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Review & Full Album Stream: Dune Sea, Moons of Uranus

Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on November 3rd, 2020 by JJ Koczan

dune sea moons of uranus

[Click play above to stream Dune Sea’s Moons of Uranus in its entirety. Album is out Nov. 13 on All Good Clean Records.]

It’s a big universe, so why shouldn’t Dune Sea find a place of their own in it? The Norwegian trio embark on a niche recon with their second full-length in as many years, Moons of Uranus, and so take the delightful genre meld of their self-titled debut (review here) and push it a year and a half later into a kind of cross-franchise hyperdrive. Dropping references to “Sarlacc” and “Tusken” from Star Wars, “First Contact” from Star Trek and “Draw 4” from the card game Uno along their way, the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist/synthesist Ole Nogva, bassist Petter Solvik Dahle and new drummer Viktor Olsen Kristensen (joined in place of Erik Bråten, who played on the last album) pull likewise from various heavy style elements, tearing into a classically strutting solo on “Tusken” atop a rolling bassline only to  push into semi-motorik beatmaking on “Air” and minor-key mysticism on “Oracle.”

Nogva, who founded the band, is a key presence throughout, but from the garage doom swagger of “First Contact” at the outset — where else to put such a song? — the growth of the band is evident in how they work to make their sound their own, creative runs of synthesizer adding flourish and nuance to the material as they go. At their thickest, as with the dug-in low end of the title-track, where they might remind of some of Spaceslug‘s melody-in-vacuum, but Dune Sea songs move in a way that holds firm to their heavy rock underpinnings, so that even while the telltale fuzz of “Shaman” might sound like British Steel in space, it’s not disjointed from its surroundings for that. Or at least not any more than it’s intended to be. Running 10 songs and 34 minutes, Moons of Uranus is manageable and thoroughly unpretentious for the apparent ease with which it engulfs microgenres and regurgitates them like a suddenly active Martian volcano, and the more one listens, the more one is ingrained into its methods.

This is accomplished in part through a deceptive clarity of purpose and structure beneath all the aesthetic shuffling. “First Contact” is a cry for assistance into the void — so, timely — and rushes behind its first of two keyboard solos, but its pleading “Please turn around/Please come back/We need your help/Please come back,” is a memorable first impression and while structurally grounded, the theme of interstellar communication bolsters the kosmiche excursions that follow. Are Dune Sea more grounded than they were a year ago? I don’t think so, but I’m also not sure that’s the right question to be asking, since the debut proved so well the solidity of their foundation. What one finds through “Shaman” and the subsequent two-and-a-half-minute space rocker “Absinthe Blues” is that the band’s vision of heavy psychedelia is encompassing, and whether that’s conjuring modes of space, fuzz, ’70s heavy or prog rocks, they’re able to bring whatever they do into the sphere of these proceedings.

dune sea

“Tusken” puts the melody line of the keyboards forward and is stronger for that turn after the more guitar-minded “Absinthe Blues,” but its rhythmic foundation in Dahle‘s punchy bass tone and Kristensen‘s crash-happy drumming is so set that there’s never a question about whether Dune Sea will return from however far out they venture. And they do. And efficiently. By the time side A closes with the title-track — also the longest song yet at just 4:06 — they have wasted not a minute of Moons of Uranus‘ time or the listener’s, and even in the atmospheric introduction to “Moons of Uranus” itself, the stage is being set for an instrumental hook and an explosion of spacious wash that’s immersive and propulsive in kind. That too is not any longer than it needs to be, and in the fading of residual melody, one almost imagines the band reminding themselves to keep it quick, not allowing themselves to veer too far away from the central intent of their craft.

Side B’s “Air” is the second of only three songs over the four-minute mark in terms of runtime — the other is the closer “Globe of Dust”; longest at 4:48 — and it brings together guitar and synth with a riff born out of classic heavy and a verse chug that’s rife with personality and tonal detailing matched in rhythm by the tambourine that moves along with the drums. The sound is warm but gives way to a standalone keyboard solo before bouncing back in a way perhaps as to signal that the second half of Moons of Uranus will stretch even broader than did the first. So be it. “Air” rolls to its end ahead of the speedy “Draw 4” with its there-and-gone two-minute run that still manages somehow to evoke folk metal in its middle and then turn back to its verse like nothing ever happened, turning the procession over to “Oracle,” which is clearly positioned a moment of contemplation. Vocals are deeper in the mix, guitars are forward and meditative if still somewhat impatient, and it’s not until nearly three minutes in that they crash into a bout of Sabbathian riffing that serves as the apex or perhaps revelation in keeping with the “Oracle” theme.

