If you heard the album, you’ll probably recognize the joyful build of “Man Changing the Atoms” from German heavy progressive rockers Carpet‘s 2013 sophomore outing, Elysian Pleasures. Released by Elektrohasch, that album was a reminder of how warm classic prog could readily be and updated what’s all too often a staid presentation with a penchant for exploration and if not spontaneity — because no doubt the Augsburg five-piece were working from a master plan — than at least a plotted sensibility that seemed as exciting to the listener as it might’ve been for the band. The soundscape “Man Changing the Atoms” constructed with its flourish of horns and weighted build made it a highlight of the record, and two years later the song shines on its own as well.
That two years might seem late for Carpet to drop a video for one of the album’s songs, but that’s not quite what’s happening here. The performance of “Man Changing the Atoms” is live, recorded at Ghost City Recordings in Röttenbach by Marius Roos, Philipp Roth and Benjamin Roth and that’s really only surprising for how smoothly the song is executed by the band, expanded from their root four-piece — guitarist/vocalist Maximilian Stephan, bassist Hubert Steiner, key specialist Sigmud Perner and drummer Jakob Mader — to a seven-piece lineup complete with flügelhorn, trumpet, more guitar and percussion, the result suitably intricate. For all its involved players, however, “Man Changing the Atoms” still sounds like the work of a band rather than an orchestra, and the humanity at its root becomes even more of the appeal as they push the song further outward.
And spoiler alert to anyone not familiar with the record: It winds up pretty far out. The video itself is pretty dark for the most part, but it should be easy enough to make out who’s doing what, and even if not, the idea is the whole experience anyway, so have at it and enjoy:
Carpet, “Man Changing the Atoms”
CARPET performing “Man Changing the Atoms” Captured live at Ghost City Recordings Studio A
Filmed by Marius Roos, Philipp Roth & Benjamin Roth Edited by Alec Barth
Recorded & mixed by Jan Kerscher
The Carpet Septet presents: “Man Changing the Atoms.” at Ghost City Recordings . Jakob Mader: drums Hubert Steiner: bass Sigi Perner: rhodes and juno Maximilian Stephan: guitar and the singing Bruno Polaris: percussion Benni Benson: guitar Martin Lehmann: flügelhorn and trumpet
Thanks very much to Jan Kerscher and all people involved!
Posted in Radio on January 30th, 2015 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Radio server, which I’ve taken to calling the “main computer core,” was down most of last week after some kind of unknown surge in the EPS conduits, so with the data stream running on auxiliary power (yes, I’m using Star Trek science lingo; I’ll stop) it didn’t make much sense to do a round of adds. No one would hear the stuff anyway amid all the Sabbath, Kyuss, Goatsnake, Electric Wizard, etc. Sometimes I really like that backup server, but after a few days of listening, a change is welcome. I was pretty happy when we got the primary box back online.
And by “we,” I mostly mean Slevin, to whose technical expertise I am perpetually indebted. While I wouldn’t dare go much farther than doing so, I’m fortunate enough to be able to add files to the server on my own — I’m sure if you gave him five minutes he’d come up with a more efficient method — so we’ll give that a shot, and if the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down, we can consider it a win. Here goes.
The Obelisk Radio adds for Jan. 30, 2015:
Sumac, The Deal
Sumac start out high-profile thanks to the lineup of guitarist Aaron Turner of Isis and Old Man Gloom and drummer Nick Yacyshyn of Baptists and the fact that Russian Circles bassist Brian Cook recorded the low end for their Profound Lore debut, The Deal, but I think even if they were a trio of out-of-nowhere unknown entities, this record would turn some heads. Coated in feedback, blisteringly heavy — in the tradition of older Isis but more assured in its purpose — its six tracks breathe dense tonal life into the pallid post-metal vibe, songs like “Hollow King” (12:21) and “The Deal” (13:41) sounding as complex as they do crushing, wanting nothing in impact or atmosphere. “Spectral Gold” (3:18) and “Thorn in the Lion’s Paw” (8:55) begin The Deal on an ambient note, and the sprawl-drone of “The Radiance of Being” ends it likewise with five minutes of solo guitar from Turner, but in between “Hollow King,” “Blight’s End Angel” (10:17) and “The Deal” work quickly to win over even skeptical ears. Yacyshyn‘s performance is of particular note. Where it would’ve been all too easy to fall into Isis-style patterning to complement Turner‘s riffs, he holds firm to his own personality and The Deal is that much stronger for it. It is a startling and potential-laden debut. Almost enough to make up for the needless dickery Old Man Gloom pulled last year sending a fake record to the press, assuming what I’ve heard from Sumac is actually the real thing. Sumac on Thee Facebooks, at Profound Lore.
