I know it’s pronounced ‘Loose’ but somehow I just always think it’s more fun to call Dutch progressive heavy rockers 35007 by their numerical moniker. I say it, “Three-Five-Double-Oh-Seven” and it’s twice as enjoyable when I happen to be talking about their 1997 self-titled sophomore outing, which while representing very little of where the Eindhoven-based outfit’s progressive path would ultimately wind up being, nonetheless brazenly captured a truly special moment in their progression.

Change happens. Turn, turn, turn and all that. If, however, you were to listen to 35007 1994 debut, Especially for You, and their 2005 swansong, Phase V (discussed here), you’d be well excused for thinking it was the work of two different bands. That’s a cliche, to be sure, but it holds up in the case of 35007‘s 35007 (reissue review here), and doubly so because not only does progression take place with the album — as in, the band growing from one release to the next — but also within it. Starting out with relatively straightforward cuts like “Herd” and “Soul Machine” and “Short Sharp Left,” which of course had their progressive aspects deeply akin to the work of fellow Nederlanders Astrosoniq, 35007‘s self-titled — sometimes also called Into the Void We Travelled, and who could argue? — shifts with the space-chugging seven-minute “Undo” into a next stage of evolution, richly arranged and while not as psychedelic or as patient as they’d become on the subsequent Liquid LP in 2002 or Phase V after that, it was a big forward step in the weirdo quotient that would be telling of their overarching evolution even as they seemed to deconstruct it immediately by moving into the low-end driven “Big Bore,” though that song, while shorter and more intense, still turned to a section of samples before its come-unhinged second half, also marked by a multi-layer solo and an ultra-insistent, on-the-beat stoner groove. In other words, once it shows up, that weirdness shows up, it doesn’t completely go away.

Like many of their peers in the yes-this-shit-existed sphere of pre-social-media heavy, 35007 were considerably ahead of their time. Maybe a decade or so? In any case, the variety they brought to 35007, turning to the Zeppelin-under-the-sea acoustics of “Vein” after “Big Bore,” continues to speak to the adventurous spirit of their songcraft, which of course was a defining element in the arc of their tenure overall. 35007, taken front-to-back over its hour-long runtime, is a heady listen. It pivots from track to track and if one isn’t careful in hearing it, it’s almost too easy to get left behind in “Short Sharp Left” while the group — then comprised of vocalist Eeuwout Baart, guitarists Bertus Fridael and Mark Sponselee (the latter also synth), and drummer Jacco Van Rooy — moved through “Undo,” “Big Bore” and “Vein” toward the funky guitar-winding “66,” further distinguished by the bass beneath and the organ on top, the mix seeming to present itself in tiers via separation of instruments. It’s an effect strange enough that the only fair thing to call it is progressive, and again, had 35007 arrived in 2007 instead of 1997, I’d probably still say it was ahead of its time. Come to think of it, the more I listen, the less planet earth seems to be caught up to it now in general. It’s like slipstream rock.

The willfully kosmiche “Powertruth” and the patient foreshadow of “Locker 21″‘s 15-minute multi-stage unfolding would seem to be the answer to the question of into which particular void 35007 were travelling. A fun exercise in this age of digital listening? Stop “Locker 21” somewhere between 12 and 14 minutes in, go back and put on “Soul Machine.” It’s unreal how far the band brings their audience across the self-titled’s span, and while there are shared aspects of sonic progressivism between them, the album’s closer finds the band moving into a dimension of their own making, in which they’d continue to dwell during the rest of their time together. The raucous finish given in the “21” section of the track, for which the vocals rejoin the fray, caps with a wash of noise that might just be the blastoff, fading into the distance like a rocket moving beyond the range of human eyes as it heads out of the atmosphere. Rest assured, things only got stranger from there for 35007.

But again, what makes their self-titled so rare is how apparent — admittedly, in hindsight — the change in the band is throughout the album. They’d lose Baart on vocals and press forward as an instrumental unit, but even beyond that, the turns of sound they make in these nine cuts are nothing short of incredible when one considers that the album as a whole still ties together as much as they want it to. It would be five years before they’d move onto their next triumph with Liquid, but even Phase V can only really be considered the realization of what began on 35007 because it was the last record they made. Had they kept going, who knows what distances and vast reaches of sound the band might have covered in their next phase and beyond.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Cheers to Remco Zwakenberg on Thee Facebooks for the pick.

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Woke up with the alarm at 3:30AM. I’d been up four times before that. Once as a result of the baby crying, the rest just up. I haven’t been sleeping for a few weeks now. I crash out by 8:30 and am up again every 90 minutes or so. It’s been pretty brutal. This morning though, I could’ve gotten up at 2AM but decided to get back in bed and give myself the extra time even though I knew it would be limited. Yesterday I made the opposite decision. I can’t vouch for which way tomorrow will go.

