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Khan Announce European Tour Supporting Creatures LP

Posted in Whathaveyou on September 27th, 2023 by JJ Koczan

KHAN

I have spent a decent portion of this year marveling at the small fortune Melbourne’s Khan would seem to have spent on social media promotion. They haven’t been in my feed every single day, but it’s been regular enough since before they released their Creatures album this past February that I feel way more familiar with the band than I am. Oh, Josh recorded the album? That’s nice.

Much of these months of content-creation has been heralding a European tour to come this Fall. Khan were among the early principals announced for Truckfighters Fuzz Festival #4 back in May, and pretty much since then the tour dates have been coming soon.

I’m not knocking this method of spreading the word about your work, mind you. Money where your mouth is. And it got me to finally listen to the record, which is of course killer enough to make me wish I’d bothered seven months ago. Never too late, though, and if you’re at Desertfest Belgium or wherever, you can succeed where I’ve failed in terms of seeing Khan live, which I now want to do, because I heard the record. Funny how that works.

But it does work. I’m a big believer in PR and all that, but a push like this can do a lot for a band. I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels like they’ve spent a good amount of time this year keeping up with Khan. Otherwise they probably wouldn’t be touring Europe in the first place.

From socials, of course:

khan creatures tour

KHAN – EUROPEAN DATES!!

Here it is kids! Behold, the long awaited list of locations, dates and venues!!

We’ve been working really hard for the last 7 months to put this together and are very excited to finally share with you the full list of dates for our second European tour!

We know we’ve already announced the Australian dates and that most of them have already happened, but we wanted to include them because it looks way more impressive on a poster (#129464#)‍♂️ Plus we still have our final show of the Australian leg with Lucid Planet coming up (#129395#)

Please note, there were definitely other cities/countries that we really tried to book shows in but despite our best efforts approaching multiple promoters and venues, we were unable to get dates that worked with the rest of our tour.

Having said that, we do still have a few gaps in the tour schedule, so if you’re a promoter, venue booker or in a band and want to book us or add us to an existing show on one of our free dates, please send us a DM.

Event Details (will be updated with more event links shortly).

Axl Entertainment & Full Contact Safari Records presents:

Oct 7 – Melbourne (AU) – Bergy Bandroom
https://fb.me/e/2V9oUxqQf

Oct 19 – Jena (DE) – KuBa
(Event link coming soon)

Oct 21 – Antwerp (BE) – Desertfest Antwerp 2023
https://fb.me/e/41lLv8ceg

Oct 26 – Berlin (DE) – Urban Spree w/ Swan Valley Heights
(Event link coming soon)

Oct 27 – Ingolstadt (DE) – Fronte 79 Jugendkulturzentrum w/ Swan Valley Heights
https://fb.me/e/14oRwAPla

Oct 28 – Frankfurt (DE) – The Cave w/ Swan Valley Heights
https://fb.me/e/1bSmDc0X3

Oct 31 – Swansea (UK) – The Bunkhouse Swansea
(Event link coming soon)

Nov 1 – Exeter (UK) – Move Live
(Event link coming soon)

Nov 2 – Bristol (UK) – The Gryphon
https://fb.me/e/5GC7Q6mQ8

Nov 4 – London (UK) – The Dev
(Event link coming soon)

Nov 5 – Manchester (UK) – Grand Central – Alt Bar & Live Music Venue – 80 Oxford st Manchester
(Event link coming soon)

Nov 7 – Lippstadt (DE) – Gaststätte Zum Güterbahnhof
https://fb.me/e/2WhgUsqvQ

Nov 8 – Odense (DK) – Frølageret
(Event link coming soon)

Nov 9 – Malmö (SE) – Plan B – malmö
(Event link coming soon)

Nov 10 – Stockholm (SE) – TRUCKIGHTERS FUZZ FESTIVAL #4 – 10/11 Nov 2023 with Valley of the Sun, Skraeckoedlan and more!
https://fb.me/e/10VMKv3zZ