That side B sense of departure is lived up to in some of the disjointedness between “Air” and “Draw 4” and “Oracle” and “Sarlacc” is tasked with reorienting the audience ahead of the finale, which it does through layered space-echo vocals and forward charge, winding but inviting for all that. It does its job, and “Globe of Dust” follows with a lurch more resonant for its echoing snare pops in its verse and the transmuted “Iron Man” riff of its bridge, marching like Witch blasted to their molecules before at last in their final minute, Dune Sea find synthy glories to behold, a tunnel perhaps of bright-light slipstream that consumes the track, the band, and whatever else might happen across its gravitational field. Given the quick turnaround even with a lineup change and the aspects carried over from the debut, easy to think of Moons of Uranus as a next step in the band’s process of developing their sound and their methods on the whole. If that’s the case, it’s an engaging one, and it still holds promise for what they might accomplish as they push further into uncharted cosmos.

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Dune Sea Premiere “Dune Sea” from Self-Titled Debut LP out May 3

Posted in audiObelisk on April 18th, 2019 by JJ Koczan

dune sea

Dune Sea release their self-titled debut album May 3 through All Good Clean Records. The Norwegian band began as the project of guitarist, vocalist, keyboardist and noisemaker Ole Nogva, who gradually was joined by drummer Erik Bråten and bassist Petter Solvik Dahle, and though their moniker might conjure all sorts of images of retread desert rock riffing, the truth of what they do throughout the nine-track/31-minute Dune Sea is much more complex, drawing from the synth-laced space thrust of closer “Cosmic Playground” and the jangle-into-drift-into-futuristic-push of “Morphine,” which isn’t the first track on the record to be named after a controlled substance, following as it does a few songs behind opener “Pentobarbital and Ethanol.” All around the album, cuts like the eponymous “Dune Sea” and the subsequent brief fuzz wash and stomping rhythm of “Future,” the brief keyboard infusion in “Bounty Hunter” — like a heavy version of proto-New Wave space vibing — and the cosmic command in “Astrodelic Breakdown” lead the listener on a charted but varied course into the greater reaches of the far out, engines burning at warp factor whatever as the stars turn to streaks outside the window.

If it’s desert rock, then, it’s a desert on some distant undiscovered world waiting for the most intrepid of explorers.

But let’s leave the moniker behind much as the penultimate “Awake” leaves the ground. Dune Sea play dune sea cosmic playgroundfully-activated cosmic heavy rock. It’s an amalgam ultimately of space, psych and progressive styles, but their debut full-length — and when you listen through and think about that, that’s really the scary part; this is their first record — careens between them with such a fluid playout that it’s nearly impossible to pin down where one element ends and the next begins. Tones and grooves are hypnotic, melody is pervasive, and the spirit and energy with which Dune Sea handle the turns from one piece to another, as on the absolutely-drenched-in-acid classic psych rocking centerpiece “Green,” are infectious to the point of entering the bloodstream. That starts right from the ultra-swing at the apex of “Pentobarbital and Ethanol,” with a full album’s worth of swagger packed into about 35 seconds that lead the way into the rest of Dune Sea with an assured push that sets up the rest of the madness to follow. Dudes are right off the wall. I mean really. We’re talking about the snozzberries tasting like snozzberries, here. It’s a trip that should come with a warning label: “This machine alienates squares.”

And it’s 31 minutes. Short for an LP, but that too becomes a strength on the part of the band, because they manage to pack so much into that time. It’s condensed, but somehow when you listen, it feels like the songs unfold over a much more spacious scale than they do. That’s credit to the mix, which is packed with layers of lysergic detailing, but there’s a constant melodic presence as well through even the various vocal effects that helps the listener along this purposefully bumpy path, and that only makes the record all the more of a joyful undertaking. I’m saying that if you think you can get down, you should.

To that end, I’m thrilled to host Dune Sea‘s “Dune Sea” from Dune Sea as a premiere for your streaming pleasure below. Second of the nine inclusions, the eponymous song on any band’s record can serve as a crucial statement of intent and who they are, and as Dune Sea cry out for freedom in the track, they would seem to be making precisely that statement. Crack open your skull and pour this one in. Somehow I doubt you’ll regret it.

Enjoy:

Dune Sea is a power trio from Norway playing a stoner rock mixed with shoegaze and space rock. The Trondheim based group are often compared with bands like Hawkwind and Queens of the Stone Age.

The Dune Sea album features nine tracks that range from stretched out psychedelic sci-fi soundscapes to synth based monolithic riffs. The sound unfolds within a cinematic universe, which is both retro and futuristic.

The band started out as Ole Nogva’s solo project back in 2012. Drummer Erik Bråten joined Ole in the spring of 2017 to record drums for the EP “All Quiet Under The Suns”.

In early 2018 bassplayer Petter Solvik Dahle became a permanent member of Dune Sea and the recording process of their self-titled debut album began. The album is recorded and produced by the band themselves in various locations in Trondheim and will be released through All Good Clean Records on May 3rd 2019. The mastering is done by Rhys Marsh at Autumnsongs Recording Studio.

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