Posted in Whathaveyou on February 5th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
At this point it’s been over six years since Darmstadt, Germany, heavy rockers Bushfire put out their last album, 2018’s When Darkness Comes (review here), and it seems like if a follow-up is something that’s ever going to happen, now’s probably a good time. The long-running troupe sent word that they’ve welcomed bassist Nicolas Kurz back into the fold and they don’t go so far as to announce recording plans or say a thing is done, but they do say flat out they’re targeting a 2024 release, and there’s a lot of year left, so they might even get there.
The band released their Live at 806qm recording in 2020 and played Desertfest Belgium last year. I’d assume any future live plans will come together around the recording, whenever that happens, so it might be a bit before they’re out for anything more than a getaway, but that they’re moving forward is still good news. Proceedings proceeding, and so on.
Frontman Bill Brown checked in on socials:
Yo, BILL here, on behalf of BUSHFIRE.
Well, you might have noticed we’ve been off the radar for quite some time. And trust me, it’s not been easy.
Understanding. For me this means in these almost 20 years as a BUSHFIRE member, in this band you must have a love for music and share with other musicians, musical ideas, a common ground and goal so to say. Sometimes that’s tougher than you’d think. As a lyricist, I depend on the music to drive me into the emotional journey so I can reflect and convey, if nothing but, a feeling. I can only assume every musician has exactly that feeling no matter the instrument. Dependance, on one another. We take a journey together and it’s tough sometimes. I’m nothing without my band. Well ok, a poet maybe.
As always in life, things change. Our bassist and good buddy Vince, has decide to depart from the BUSHFIRE saga, on his own terms and personal reasons. It lay heavy in our hearts but understanding is key. We wish him nothing but the best.
From Vinz:
“When I joined Bushfire I was a fan of the band. I had seen them in 2012, playing a gig in Das Bett in Frankfurt and I thought “This is the music I would like to play!”. Fast forward a couple of years and I was waking up at 6 every morning to practice dozens of songs after Billorone had asked me: “Do you have time for a 2 weeks tour of the Balkans?”. It has been 10+ years of efforts and rewards, sacrifices and satisfactions, sweat and thrills, passionate fights and passionate harmonies, crazy highway trips, long stage-time waits, amazing concerts. I leave now because I need to find a new perspective, you know when sometimes a cycle must close? I will stay a Bushfire fan. I wish you good luck, guys, and I bow one last time to all the people that have been supporting us all along. Rock on!”
As bittersweet as this may be, we are excited to announce and love to re-welcome, NICK. (Nicolas Kurz)
Nick has shared the stage with us through the years with countless heroes of music.
We have a history, it’s comforting. Between (2011-2013) (recorded: Heal Thy Self), we’ve crossed Europe, destroying minds and ears along the way. It’s amazing to have him back for the support and journey. So let’s raise a glass to our brother’s return!
That being said, we’ve been focusing on our new album diligently. Our goal is to record, produce and release this album this year. Determined to take a new journey and return to the light, love, family, friends and stage that we’ve been so greatly missing.
Understanding is key. See you very soon. Love. BUSHFIRE
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 10th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
15 years of Wight, huh? I recall vividly digging their recently-reissued 2011 debut, Wight Weedy Wight (review here), and the progression they’ve unfolded in the years since — their most recent album is 2020’s Spank the World (review here) — they came to embrace first a psychedelic take and settled into a funkish groove based around that, emphasizing performance and daring to be fun in an unironic way. Well, at least mostly unironic. Cheekiness has always been a factor, along with a good deal of charm.
They’ll head out for live shows to celebrate the anniversary, which is fair enough, in the company of Buddha Sentenza, who as fate and luck would apparently have it are also celebrating their 15th year in 2023. Cheers to both bands and safe travels. You don’t even have to look as far as the poster to know this’ll be fun, but you might want to check it out anyway.
And worth noting that 15 years in, Wight aren’t resting on laurels. I saw some studio-adjacent antics in a post on whichever social it was, so they’re at least around recording equipment, which if you’ve ever heard music before you know is an important step toward making a thing.
And while I’m ticking boxes, I’ll further note that the only reason I’m posting Wight‘s announcement of these shows instead of Buddha Sentenza‘s is I saw Wight‘s first. Fair’s fair.
Dig:
Wight’s 15th anniversary tour with Buddha Sentenza
As you might have noticed on social media, we had our 15th anniversary this year. We prepared a special set for our birthday show back in April, and we’d like to play a few more gigs with that one. So far we have only played locally this year, but now we’ll be going on a short tour through Germany in November. We’ll have our friends of Buddha Sentenza with us, who coincidentally also just turned 15 years old. (The band that is, not the members.)