Nov 11 – Oslo (NO) – Revolver
https://fb.me/e/36CHCnQ0q

Khan are:
Josh Bills – Vocals/Guitar/Keys
Mitchell Kerr – Bass
Beau Heffernan – Drums

https://www.facebook.com/khanbandofficial/
http://www.instagram.com/khanbandofficial
http://khanofficial.bandcamp.com/
https://linktr.ee/khanofficial

https://www.facebook.com/fullcontactsafarirecords/
https://www.instagram.com/fullcontactsafarirecords/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUMHoOMtZHqXWtBKfzG7TmA
https://www.fullcontactsafarirecords.com/

Khan, Creatures (2023)

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The Obelisk Radio Adds: Boris, Sólstafir, Desert Suns & Chiefs, Elara, Fungus Hill

Posted in Radio on July 31st, 2017 by JJ Koczan

the obelisk radio cavum

Some bigger releases going up to the playlist for The Obelisk Radio this time around, and that’s just fine by me. It’s five albums listed here, but there are a few others included as well that you can see listed on the updates page and it’s good stuff all the way around. It was all actually supposed to go up last week, but you know, life is chaos and all that. I hope as always that you manage to find something you enjoy, and if you haven’t heard some of this stuff as yet — I suspect you have, because you know what’s up and I’m perpetually behind on these things; more than just a week, on average — then all the better. Let’s dig in together.

The Obelisk Radio adds for July 31, 2017:

Boris, Dear

boris dear

If you were Boris and you were looking to celebrate a quarter-century of innovating heavy rock, noise, drone, J-pop, and genreless forays into bizarre sonic delights, how would you do it? If you said, “I’d release 69 heavy-as-hell minutes of rumbling tectonics and progressive scope making for one of the best albums of the year,” you’d seem to be on the money. The Japanese trio’s umpteenth full-length, Dear (on Sargent House in the US/EU and Daymare in Japan), begins with the appropriately-titled “D.O.W.N. – Domination of Waiting Noise,” setting forth a consuming six-minute onslaught of feedback and lumbering pummel before the SunnO)))-rivaling drone of “Deadsong” takes hold, shifting at its midpoint to a spaciousness all Boris‘ own. Then they chug out galloping riff triplets on “Absolutego” like it ain’t no thing. That’s Boris: the band who named themselves after a Melvins song and then utterly outdid their namesake on every creative level and have continued to do so throughout one of underground music’s most landmark tenures. Dear offers simultaneous melodic breadth and droning depth on its centerpiece duo of “Kagero” and “Biotope” after counteracting minimalist march with explosive crash on “Beyond,” but they’re still just getting started. The seven-minute “The Power” leads off the second of the two LPs and seems to stem upward from the same roots as YOB at their harshest, brutally feedbacking into the dronegaze of the shorter “Memento Mori” before the 12-minute “Dystopia – Vanishing Point” and the nine-minute title-track comprise a side D that’s nothing less than a triumphant lesson in how to meet your audience head-on right before you swallow them whole, setting its stage with keys and tribalist drums quickly before hypnotizing through five minutes of quiet stretch and bursting gloriously to life ahead of one last contrast of empty spaces and crushing tonality on “Dear” that gives way at last to the noise and feedback that’s always been so essential to their process. If Dear is a letter to Boris‘ fans, as they have said, it is also a willful embrace of the wide-open sensibilities that have made the last 25 years of their craft so uniquely their own. They can go anywhere stylistically and remain Boris precisely because they refuse to settle on a single idea that defines them.

Boris on Thee Facebooks

Boris at Sargent House’s website

 

Sólstafir, Berdreyminn

solstafir berdreyminn

Having now passed the 20-year mark since their founding in 1995, Iceland’s Sólstafir continue to reshape melancholy in their own image on their sixth album and third for Season of Mist, Berdreyminn. The Reykjavik-based four-piece keep the significant achievements of 2014’s Ótta (review here) close to the chest throughout the eight-track/57-minute offering, but songs like “Ísafold” have an upbeat push behind their emotional resonance, and even on a brooding piano piece like “Hvít Sæng,” the overarching sense of motion and the dynamic is maintained. The penultimate “Ambátt” — first of two eight-minute cuts in a finale duo — might be Berdreyminn‘s richest progressive achievement, with its lush opening vocal harmonies giving way to a patiently-delivered clinic on texture, build and payoff that borders on the orchestral. Of course, strings and horns to appear on the album, adding to already complex arrangements, but Sólstafir never lose their corresponding human center, and as “Bláfjall” closes with an intensity of thrust hinted at by the cymbal-crash wash of opener “Silfur-Refur” and the post-blackened push of “Nárós” but ultimately on its own level, they underline the realization and poise that is simply all their own. Berdreyminn is the sound of a band doing important work, and with it, Sólstafir only prove themselves more crucial on an aesthetic level, yet it might be their ability to somehow still feel in-progress that most defines what makes them so special. More than two decades on, they still come across like a group exploring their sound and finding new ways to develop their songwriting — which they are and which they do here. That in itself is an accomplishment worthy of every accolade they reap, and Berdreyminn lives up to that standard front to back across its engaging, encompassing span.