—
Garden of Worm, Idle Stones
Tampere, Finland, trio Garden of Worm make their debut on Svart Records via Idle Stones, their second album following 2010’s Garden of Worm (review here) on Shadow Kingdom. Comprised of four songs alternating between shorter and longer before arriving at 19:49 closer “The Sleeper Including Being is More than Life,” the sophomore outing is a richer, more progressive affair, with bassist SJ Harju and guitarist EJ Taipale combining their vocals effectively at the fore of the mix on “Summer’s Isle” (10:13), which follows the rolling opener “Fleeting are the Days of Man” (5:35). With a style that ultimately owes more to Witchcraft‘s tonal understatement than Reverend Bizarre‘s genre-defining traditionalism, they nonetheless shirk the trap of retroism and make an individual showing with a feel both loose and purposeful throughout. The brighter guitar work of “Desertshore” (7:01) makes it a highlight, along with the persistent crash of drummer JM Suvanto, and the freakout that emerges in “The Sleeper Including Being is More than Life” gracefully and boldly flows across the rarely-bridged gap between doom and heavy psychedelia with a naturalness that very much makes me hope it’s not another half-decade before we hear from Garden of Worm again. Garden of Worm on Thee Facebooks, at Svart Records.
—
Carpet, Riot Kiss 7″
Story goes that German progressive heavy rockers Carpet started writing for their third album, to follow-up on 2013’s Elysian Pleasures (review here), which was released by Elektrohasch, and wound up with some material that didn’t quite fit the concept they were going for. Since they dug it and didn’t want to just toss it, the Riot Kiss b/w Song of Heartship 7″ was born. Two songs, both a little over four minutes long, reaffirm the Augsburg four-piece’s commitment to forward-thinking textures, with “Riot Kiss” as the space-prog A-side and the quieter, atmospheric-but-still-clearheaded “Song of Heartship” emphasizing Carpet‘s range on side B, the cuts having more dynamic between them than many bands show in their career. I don’t know what Carpet — the lineup of Sigmund Perner, Jakob Mader, Hubert Steiner and Maximilian Stephan — are shooting for with their third record that these songs didn’t jibe with, and I guess we won’t know until that album arrives, but Riot Kiss is a stopgap of considerable substance that showcases Carpet‘s ability to present progressive ideas in ways not only palatable but deeply engaging. Carpet on Thee Facebooks, Elektrohasch Schallplatten.
—
Sporecaster, See Through Machine
An experimental drone/psych duo comprised in half by Ron Rochondo of Boston’s Ice Dragon, Sporecaster‘s debut release, See Through Machine, is four tracks/26 minutes of exploratory drone given natural breadth through use of didgeridoo and percussion. The outing was tracked at Ron’s Wrecker Service and has a lo-fi feel despite its spaciousness, and chants out its hypnotism early, opener “Invocation or Incantation” (4:20, by astounding coincidence) wrapping itself around consciousness like some kind of psychedelic serpent, only to have the whistle-blowing “Things are Not What they See” (3:21) and tribal-ish drummed “The False Light” (5:46) push deeper into the moody ambience laid out at the beginning. Closer “You are Transparent” (12:45) makes me wonder what Sporecaster might do working in even longer forms, its drone-out having room for both a jammy drum progression and a continuation of the earlier experimental and improvisational feel. As an early showing of their intent, though, See Through Machine makes it clear that Sporecaster‘s creative process is wide open. Sporecaster on Thee Facebooks, Ron’s Wrecker Service.
