Tomorrow here in the US it is Thanksgiving, which has some questionable origins but in practice is actually one of our less-abominable holidays, with a focus on togetherness, good food, and enjoying the company of loved ones. Today, the day before, is traditionally the busiest travel day of the year while people get to wherever they’re going. Even if you don’t manage to find it until after the holiday is over, it seemed only fitting to make a new podcast so that anyone who might want to take it along for the ride would be able to do so.
My head has started to get into year-end wrap-up mode, so don’t be surprised if one or two or three of these bands show up in subsequent “Best Of” coverage. Maybe even four, looking at the list. It’s been a crazy good year, and as it starts to wind its way down and we make our way into the next one, I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to these podcasts and hopefully discovered something you wouldn’t have heard otherwise. That’s really the whole idea.
If you’re traveling by road, rail, or air, I wish you a pleasant journey, and even if you’re staying put, the same applies.
First Hour:
Stubb, “Heavy Blue Sky” from Cry of the Ocean
Murcielago, “Way too Far” from Murcielago
Dune, “Of Blade and Carapace” from Aurora Majesty
The Skull, “Send Judas Down” from For Those Which are Asleep
Elephant Tree, “Attack of the Altaica” from Theia
Renate/Cordate, “Laudanum” from Growth
Mothership, “Serpents Throne” from Mothership II
Space Guerrilla, “Event Horizon” from Boundless
Monster Magnet, “End of Time (B-3)” from Milking the Stars
Memnon Sa, “Megalith” from Citadel
Second Hour:
Soldat Hans, “Meine Liebste; Sie Zerbricht Sich” from Dress Rehearsal
Atavismo, “Meeh” from Desintegración
Øresund Space Collective, “Remnants of the Barbonaeum” from Music for Pogonologists
Posted in audiObelisk on November 20th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
There’s a reason I asked Atavismo if I could stream their debut full-length, Desintegración, instead of just reviewing it, and it’s because I think hearing the songs themselves does the record the most justice. Released by the band in cooperation with Odio Sonoro and a host of others, Desintegración is comprised of just four tracks, but holds a world of lush and spacious heavy psychedelia within them, alternately folkish and expansive, minimal and encompassing. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve heard any of the trio’s past work in bands like the spaced-out Mind! or Viaje a 800 — who, sadly defunct, remain among heavy rock’s most criminally overlooked acts — so much as it matters that you’re willing to loan a piece of your psyche to “Blazava,” “Kraken,” “Oceanica” and “Meeh,” and engage the 37 minutes of Atavismo‘s debut on their own level. Among first releases I’ve heard this year, Desintegración is an immediate standout for its complexity, sense of arrangement and for Atavismo‘s ability to hold the material together and create an overarching flow between songs that each boast their own personality.
Witness the Yawning Man-style guitar tone that emerges from the initial synth sprawl of opener “Blazava.” Desintegración takes a minute to unfold, but it’s worth it. Over the course of the 11:31 opening and longest cut on the album (immediate points), guitarist/synthworker Poti, drummer Sandra and bassist Matt loose a ranging instrumental build of dreamy but earthbound heavy psych jamming, making their way across hypnotic tones and masterful breadth as they go, driving as much as they’re meandering toward a lead-topped culmination the underlying rhythmic layer of which is no less a highlight, gracefully executed and in no way giving into the temptation to blast out in terms of pace and upset the careful balance they’ve been able to set. One could trace the acoustic/electric strums to The Who or a host of others from the classic rock pantheon, but immediately, the song and the album belong to Atavismo, and the swirl that ensues on “Kraken” only affirms the hold they have on their approach.
Though the fact that it’s named for a seabeast might lead one to think “Kraken,” the shortest piece here at 6:47, is that explosive moment, and its second half gets fairly raucous, but with a careful Floydian blissout of Mellotron-style keys and acoustics, the beginning half is actually the most soothing moment on Desintegración, and remains so even after the arrival of the album’s first vocals. Classic psychedelic pop, backed by swirl and airy tones, plays out over “Kraken”‘s course, until just before four minutes in, more foreboding, weighted guitar begins a quicker progression that builds into fuzzy lead and the instrumental jam that serves as the track’s still wildly psychedelic apex. Heavier riffing from Poti and a wash of crash from Sandra push “Kraken” to its peak, leading to the similarly minded but more subtle execution of “Oceanica,” which starts out on an even more reserved, otherworldly plane and executes its linearity so smoothly that, unless one were to jump from an early moment to a later one, it would be easy to be entirely lost within the track’s unfurling. Dual vocals come across gorgeously melodic atop light effects and keys and guitar strumming, Matt entering easily on bass and Sandra periodically donating a cymbal wash to the atmospheric cause.