Sólstafir on Thee Facebooks

Sólstafir at Season of Mist’s website

 

Desert Suns & Chiefs, The Second Coming of Heavy – Chapter 5

second-coming-of-heavy-chapter-5-desert-suns-chiefs

Ripple Music has made its The Second Coming of Heavy series of split LPs an essential showcase of the variety in underground rock. The Second Coming of Heavy – Chapter 5 brings together San Diego heavy psych/blues rockers Desert Suns, who also reissued their debut long-player through Ripple in 2016 and followed it with the single “The Haunting” (review here) in conjunction with Ripple and HeviSike Records, and Phoenix, Arizona’s Chiefs, whose 2015 debut, Tomorrow’s Over (review here), arrived on vinyl via Battleground Records and whose five tracks included on side B here cast them among the best Ripple Music bands in the Southwest not currently signed to Ripple Music for their next album. More than some prior installments, The Second Coming of Heavy – Chapter 5 finds its two featured purveyors complementing each other’s work excellently, as Desert Suns offer three seven-plus minute tracks running from the harmonica-inclusive “Night Train” and the rolling, long-fading “Solitude” with the push of “Heavy” in between and Chiefs — though their individual runtimes are shorter — holding straightforward heavy/desert rock methods at their core in unpretentious fashion across “The Rhino,” the standout “Baron to Chancellor,” “Low Tide,” “Caroline” and “My Last Stand,” nodding initially at ’90s noise rock à la Helmet in “The Rhino” but in the end keeping to their sandy, well-structured mission. As ever, The Second Coming of Heavy asks nothing more of its audience than a basic exploration of the groups included, and certainly both Desert Suns and Chiefs earn that. Whether one takes it on in the context of the prior chapters or as a standalone split release, it delivers a collection of cuts from two outfits with a shared core of quality songcraft and the underlying message that sometimes the straight-line route is the way to go. Right on, once again.

Desert Suns on Thee Facebooks

Chiefs on Thee Facebooks

Ripple Music website

Ripple Music on Bandcamp

 

Elara, Deli Bal

elara deli bal

Both sides of Elara‘s PsyKa Records-released debut full-length, Deli Bal, are comprised of one shorter track on either side of eight minutes and one longer one, 12 and 17 minutes, respectively. Between that and the cover art, it should come as no surprise that heavy psychedelic drift is central to what the Stuttgart, Germany, trio of bassist/vocalist Daniel Wieland, guitarist/noisemaker Felix Schmidt and drummer Martin Wieland — who also stylize their name as the bracketed [Elara Sunstreak Band] — get up to in their first offering, but there’s an underlying progressive melodic sensibility as well, and Schmidt‘s guitar seems to have picked up a few lessons from My Sleeping Karma‘s minor-key solo mysticism, so one can hear a sound beginning to take shape early as the leadoff title-track gives way to “Amida,” which swaps back and forth between organ-laden krautrock meandering and fuller-fuzz thrust, and as “Quarantania” reinforces that classic vibe with a warm bass tone from Daniel. Whether you’re listening to the platter itself and switching sides or digitally or on CD, Deli Bal is clearly intended to be consumed as a whole work, and one can hear the vocal melody of “Harmonia” tying back to that in the opener as another example of the underlying structure with which it plays out, despite the broad feel of the songs themselves and the expanses they both intend and actually do cover. The LP has just the four tracks, but the digital version comes with the 9:42 bonus cut “Trimenon,” which builds around a core post-rocking guitar line to come to a fervent apex before receding again to let the listener go gently from Deli Bal‘s total 56-minute runtime; no minor undertaking, but effectively executed and a pleasure in its wandering mind and spirit.

