Ever adventurous, New York (for the moment, it seems) experimentalists Queen Elephantine have decided to post their entire new album, Garland of Skulls, on the Tubes of You for streaming with accompanying public domain documentary footage. Sure, the record’s still in the process of being mastered — by Billy Anderson, no less — but that’s not about to stop these dudes from getting the word out in advance of the touring they’re looking to do this August. As always, their shit is heavy, expansive and unpredictable. Here it is in three parts:

Psych-metal wunderkind Indy Shome, guitarist/vocalist of the Providence-by-way-of-New–York-by-way-of-Hong–Kong outfit Queen Elephantine and sometime label head of Concrete Lo-Fi Records, returns with his band’s second full-length to be released through a yet-undetermined imprint, Kailash. Named for the Himalayan peak on which Hinduism says resides Lord Shiva, the album was mastered by Billy Anderson, who joins the ranks of Sons of Otis and Elder (with both of whom Queen Elephantine has released splits) on the growing list of names associated one way or another with the band.

With Shome on the experimental outing is vocalist Rajkishen Narayanan, former Agnosis/Tides Within bassist Andrew Jude Riotto, The Cutest Babyhead Ever multi-instrumentalist Brett Zweiman on tabla and other percussion and drummer Chris Dialogue, but contrary to what the personnel might suggest, Kailash relies mostly on a minimalist aesthetic, with few parts that would qualify as conventional doom. Instead, Shome and the band offer sparse, loosely-structured excursions into a spontaneous, improv-sounding creative dimension. There is obviously a plan, but it’s written down on 30 separate pieces of paper and it’s up to you to put them in the right order to find out what the hell it is.

Take the hypobaric drone of opener “Search for the Deathless State,” which, led along the cliffside by a thick Riotto bassline, finds itself falling deep with a spoken word movement and slowly encompassing noise. At 15:39, it is a song almost entirely void of payoff — that is, if you sit through the whole thing expecting Sleep-style guitars to kick in and for Kailash to become an entirely different kind of Holy Mountain, you’re going to be disappointed — but the sense I get is they were going for unsatisfying in the traditional sense.

Read more »