I’m sore all over. My body is so bloated from retaining water that even my face is swollen. This eating disorder treatment. I don’t know. I don’t feel healthy. I don’t feel “better.” It hurts to walk or sit or lie down, I’ve gotten so huge in such a short amount of time that I’m embarrassed to look at myself in the mirror — seriously, I didn’t shower this morning so I wouldn’t have to see my own body [note: I eventually showered] — and I’m just fucking miserable. I got a couple very nice notes and comments last week, and thanks for those if you were someone who sent one. Hugely appreciated. I have a really hard time believing any of this is going to get better, though and that I’m not just damaging myself in some other, substantially less satisfying manner.

Don’t get me wrong — I’ve enjoyed making my own granola and grinding my own nut butters and roasting cauliflower and I’ve had a few dinners in the past month and a half that would absolutely knock your socks off — but has it been worth it? Hell no. My nutritionist keeps talking about all this extra energy I must have now. Yeah, fucking super. Extra energy so I can not sleep. Extra energy to feel like shit with. And you want to make the case that eating is healthier than not eating? Well, no shit. But let me ask you this: if I have three well balanced meals a day and well-timed snacks in between designed in food-as-fuel manner to keep me going throughout my day rather than deny myself that and subsist on protein shakes and coffee, do I get to live forever? Can I be 102 like my grandmother was and have no idea who any of my relatives are and accuse my child of robbing me and my home health-aid worker of beating me and try to escape my own house every chance I get because I’ve got dementia and I’m confused and I think I’m being kept prisoner? Can I fling open the windows and yell “help! help!” until someone calls the cops? Is that the long satisfying life that refeeding is going to get me? Can I grow through middle age and ruin my son’s perspective on the world around him with my cynical, depressive bullshit? Can I make it so my wife feels like she has to walk on eggshells around me because she doesn’t know what’s going to set me off on a spiral of self-loathing? Can I continue to burden my family financially and emotionally? Can I continue to disappoint myself in terms of my own work writing, both in quantity and quality? Can I continue to have hundreds of creative ideas and no means, time, money or strength of will or character to bring them to fruition? Can I live just long enough to get some fucking cancer that should’ve been cured 50 fucking years ago and have that kill me? Are these the kinds of things I’m buying myself with this process? More of this? Because I’ll be honest with you: you can fucking keep all of it. I’d rather do the universe around me the favor of dying skinny than keep going through this, my failure on every level wafting from me like an aura — the very core of my being.

I’ve been fat my whole life. Fat. Not big. Not large. Fat. My whole life. Dangerously fat. The Russian endocrinologist I went to couple years back entered it into his computer as “morbidely obese” and got mad when I corrected his spelling. But that’s what I’ve been. Dangerously fat. Risk of heart attack, all kinds of cancers, diabetes — all that shit fat people get. Why can’t I live on the other end of it? Why? Why can’t I be dangerously skinny instead? I’m dehydrated? My kidney function is all screwed up? I’m at risk of “sudden death?” Well so is everybody all the time. And you know what? I’d rather be fucking dead than going the way I’m going now. I was tired and cold? So fucking what? I put on a hoodie and some warm socks and went to bed early. I slept better before. I felt better before. At least I had some fucking control. Now I eat a half-cup of almonds and I feel like I’m going to lose it. This is what I’m keeping myself alive for? More of this? More of my legs being so swollen I’ve got cankles? More doctors? More meds? More driving all over the fucking place to be told that what I’ve done to my body was wrong like I didn’t fucking deserve every second of deterioration I got? Crock of shit. Keep it. What a waste of my fucking time.

I’m in New Jersey next week from Sunday through Thursday. Going home for a few days. I’m anxious about it. I don’t want to be seen. Not by friends, family, anybody really. I feel like I could send The Patient Mrs. and the baby and everyone would get what they wanted out of the trip anyway and I could just stay home and curl up on the couch by myself and not talk to people. Not have to explain anything. Not ruin anyone’s day by just being there.

Fuck it.

Here’s the schedule for posts:

Mon.: Freedom Hawk track premiere; Eldhamn video premiere; shit ton of news.
Tue.: The Golden Grass track premiere; Argus video; another shit ton of news.
Wed.: Rongeur track premiere; MaidaVale video.
Thu.: Black Royal track premiere; Dollar Llama video.
Fri.: Hashteroid track premiere; Six Dumb Questions with Akula.