Elara on Thee Facebooks

PsyKA Records on Bandcamp

 

Fungus Hill, Creatures

fungus hill creatures

This early-2017 psychedelic curio from Umeå, Sweden’s Fungus Hill begins by asking “Are You Dead?” The just-under-nine-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) of the groovy outfit’s four-song, self-released, 28-minute debut Creatures EP doesn’t sound overly concerned with whether the answer is yes or no so much as enacting a serene flow by posing the question over a laid back bluesy vibe. Arrangement? Fluid. With dual vocals from guitarist Gustav Orvefors and percussionist Jenny Isaksson — the five-piece is completed by guitarist Erik Sköld, drummer Nils Mörtzell and bassist Tom Westerlund — Fungus Hill are able to bring variety as they turn to post-Ghost straightforward ’70s chorus-leaning in the first half of “Beware of Evil in the Sky,” prior to a midsection trip outward on subdued shimmy and deceptively complex melodicism. The flute (or keyboard flute sounds) of the jazzy “Evolution” brings Isaksson to the floor with a smoky, even-bluesier feel, and the guitar answers back with fuzzy lead flourish that only enhances the soul on display, while a seven-and-a-half-minute closing title-track delves deepest of all into thicker riffing, a “Na na na na” hook taking hold quickly just in case you weren’t sure it was going to be a highlight. It is. More tonally dense than most retro boogie — and less retro, for that matter — Fungus Hill‘s Creatures nonetheless has its traditionalist elements, but across its individual pieces each one points to a different side of the band’s personality, and from the Alan Watts sample at the beginning of “Are You Dead?” to when we meet the troll later in “Creatures,” each side of that personality utterly shines.

Fungus Hill on Thee Facebooks

Fungus Hill on Bandcamp

 

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Fungus Hill Premiere Live Video for “Creatures”

Posted in Bootleg Theater on July 10th, 2017 by JJ Koczan

fungus hill

It’s a pretty rare band who would let themselves shine in the context of an official live video rather than something more polished featuring — even if it’s live footage — the studio version of a track, and yet, in the case of Sweden’s Fungus Hill, yeah, I get it. To see the Umeå-based five-piece performing the title-track of their early-2017 debut EP, Creatures, on stage in their hometown — the lights, the party vibe, the raucous jam that takes hold as a seven-minute song becomes a nine-minute one, rolling out its sing-along-ready na-na-na hook — it’s almost hard to imagine a more appropriate context for “Creatures” than the one Fungus Hill set for it here.

And yeah, the live version of the song is rawer than what one hears closing out the EP after “Are You Dead,” “Beware of Evil in the Sky” and “Evolution” have unfolded their flowing and jammy chill. If you need a clue that it’s tripped out, the EP starts with an Alan Watts sample before locking quickly into the first of its many languid grooves, touching on a melodic wash but keeping earthy tones beneath for a terrestrial anchor. “Beware of Evil in the Sky” is shorter and more boogie-prone, but its midsection lets loose as well, and while “Evolution” touches on ’70s prog and brings Jenny Isaksson‘s vocals to the fore, “Creatures” is an all-in fuzz happening, nod and color intertwining righteously in an echoing expanse that, live or in the studio, brims with creative energy and an infectious positivity of mood. If you were to say “right fucking on” in response to hearing it, I don’t think you’d be wrong.

You can check out the live clip of “Creatures” below and, like me, wish you’d been at the band’s hometown show at Pipes of Scotland this past March where/when it was filmed. More info follows the clip, and as always, I hope you enjoy:

Fungus Hill, “Creatures” live in Umeå

The psychedelic, stonerrock band Fungus Hill from northern Sweden performing the title track from their debut EP “Creatures”.

Starting this week Fungus Hill will be recording a new album which will add cosmic ambience to their already fuzzy sound, listen out for it this winter!

Fungus Hill is:
Erik Sköld – Guitar
Nils Mörtzell – Drums
Gustav Orvefors – Guitar/vocals
Tom Westerlund – Bass
Jenny Isaksson – Vocals/percussion

Fungus Hill, Creatures (2017)

Fungus Hill on Thee Facebooks

Fungus Hill on Instagram

Fungus Hill on Bandcamp

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