a moment in time for both of these acts. Along the myriad paths heavy psychedelia has taken in the ensuing years, including among these players, this was when theirs came together at just the right time, right place, right sound. However long or short, in music or out, not every life is gifted such a moment.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thank you for reading.
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Up and down week, but busy. Head-spinning, still recovering from Psycho Las Vegas last weekend and a tumultuous return trip that had me home at 3:30 in the morning on Monday/Tuesday. Not the best way to start out, and I basically lost all of Tuesday working as a result. That sucked; I don’t have another way of saying it. Frustrating end to a trip that I still feel like I’m processing on a few different levels: emotional, physical, ethical, and so on.
The Pecan starts school week after next. The Patient Mrs. started her new semester yesterday, which he’s old enough now to know means she won’t be around. He and I are pretty tight. We have a solid relationship, and markedly more so now that he’s potty trained. But as with pretty much everything else about my relationship with my wife, I am the second. She is the star of the show, and legitimately so. He fucking loves her. And I get it. It’s not like I’m out here arguing against. I have spent the last 25 years rightly worshiping the ground she walks on, so yeah. I understand. She’s incredible. But that does make it harder when all of a sudden she’s not upstairs on her laptop anymore, she’s out teaching class. Next week will be difficult.
He was bummed yesterday when she left, but we got down to work cleaning the house, played the arcade for a while, ran errands, talked a lot about music and construction vehicles and space and generally had a good time. He’ll fight you, though. He’ll push, and push, and push. If there’s a line, he’s crossing it. He’s not yet five. Every day he says, “I hate being told what to do.” Fucking hell, kid, who doesn’t? Welcome to existence. Sorry about that.
He has openly admitted (which is saying something as regards him and emotions generally; they are mostly denied verbally and expressed via physicality) to being nervous about starting school again. I feel for him. And if he can’t find a balance between knowing when to break rules and climb fences and when to sit down, shut up, do your work and then screw off and do whatever you want, he’s going to have a much, much harder time. Maybe “first this, then that” is the frame. I don’t know. I’ll try it. Thanks for talking it out with me. Starfleet method. Brainstorm AF.
It’s 5:50 and he just opened his door to come downstairs, so I’m out. Have a great and safe weekend. Thanks for reading. Hydrate, enjoy your waning summer if it’s summer where you are, watch your head, all that. Good stuff next week.
Here we go.
FRM.
Tags: Elektrohasch Schallplatten, Maastricht, Sungrazer, The Machine, The Machine Sungrazer Split, The Netherlands
Love this record. Was my introduction to both these bands