It’s not until after five minutes in that the build really shows itself, the progressive interlude and following verse leading to an uptick around 4:30 that continues to a glorious takeoff almost exactly at the five-minute mark that still doesn’t separate itself from the peaceful vibe preceding but pushes forward into heavier riffing and near-stomp only to recede and end “Oceanica” with a return to the softer psychedelics of its beginning, in turn shifting into “Meeh,” a longer track bookending the album with “Blazava” that is based around the most singularly memorable guitar line on Desintegración. Again, Yawning Man is a point of reference, but there’s a tension even in first, wide open verse — the drums more forward, the bass tighter — that lets you know the payoff will be considerable. And so it is. A mostly instrumental course is led by the guitar into still-patient tradeoffs that ultimately round out “Meeh” with the record’s heaviest stretch, feedback passing the 7:30 mark to dip back into a couple lines before the final thrust begins. Atavismo cross 10 minutes with some vague sense of ritual in the guitar, but it’s still a relatively quick, efficient cap put on Desintegración, leading one to wonder how far the three-piece will push out the next time out.
I’m thrilled to be able to host the stream of Desintegración with permission from Atavismo. I hope you’ll take the time to listen and get to know the album. It’s one I have the feeling I’m going to be talking about here for a while.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 12th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
With former members of Mind! and Viaje a 800 in the lineup, Spanish trio Atavismo will make their recorded debut with the full-length Desintegración this week. The release is four songs of immersive and dreamy progressive psychedelia, not as space rocking as Mind!, who released Stunde Null (review here) last year,or as tonally weighted as the last Viaje a 800, 2012’s Coñac Oxigenado (review here), but exploring psychedelic ground somewhere between the two, the subdued bliss of “Oceanica” and classic swirl of “Kraken” sandwiched between two 10-plus-minute adventures that, one hopes, are the first of many to come.
Don’t be fooled by the black and white photo or dark cover art — this one’s in full color:
Atavismo – Desintegración New Album!!!! (ex-viaje a 800/ex-mind!)
DESINTEGRACION is the new album of Atavismo a Hard psychedelic experimental rock band from Algeciras (Spain).
Not on label Records joined to others records labels and friends (Odio Sonoro,Adansonia Records,Nooirax…) to present this amazing debut of a band with ex-Viaje a 800 member and Ex-Mind! members. Progressive rock sound and echoes of the Hard Psychedelic of bands like UFO first-era, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Pink Floyd post-Barret era, or Groundhogs…
Atavismo is formed by Sandra on drums and vocals, Matt on bass and Poti on guitar and vocals, all seasoned musicians in other bands in the area as Viaje a 800, Buena Muerte Trio or Pussyworm. With this formation have decided to develop sound issues with Mind! (maybe a little more traditional and recognizable within the canons considered “commercial” character) had not yet explored, to some extent regardless of electronic kraut reinforcements to reach the rawness and immediacy so characteristic of electric power trios.
This musical philosophy, certainly less sophisticated and dramatic, but much more visceral and risky, Atavismo want to be synonymous with sonic expansion of open and reverberating guitars, hypnotic rhythms, thus twinned with all those groups that have made the jam session almost a form of religion. Or to put it another way, as the name suggests, Atavismo members have decided to unleash all those musical genes that were waiting to retrieve the echoes of bands like the Grateful Dead and Neil Young and Crazy Horse and continue to manifest today in bands like Earthless, Major Stars and Dead Meadow. Thus, inserting in that tradition, but also providing the product of his own imagination and musical intuition, Atavismo intended fascinate and drag with all electrical chromaticity and rhythmic mantras that can boast. ¡Que así sea! “