There. Let me just say I’m not fishing for comments or support or anything like that with the above. I’m not. This is my outlet. It’s all I’ve got. If I’m going to say this anywhere, this is where I need to say it and it’s the only space I have in my life where I can do that. If you think it’s bullshit, I sincerely apologize. Trust me, I thought long and hard about this before I clicked “publish.” But this is where I’m at right now and frankly it’s more important to me to express myself honestly and be true to my own headspace than it is for me to be like, “Haha riffs bro!” and pretend everything’s cool on all fronts while my skull feels like it’s going to collapse on itself. I’m doing the fucking best I can to hold it together. This is part of that. If you can’t get on board, or you don’t give a fuck, or you think it’s whiny bullshit, then congratulations on your well-adjusted disposition. I hope it continues to serve you throughout your long, deeply satisfying life. And yes, I mean that sincerely.

Alright. I gotta go empty the dishwasher. Please have a great and safe weekend. And please check out the forum and the radio stream. They both need love.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

During their time together, it was said that Netherlands-based progressive heavy rockers 35007 were “a state of mind.” That’s fair. A lot of bands have slogans. Looking back on their catalog now, nearly a decade after the 2005 release of their final album, Phase V (discussed here), their discography seems less a state of mind than a world to be explored. Germany’s Stickman Records, which was the band’s label home for most of their tenure, has continued to foster that exploration since 35007‘s dissolution, both in making their studio outings available to those bold enough to find it and in fostering other European heavy prog acts like Motorpsycho, whose legend and catalog seems to grow each year. In a grand gesture of reverence, Stickman has recently reissued three of 35007‘s albums on vinyl: 1994’s Especially for You debut, 1997’s sophomore long-player 35007, and 2002’s Liquid.

Each release is different, and it’s important to remember that we’re spanning eight years of the band, different lineups, a developing approach, but what unites all three is the bleeding-out passion with which the reissues are executed. Not just time, effort and money put into them, but love. It’s evident in the gatefolds of 35007 and Especially for You, or in the way the color of the vinyl matches the album artwork for all three — black and red on Especially for You, white on 35007 and blue on Liquid. These are 180g treasures for a group who, if they’d come along a decade later than they did, would still probably be considered among the forebears of modern European heavy psychedelia. In presentation and in the sound of each of these, the spirit of honoring the band is obvious and palpable, and while that might intimidate the novice or someone less familiar with 35007‘s work, the music itself is so consuming that one can’t help get immersed, first time listener or not.

A quick breakdown:

Especially for You (1994)

Their earliest work. Especially for You only barely represents the ground 35007 would cover and break in their time together. There are flashes of the progressive fluidity their heavy psychedelia would later accomplish on the late instrumental “Water,” which appears here on side C, leaving the second half of he second record to “Slide,” but much of 35007‘s first outing got its personality from its crunching riffs, and while they’d gain a reputation afterward as an instrumental unit, songs here are often distinguished by vocals, and that begins on opener “Zandbak,” which takes an early stoner rock nod and build off it with keys and samples in an nascent showing of experimentalism. The subsequent “Basiculo ad Cunnum” is more indicative of the atmospherics and blend of Krautrock texturing, tonal heft and patience that would develop in their sound, but it too has a younger intensity to it, 35007 figuring out their where their place is even as they come do define it, keyboards factoring in heavily throughout, even as side B’s “Bad Altitude” starts out all riff and swagger en route to one of the LP’s most satisfying blissouts.

Space funk joins heavy rock impulses on the later “U:mu:m’nu:” and “Cosmic Messenger,” hinting at some of the territory 35007‘s countrymen in Astrosoniq would cover in the years to come, and “Slide” closes Especially for You with prog-metal chugging — it was 1994, so Tool‘s Undertow might’ve been a factor in the rhythm and vocal shouts — and a kitchen-sink finale of noise, swirl and sampling. If anything’s a giveaway of the 20 years that have passed since its initial release, it’s the production, since the adventurousness and will toward progression at its heart is still very much evident in what they accomplish. It’s a hard record to dig into without thinking of what 35007 did afterwards, but that doesn’t makes the space-rocking “The Elephant Song” any less enjoyable as the centerpiece of side B, its wanderings both engaging and righteously trippy, buried-deep semi-spoken vocals calling throaty shots atop a deep swirl of lead guitar echo. There are bands out there today, more than a few, who are trying to sound like this and haven’t yet caught up to what 35007 did their first time out two decades ago. That sounds like hyperbole, but it’s also true.