—
The Devil and the Almighty Blues, The Devil and the Almighty Blues
The slow-rolling “The Ghosts of Charlie Barracuda” (7:46) begins the self-titled debut from Oslo-based five-piece The Devil and the Almighty Blues, released on the upstart Blues for the Red Sun Records. That song picks up gradually in the first of several of the six-song full-length’s satisfying builds, but atmospherically sets a laid back tone that tracks like the subsequent “Distance” (4:11) and more active “Storm Coming Down” (10:17) play off of, the band proving equally comfortable in long- or short-form material, nestling into a neo-heavy semi-retro blues rock more in line with Graveyard‘s overarching moodiness than Witchcraft‘s early-days dooming. Well-balanced lead guitars and crooning vocals serve as a uniting theme, but in a classic dynamic, it’s the rhythm section that makes the swing of side B’s particularly thick “Root to Root” (9:48) and “Never Darken My Door” — the singing especially blown-out on the latter — so irresistibly grooved. Wrapping with the classy fuzz of “Tired Old Dog” (6:28), The Devil and the Almighty Blues will come from a familiar place sonically, but as their debut, The Devil and the Almighty Blues boasts a cohesion worthy of its weighty title. The Devil and the Almighty Blues on Thee Facebooks, Blues for the Red Sun Records.
—
Some of this stuff — Sumac, The Devil and the Almighty Blues, Carpet — was also included in the podcast that went up yesterday, so if you’d like another avenue for getting a sample, that might not be a bad way to go. However you choose to dig in, I hope that you will and hope that you find something that you feel is worth the time and effort.
I’m happy to report that of all the podcasts I’ve ever put together, front to back, I think this one came together the smoothest. No programs crashed, no uploads were interrupted halfway through. Unless I click “Publish” and the internet eats this entire site, it’s safe to say this was the easiest time I’ve had putting together a collection of tracks to be featured here. Could it be I’m getting better at it? Nah. Dumb luck all the way. As I recall, last time I said something of the sort, the next month my editing software crapped out and it was a year before I got another program that worked. You’d think I might learn to keep my mouth shut.
Keeping current with this month was something of a concern. It’s hard to fill out 2015 releases since we’re only a month into the year, but even if some of this stuff is 2014, it’s later 2014 for sure, and the vast majority of it did wind up being 2015. The second hour, which has become a sort of psych blissout over the last however-many podcasts, actually gets pretty heavy and doomed this time around. Change is good for the soul. As always, hope you enjoy:
First Hour:
Torche, “Loose Men” from Restarter
Bloodcow, “Crystals and Lasers” from Crystals and Lasers
Elder, “Compendium” from Lore
Lacertilia, “Do Something!” from Crashing into the Future
Ruby the Hatchet, “Tomorrow Never Comes” from Valley of the Snake
Carpet, “Riot Kiss” from Riot Kiss 7”
Black Moon Circle, “Supernova” from Andromeda
Desert Storm, “House of Salvation” from Omniscient
Spidergawd, “Fixing to Die Blues” from Spidergawd II
Bellringer, “Von Fledermaus” from EP
Romero, “Gold for the Hunt” from Gold for the Hunt Single
Brothers of the Sonic Cloth, “Lava” from Brothers of the Sonic Cloth
Second Hour:
Sumac, “Blight’s End Angel” from The Deal
Horsehunter, “Stoned to Death” from Caged in Flesh
The Devil and the Almighty Blues, “Storm Coming Down” from The Devil and the Almighty Blues
Saturndust, “Realm of Nothing” from Saturndust
Sonny Simmons & Moksha Samnyasin, “We are Entering a Place of That” from Nomadic
