Confirmed: hemp and goats. There were plenty of both the day a crew of no fewer than 12 players in the sphere of Psychedelic Source Records — something like a collective, but looser, more casual — jammed in a field at the bottom of a small hill. Hemp behind and goats running around on the hillside further back. As I understand it, there was also a very large pig, but I didn’t get to see it. Can’t have everything, and it was already a full day of players switching in and out, trading instruments, stopping for a drink and then picking back up when somebody decided it was time — sometimes that was Bence Ambrus, who organized the get-together-and-jam I was fortunate enough to be hanging around for in Páty, Hungary, last month, sometimes it was someone else — to start playing again.

Released now as the 12-track/two-hour-and-19-minute Recorded at the Goatfarm, the day would seem to have been a success. Obviously unnamed while they were being made up on the spot, songs have been given titles like “Goats on the Horizon” (12:35), “Sungarden” (6:29) and “Heavy Hemping” (7:10) — also “Mercat Encants” (19:52), “Slagamite” (9:56) and “Voids” (10:37), so not everything is strictly farm-relevant — and carved out of the live-captured, improvised pieces played in the grass under the summer sun with the breeze blowing around during the early August afternoon.

I won’t pretend to be impartial about it. It was incredible and humbling to be there while it happened, and hearing Márton Havlik‘s flute amid the languid heavy drift on “Wopila” (10:18), Krisztina Benus‘ vocals and synth on “Goat No. 8” (12:46) and the jazzy drumming — the day boasted three drummers in Máté Varga, Sándor Nagy and Krisztián Megyeri — behind the flowing lead guitar of “Blues From the Field to Mass Customers” (8:35), it’s hard to think of the endeavor as anything other than a success. The fact that Psychedelic Source — and you’ll note on the cover here the ‘Records‘ is dropped — got more than a 2LP’s worth of material from it and have already hosted a similar happening-style jam less than four weeks after the fact would seem to hint toward agreement.

Whether it’s the walking bassline of “Sungarden” (6:29) or the extended cosmic build and float of “You and Me and the Goat Makes Three” (17:00), and no matter who’s playing where — on bass throughout: Ambrus, Barna Bartos, Dávid Strausz, Gergely Szabó, Róbert Kránitz; on guitar: Ákos Karancz, Dávid Nagy, Balázs Tavaszy, also Ambrus — the sound of the recording is alive and organic, exploratory as “You and Me and the Goat Makes Three” reaches into its last two minutes of standalone drone guitar meditation and in the banjo-style saunter of “Hamaku,” with what might be Havlik on zither in the mix alongside the lighter-strummed guitar, and duly broad for having been cast into the open air. Given its near-20-minute reach, it’s not necessarily any great surprise “Mercat Encants” is especially encompassing, but it gets there through likewise expansive and patient flow, a resonant echo of effects tying together movements through and down the other side of its builds. Was that Karancz on guitar? Could be, but from the wash at its most fervent circa 11 minutes in through the will-to-meander course taken from there on, the entrancing aspects of what Psychedelic Source Records does remain at the fore for the duration.

It’s hard to know where my always-spotty memory ends and the actual listening experience of Recorded at the Goatfarm begins, but there is some very fortunate overlap between the two as the extended release plays out. To wit, the wah-drenched pastoralism of “Voids” and the openness in terms of style. Under the vast blue sky depicted on the cover from over to the side of where the jams were happening, seen through tall grasses creating an easily surmountable barrier between where the van was and where instruments were being played — it was an easy walkaround if you didn’t feel like going in the grass — the sounds didn’t have the same kind of immersion as they do on headphones in the after-the-fact, but they complemented the sunshine and warm air gorgeously, and they still do when put in that context.

Varying in length, personnel and intent, each jam finds its own way. “Voids” noodles out like slow-motion Earthless as it heads to its shimmering-tone midpoint where flute-inclusive closer “The Last Goat Was Capricorn” feels more expansive with a current of effects or synth running beneath the main guitar ramble and set atop a vital percussive pulse. In spirit and execution, the material is meditative, and depending on who’s doing what where, it can get pretty far-out if you want to start mixing metaphors between the terrestrial setting and the ever-expanding cosmos just on the other side of the blue sky noted above, but if the music takes you someplace other than where it was made, I think that’s valid. As much as Havlik‘s flute and Benus‘ voice might provide an intermittent folkish tie, there’s plenty on Recorded at the Goatfarm that comes across as otherworldly and ethereal, including those elements.

Ultimately, Recorded at the Goatfarm fits in with the mellow sprawl of many Psychedelic Source Records releases. Less pointed than some of what the likes of Pilot Voyager or River Flows Reverse put together in terms of songwriting, but harnessing something of the primordial energy that lies beneath that craft. As with the best of improv-based heavy psychedelia, there’s appeal in concept and audio alike — that is, you’re not sacrificing listenability to either experimentalist concepts, and there’s no one indulgence taking away from the impression of the whole. Aspects stand out, be it a guitar or bassline, a drum progression, flute, voice, synth or whathaveyou, but the entirety is bolstered by all participation in the process including — one likes to think — that of the after-the-fact listener.

I guess what I’m trying to say is Recorded at the Goatfarm represents something special about Psychedelic Source in a way that much of what comes out through their Bandcamp also does, and that however special it might have been to be there while these sounds were being made, there’s more on offer here sound-wise than my own sentimentality. I may not be there to witness it, but I hope the next goatfarm session produces such vibrant results.

Psychedelic Source Records, Recorded at the Goatfarm (2024)

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

Psychedelic Source Records on Spotify

Tags: Hungary, Páty, Psychedelic Source Records, Psychedelic Source Records Recorded at the Goatfarm, Recorded at the Goatfarm

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 4th, 2024 at 6:45 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.