The tour dates: 01.11 Bessunger Knabenschule – DARMSTADT (Wight only!) 02.11 SubKultur – HANNOVER 03.11 Supamolly – BERLIN 04.11 Schlachthof – EISENACH 11.11 Bessunger Knabenschule – DARMSTADT (Buddha Sentenza only!)
We are planning to play live a lot more in 2024, and also go to other European countries. If you have ideas or suggestions, let us know! So far, we have the following gigs confirmed:
There’s something unassuming about the way Lucid Void jazz into “Himmelheber,” the seven-minute opening track on their self-titled debut full-length, released through Sound of Liberation Records. But the first two minutes of that song, before it moves to the more grounded but still intricate series of jabs and bass flourishes, building like classic heavy prog jams, are emblematic of the subtleties on display throughout the record. Based in Darmstadt, Germany, and produced by René Hofmann (also of Wight) with mixing by Josko Joketovic Jole Joka (Willi Dammeier at Institut für Wohlklangforschung mastered), Lucid Void offer six tracks of krautrock-informed sans-vox heavy prog and psych.
Beginning with “Himmelheber” as both leadoff and the longest individual piece (immediate points), they go on to inhabit a range of vibes across the three-per-side-makes-six songs and 36 minutes, with “Gala Ballada,” following and opening wider to psychedelic-ish fluidity, mellow space rock throwing itself a twist in the last of its own seven minutes (opening with the two longest tracks is double points; please note there are no actual points) in giving due accent to its patient but not still movement. Like the quiet section of a latter-day Elder song isolated and extracted to stand on its own, it sweeps into its more shimmering conclusion of thoughtful lead guitar and keys, resides there for a while and then fades out, not looking to wear out its welcome but, especially in combination with “Himmelheber” just before, engaging and maybe a little hypnotic but still clear in its purposes toward exploring classy/classic progressive rock.
The listener might not always know where the four-piece of Jakob Schuck (guitar), Samba Gueye (keyboards), Béla Nitsch (bass) and Max Hübner (drums/percussion) are going, but if Causa Sui had already known they wanted to be psych-jazz when they started out, their first record might’ve sounded like Lucid Void‘s self-titled, and as they move through the willfully bumpy early rhythm and warm heavy-psych-toned procession of “Dorian,” definitely plotted in its structure but still feeling open on its journey into the proto-New Wave keyboard and molten bass and the concluding acoustic reveal in its second half, the grace in the band’s sound isn’t to be ignored.
One can hear hints of Colour Haze, the aforementioned Causa Sui and Elder, maybe some loose influence from fellow European instrumentalists like My Sleeping Karma on “Dorian,” but while Lucid Void are obviously schooled in the works of generational forebears, they come across as wanting to take on an array of different sounds and sub-styles within the proggier end of heavy music, and that ambition is realized across Lucid Voidin the varied but cohesive stretches of the songs that comprise it.
“Dorian” is shorter than either of its two side A companions, and no less thoughtful in wrapping the first half of the album than “Himmelheber” was in starting, the pastoral shimmer of its relatively quick guitar intro soon joined by toms seeming to preface some of the serenity of the is-that-running-water-I-hear ending. To be symmetrical and liquid in kind is not easy in any style, let alone on a first record, but a deceptively gentle delivery even at in the neo-space rock shuffle of “Gala Ballada” answers the insistence that emerges from the keys and chimes in the early going of “Himmelheber” in ways that make the album a deeper listening experience and give a more complex impression of the band on the whole.
Further evidence of an underlying plan at work is the manner in which “Flatlanders” picks up with acoustic guitar where “Dorian” left off, taking its first minute for an introductory exploration before the organ-backed swing and strutting lead electric guitar kick in to unfold the ‘meat’ of the song itself. There’s character in “Flatlanders” beyond the organic tonality of the band itself and the bit of tambourine they toss in shortly before mellowing out at the halfway mark. The patience in that trade, in pulling back, is crucial to understanding the band, and that they don’t rush back into ‘the heavy part’ communicates their potential all the more. Instead, “Flatlanders” makes its way through a build of guitar and keys.
Yes, the tambourine returns at the end, but the four-piece do well to focus on getting there as much as where they’re going, where they’ve been. The penultimate “Galyxo” is the longest cut on side B at 6:29, and by then the course is set. Lucid Void lean a bit into the rhythmic urgency of Slift but not necessarily the sensory-overload of volume, and when they turn from the buzz-fuzz and sharp snare to the more open flow for the second time, the result in what you might call the song’s payoff if the whole thing wasn’t the payoff arrives at thicker distortion and riffier push only as part of its overarching purpose toward heavy psychedelia.