You could teach a college class on the influences under which Carpet work. Sounding here like John Lennon fronting Adrian Belew-era King Crimson and there meandering into Floydian ambience offset by fuzzy heavy rock guitar work, the German progressive heavy rock foursome’s Elektrohasch-released sophomore outing, ElysianPleasures, is rigorously plotted and technically accomplished. Like its cover, it is a collage, ably skirting the line of giving itself over to instrumental explorations, but never quite losing focus entirely on songwriting. This works markedly to the favor of tracks like “Elysian Pleasures,” “In Tides,” “Serpentine” and “For the Love of Bokeh,” though with richly varied parts throughout, each of the eight cuts seems to find its standout moment one way or another in the album’s total 49 minutes. The Augsburg/Munich outfit — Maximilian Stephan (guitar, vocals, clarinet, Mellotron, minimoog), Jakob Mader (drums, xylophone, glockenspiel, marimba, percussion), Sigmund Perner (Rhodes, grand piano, organ, accordion, Mellotron) and Hubert Steiner (bass) — split the songs into two sides even on the CD version of the album, and in line with the vinyl available in yellow or black with a poster and “Elysian PleasuresTextbook” lyric sheet, the individual pieces that make up the record work well with that construction, despite a linear flow that surfaces over the course of the CD taken as a whole. Such winds up being inevitable, since if the listener is going to be sucked into Carpet‘s world at all, it’s going to happen at the start, and with the variety of instrumentation the band utilize at any given moment, they establish a wide base early on, requiring the listener to keep a likewise open mind. The xylophone, in other words, appears with no delay. It practically opens the record, as a matter of fact, with Mader and Stephan announcing the arrival of Elysian Pleasuresas a telling bit of fanfare plays out in the first 30 seconds. Like the best traditional prog, Carpet are patient and require a patient audience, but they do well in establishing a balance between what’s satisfying for them to play and still accessible for someone hearing it, which isn’t something that can be said across the board of the genre.
The King Crimson elements strike quickly, a bed of subtle noodling on guitar backing Stephan‘s echoing vocals as “Elysian Pleasures” begins to unfold. Ambient, jazzy and richly textured, the opener is a decent but not all-telling lead-in for the Carpet debut that shares its name, sounding modern in its production and classic in its ideology while a heavier tension lurks just below the surface later into the track as Mader rides his crash cymbal while Perner plays out the central melody on keys. It is busy from the word go and remains busy even in its quiet stretches. A subdued finish for “Elysian Pleasures” lulls the listener into a false sense of security as “Nearly Four” snare-pops its way in with a fuzzy guitar-led strut and vocals buried beneath the progression, all instruments headed in the same place anchored by Steiner for a section of insistent and showy crashes. Of course, they take the initial idea and run with it like gleeful children — half of the appeal of progressive rock is imagining how much fun the person playing it is having — but return to the main riff near the halfway mark, realizing perhaps that not every song needs to be an indulgence. Stephan is no less an able vocalist than he is a guitarist, his voice smooth and engaging before he and Perner trade solos, his own leading to a stop that once again brings back the main figure before organ closes out the proceedings and “Man Changing the Atoms” revives the Belewery, Mader taking the fore for a time to lead an instrumental section of jazz complemented by trumpet (credited to Andreas Unterreiner) in one of Elysian Pleasures‘ jazziest and most singularly enjoyable stretches. It seems to just happen — one minute Carpet are headed one way, then they turn, decide they like this better and that’s all there is to it. It’s a flagrant — almost arrogant — casting off of structure, and it could easily fall flat, but it doesn’t, and they smoothly work “Man Changing the Atoms” to an excitingly heavy build, saxophone (courtesy of Jan Kiesewetter) joining the fracas as it peaks with crashes, and just when the verse seems most like a thing of the past, vocals arrive again and renew the initial spirit of the track. Did that just happen? But for some resonant Mellotron and bass tension, it’s hard to be sure. Past six minutes in, they pick up again and end “Man Changing the Atoms” big, so it’s fitting the modus so far that “In Tides” should start quiet. And it does.
