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Carlton Melton Premiere “Waylay”; Where This Leads out Oct. 30

Posted in audiObelisk, Whathaveyou on August 27th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

carlton melton

Everyone comes to it at their own speed, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all, but when you’re really ready to let it all go, Carlton Melton will be waiting. It’s no easy feat to discard all your hangups, all those things in you that don’t feel right or like they help push you forward rather than hold you back, that don’t — in the parlance of our times — “bring you joy” from within yourself, but maybe you’ll be one of the lucky few who get to that plane. I imagine it’s a bit like the pointillist pastoralia of the cover art to Carlton Melton‘s upcoming album, Where This Leads. I wouldn’t know myself, but maybe that’s how some people see the world.

In my mind everyone out in Northern California (at least what’s left of it after years of unprecedented wildfires) is a pot farmer, and if Carlton Melton aren’t, the made-for-TV-but-for-his-horrifying-ex-girlfriend governor Gavin Newsom should do everything in his power to subsidize them in that regard, but of course their meditations are more than weedian worship, and the sweet psychedelia they bring to bear across Where This Leads — beginning with the side A-consuming exploration “The Stars are Dying” and running from there into varied progressions of hold-your-breath-and-dive-in fluid immersion across a 70-minute entirety, offering spacious complement in side C’s “Smoke Drip Revisited,” brash cascade in “Three Zero Two” and alt-jazz expectation-defiance on “Dezebelle” along the way — is the stuff of afternoon daydreams.

They call it “dome rock.” Okay. Put it in your dome.

Along with the album announcement below, I have the distinct pleasure to host the premiere of “Waylay” from Where This Leads, which you’ll find at the bottom of this post. No single song on the record speaks for the whole of it (not even that opener), but I’m not kidding when I tell you it’s an honor to host this track, and I’d appreciate it if you could take the time to listen and (and you know I rarely ask this so directly) please share accordingly.

Breathe deep. Here goes:

carlton melton where this leads

CARLTON MELTON – Where This Leads
Agitated Records 2LP / CD / DL
Released 30th October 2020

Preorder: https://meltoncarlton.bandcamp.com/album/where-this-leads

DOME ROCK.

Nestled deep in the forests of Mendocino County in Northern California, huddled under the protective shade of towering redwoods and within earshot of frothy waves crashing against the Pacific coastline, squats a geodesic dome that has served as crucible for the experimental genius of Carlton Melton. Nature and Man operate under different logics. But here, Carlton Melton wholly entrusts this idyllic environment with the task of inspiring and guiding their musical improvisations.

The Dome has been the ideal setting to facilitate their creativity. Without forcing a specific dynamic or theme, the band inhabits its womb-like confines to improvise, explore, dream. Their music draws on psychedelia, stoner metal, krautrock, and ambient atmospherics to convey, above all else, a mood.

A prickly guitar melody will float lazily, a wall of dissonant feedback will resolve into a hypnotic drone, or a colossal riff will exhume the soul of Jimi Hendrix. One hears Hawkwind or Spacemen 3 jamming with Pink Floyd at Pompeii.

Indeed, Carlton Melton have one foot in the ancient world and one tentacle in deep space. They are both the pack of proto-humans drumming with femurs in Kubrick’s 2001 and the film’s inscrutable monolith hinting at the universe’s mysteries. The “Stoned Ape” theory holds that early hominids ingested psychedelic mushrooms that provided an evolutionary boost to their brains, helping them blossom into Homo Sapiens. Imagine such cavemen trippin’ balls, their nightmarish visions sending them into feverish bouts of rage and then gentle moments of introspection. They very well could have heard the music of Carlton Melton rattling inside their skulls, first driving our ancestors mad then upward into a higher realm.

Andy Duvall (drums, guitar), Clint Golden (bass), and Rich Millman (guitar, synths) have yet to play Pompeii, but they have already wowed crowds at European festivals such as the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia, Roadburn, and Desertfest Antwerp. Live, they are jaw-dropping. On record, mind-altering.

In fact, with each album, Carlton Melton adds a subtle new element, synapses firing new neural connections. In 2020, they release new full-length Where This Leads, marking ten years of the band’s working relationship with their UK label Agitated Records and five years of recording with Phil Manley in his El Studio in San Francisco. With Where This Leads, the band rewires the listener’s mind. “Smoke Drip Revisited” is a ticklish acid flashback, “Porch Dreams” a dabbling in country psych, and “Closer” a driving, freak-out of guitar heroics.

One senses that the group is conveying a message that cannot be expressed verbally but only suggested through synth sighs, walloping rhythms, and soaring solos. Would Carlton Melton therefore be a group of stoned apes dizzily grasping for meaning or telepathic futurists communicating to us through crude man-made instrumentation?

Well, lower the stylus to find out. – Eric Bensel, Paris July 2020

Tracklist
1. The Stars Are Dying
2. Butchery
3. Waylay
4. Dezebelle
5. Smoke Drip Revisited
6. Crown Shyness
7. Three Zero Two
8. Porch Dreams
9. Closer

https://www.facebook.com/Carlton-Melton-band-page-142609689122268/
https://meltoncarlton.bandcamp.com/
http://www.carltonmeltonmusic.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AGITATEDRECORDS/
http://agitatedrecords.com/

Carlton Melton, “Waylay” official track premiere

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