“Galyxo” is satisfying enough to be the crescendo of Lucid Void, and is all the more appropriate to think of in those terms because it doesn’t lose itself in the moment it creates, but the concluding “Suns,” which is the shortest inclusion at 5:08 seems to allow the listener space to daydream. There’s definite forward movement, a particularly post-Koglek rhythm to the riff that some of the song works around, but in the finale as well, Lucid Void show they’re up to the task of incorporating influences into their own approach rather than carbon-copying what came before. More than an epilogue as the closer, “Suns” is languid in its groove and the last guitar solo and standalone-piano ending feel placed in order to leave off with no less consciousness-of-self (as opposed to being self-conscious in an insecure sense) than they executed “Himmelheber,” “Dorian,” or “Flatlanders.”
Which is to say, if Lucid Void didn’t write these songs specifically to be put where they are on the record, they sound like they did, and that might actually be more of an accomplishment. That’s doubly true on a debut full-length, where the task is as much about making a first impression on new listeners as establishing at least some facets of the aesthetic scope the band will explore. Lucid Void sound fresh in their not-overwrought, semi-psychedelic prog, and are able to shape their material in order to evoke and emotional response without vocals. Wherever they ultimately end up in terms of sound, that ability can only be an asset, as it most certainly is here.
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Just a couple weeks ago, Darmstadt’s Lucid Void were announced as having signed to SOL Records. The acronym there is for Sound of Liberation — if you were thinking “shit out of luck,” nope, though there may well be days where the European booking agency feels like it might apply — and the German four-piece join a nascent but already international roster of acts after already inking for tours. I suppose a big clue might’ve been when Lucid Void were invited to play the Sound of Liberation anniversary party last year, or 2022’s first edition of the Lazy Bones Festival in Hamburg, which the company also puts on.
In 2023, Lucid Void are already confirmed for Keep it Low in October — they’ll be at Stoned From the Underground as well this summer — and it only seems likely that will lead to more as they make ready to unveil their self-titled debut, produced like their 2020 SAAT EP by René Hofmann of Wight, on May 19. If that seems like a quick turnaround from signing to release, that might be a result of shellshock from the pressing delays of 2021-2022, which have reportedly abated to some degree this year, so take it as a good sign. And you could do far worse than, “my goodness we gottta get this record out asap,” as regards urgency.
Cover art and preorder link and other whathaveyou follow here, as per socials:
It’s official — Our self-titled album “Lucid Void” will be released on 19th of May via SOL Records
It will be available on limited coloured vinyl, black vinyl and cd. You can preorder your copy now on SOL Record’s website.
We’re also proud to finally present to you our magnificent album cover by the amazing artist Johanna Amberg from Darmstadt.
She took inspiration from our music and came up with a very cool idea. What you are seeing is actually a real miniature sculpture she manufactured herself.
The album was recorded by René Hofmann and mixed by Josko Joketovic Jole Joka. The mastering was done by Willi Dammeier at Institut für Wohlklangforschung.
TRACKLIST: A 1 Himmelheber A 2 Gala Ballada A 3 Dorian B 1 Flatlanders B 2 Galyxo B 3 Suns
Lucid Void are Jakob Schuck, Samba Gueye, Béla Nitsch and Max Hübner.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 23rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Darmstadt, Germany’s Lucid Void are the second band to be picked up for the roster of SOL Records, the label wing of European booking agency Sound of Liberation. The imprint released Slip Through the Cracks (review here) by Athens’ Half Gramme of Soma last year and will follow sometime in the coming months with Lucid Void‘s yet-untitled debut. If you saw the word “Darmstadt” there and thought to yourself, “Gee, I wonder if they know Wight and/or Bushfire,” well, Wight‘s René Hofmann mixed and mastered their 2020 SAAT EP — streaming below; it’s pretty cool — so at least there’s that.
I don’t know what they call this generation in Europe. Is it still Gen-Z? I think we’re really starting to see a generational turnover in bands. Some are aging out, some new ones are coming in, it’s great. If I was the listicle type, I’d put together a ’30 under 30′ or some such, but I’ve got neither the time, the inclination, nor the will to fact-check the age of a bunch of dudes when it’s secondary to the point of the band’s existence anyhow. I wouldn’t count someone out because they’re 32, is what I’m saying, and the whole thing suddenly becomes an overthought pain in the ass because that’s how I do.
Whatever. I asked the AI robot what Gen-Z is called in Europe and it’s Gen-Z, mostly. See? Fact-checking matters. Though I’m not sure I’d call that robot a reputable source at this point. In any case, congrats to Lucid Void on the signing and here’s looking forward to the record. I’m kind of assuming it’ll be out this Fall since after playing Stoned From the Underground this summer, the band will also play Keep it Low in Munich this October. Would be a hell of a release party, but I guess we’ll see how the timing works.