35007 (1997)

It would be difficult to mess with the low-end fuzz that underscores the breathing tension of 35007 opener “Herd,” and you won’t hear me try. I’ll again compare it to Astrosoniq‘s propensity for opening to a chorus, but it’s really just the tip of the weird futuristic submarine racing apparatus when it comes to 35007‘s second album, also known as Into the Void We Travelled. Issued three years after their debut as their first outing on Stickman, it’s immediately more cohesive stylistically, a bruiser riff in “Soul Machine” finding accompaniment in the keys and psychedelic undercurrents, the two sides playing off each other rather than competing as they sometimes seem to be on Especially for You. Of course, the ambient vibe isn’t absent either, as “Short Sharp Left,” which rounds out side A takes hold with a swaggering, almost Western, guitar line and drum stomp only after a stretch of ambience that picks up directly from “Soul Machine,” making it impossible to tell on the LP where one ends and the other starts. A lot of what 35007 accomplishes on this album is laid out in the first of its four sides, but the thrill of the journey and hearing where the band takes its now-more-solidified approach — be it the plus-sized riffing of “Big Bore” on side B or the subsequent Zeppelin-in-space acoustics of “Vein” — shouldn’t be discounted either.

“Undo” explodes to start out side B prior to the farther-out method expansion of “Big Bore” and “Vein,” but it’s side C and D that seem in hindsight to show where 35007 were really headed, and among these albums, the divide between the two halves of the self-titled is most stark. Songs like “Herd” and “Soul Machine” and “Big Bore” have an experimental or proggy edge to them, no doubt about it, but with “66” and “Powertruth” on side C and “Locker” and “Zero 21” bled together on side D, the band shifts first into organ-laced ’70s weirdness before moving into head-down prog chug and keyboard interplay on “Powertruth” — listening right after Especially for You, the song seems in direct conversation with parts of “Slide,” but it’s ultimately more straightforward — building to a rushing head before being carried out by its frenetic keyboard line. Similar impulses drive “Locker” and “Zero 21” — a flair for capturing the “let’s try this” moment — but the closing duo come across most as the moment where 35007 found their niche in a psychetronic (now almost entirely) instrumental blend of heaviness and atmospherics, starting so quiet and patiently evolving the movement over the two songs to the record’s blood-stirring apex. This was a crucial transitional phase in the band, and in terms of harnessing where they were coming from and where they were headed, it brings together the best of both worlds.

Liquid (2002)

Preceded by a 1999 Stickman reissue of Especially for You and 2001’s Sea of Tranquility EP, the 2002 Liquid full-length is as aptly-named as an album can get. Of the three new vinyl releases it’s the only one that fits on a single LP — it is a full 20 minutes shorter than the self-titled and has a printed record sleeve instead of a gatefold — but the expanses 35007 cover across its four tracks more than answers for any “Hey, where’d the rest go?” type questioning that might arise. Liquid is arguably 35007‘s most essential release. Phase V would expand on these ideas and concepts and delve further into ambience, but Liquid was the lightbulb moment in the narrative of band, certainly as pertains to these three outings and overall as well. The tonal warmth in the bass on “Tsunami” or the smoothness of the production, the patience in its completely instrumental transitions and the flow between one song and the next and within songs as well as parts shift into others, it’s fluid, lush heavy psych that’s neither one more than the other in an impeccable and beautiful balance. It made space rock new again, and unlike Especially for You and 35007, it was also clearly intended to be a vinyl release, its four component tracks breaking evenly into two halves and feeding into each other with an audible break between sides A and B.

Flip the band’s name upside down and it spells “Loose,” but I’m not sure they were ever tighter or more coherent than they are here, building with keys and riffs and effects as “Crystalline” morphs gradually out of “Tsunami” to jam its way forward and back again into its own mix, a strong current of synth remaining with volume swells to set a wave pattern from which the guitars, bass and drums burst in for the final stretch, their cold disappearance after the climax seeming to cut short a track that’s already reached toward eight minutes long. On side B, the shorter “Evaporate” recalls some of the progressive metal riffing of 35007‘s earlier days, but like the band’s approach overall, it is more clearheaded about what it wants to accomplish, toying with back-and-forth tension release in what might’ve been a verse and a chorus five years prior but here serve as a means to a more complex end, giving way somewhere in a wash of keyboards to closer “Voyage Automatique” as bass plays the pivotal role of anchoring the proceedings, not weighing them down necessarily, but making sure there’s solid ground somewhere beneath all the open space. Gradually, “Voyage Automatique” builds to a head in a patient linear execution, and Liquid ends with a fading keyboard line that seems to still be exploring, reaching further out from where the band decided to vacate the jam, leaving it and the listener alike to process the data uncovered by all this exploration.

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From their beginning, 35007 was a progressive heavy rock act with an individualized take. The fact that they were then able to realize their potential and push themselves further into their own sound made them truly distinct among what was happening in heavy music at the time, and while they’re not around now to continue that journey — members can be found in Monomyth and Neon Twin — reissues like these show just how special their work was. Due reverence, through and through.

Recommended.

35007, Liquid (2002)

35007’s website

Stickman Records