Sound of Liberation sent the following in their newsletter:
SOL RECORDS: LUCID VOID SIGNED
We are proud to announce the signing of the super talented psychedelic krautrock band Lucid Void from Darmstadt, Germany.
Some of you might know them already from performances with My Sleeping Karma, Colour Haze and Greenleaf at some of our festivals.
We are stoked to have them on board. Their first full length album will be released soon via our new SOL Records Label.
Stay tuned about what’s coming next. A lot of good music cooking in our label pot. We are sure you will love it!
Posted in Questionnaire on November 19th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Bill Brown of Bushfire
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Vocalist in BUSHFIRE. My mother had music in the house constantly, all genres from a-z and movie musicals. No matter how hard times were or how much trouble I was in… we could sing. (Even at the dinner table) my first band was with 15/16.
Describe your first musical memory.
I’m guessing impressions? I guess it would have to be Kris Kristofferson ripping off his mask singing “go to hell” (hellacious acres) in the Barbra Streisand remake of A Star is Born in a movie theatre when it was released.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
That’s a tough one because I love to perform, so I guess it’s just being out with my guys rocking it out with my band and the crowd, every and anywhere.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I’m quite stubborn, open but stubborn. What I believe is just that and I won’t be swayed. Sadly the some of the world doesn’t comply with my beliefs of humanity, charity and brotherhood. Greed and power seem to be more important for some.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Mine? I love to turn the stone and see what’s lurking, stabbing into the dark and going to uncomfortable places to reveal possibly more to myself about myself. The bonus is recording it, rereading it, transforming it into something, in this case a song/album.
How do you define success?
Being happy doing what you do and what you have done.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
My mother’s last breath. Don’t get me wrong, it was a privilege to comfort her on her way out but that last second just haunts me to this day.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
A German Schlager song… more for just the humor of it. And a really over the top trippy psychedelic album, possibly spoken word.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Expression and inspiration.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Oh my breaking heart as we move into day seven of the Summer 2021 Quarterly Review and I am reminded that the wages of hubris are feeling like a dumbass later. I was loading up my laptop on Saturday — so pleased with how ahead-of-the-game I was able to stay all last week — when the thing decided it was gonna give itself some time off one way or the other.
I dropped it for repair about 20 minutes before the guy I’ve come to trust was closing shop. He said he’d be in touch on Monday. Needless to say, I’m on my backup cheapie Chromebook, reviewing off Bandcamp streams, eagerly awaiting that call which I can only hope has come in by the time this is posted. I’ll keep you in the loop, of course, but putting together the reviews for yesterday? That was not pretty.
I expressly thank The Patient Mrs., through whom all things are possible.
Onward.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
Geezer, Solstice
Geezer‘s ambition could hardly be clearer in their 17-minute “Solstice” jam. It was the Solstice — Winter 2020, to be specific — and the Kingston, New York, trio jammed. Guitarist/vocalist Pat Harrington (who doesn’t sing on the track) added some dreamy synth after the fact, and the affect is all the more hypnotic for it. Harrington, bassist Richie Touseull and drummer Steve Markota are no strangers to exploratory fare, as they showed on 2020’s righteous Groovy (review here), and as a Bandcamp Friday-era stopgap offering, “Solstice” brings a sampling of who they are in the rehearsal space, willing to be heavy, willing to not, ready to go where the music leads them. If Geezer wanted to do a whole full-length like this, I wouldn’t fight them, so you most definitely will not find me arguing against a digital single either. With jams this tasty, you take what you can get.
Issued less as a stopgap, which a digital-only single might normally be, than as a response to the band having lost gear in a practice space flood, the 8:52 single-song outing The Event Horizon was recorded at the same time as Spaceslug‘s late 2020 EP The Leftovers (review here) and in a way acts to bridge the melancholy beyond-genre push of that release with the more weighted, spacious roll that has typified the Polish outfit’s work to-date — their latest full-length was 2019’s Reign of the Orion (review here), and they recently finished a new one. So perhaps “The Event Horizon,” with its hypnotically languid rhythm and concluding drift, is a stopgap after all, but between helping the band recoup their losses and thinking of what might be coming next, it’s an exciting if not-unalloyed listening experience, and the three-piece move deeper into a signature sound even as they continue to bring the definition of what that means to new places.
Creating sometimes-scorching, droning psychedelic soundtracks to all your favorite classic sci-fi films that never existed, Kansas City’s Expo Seventy offer a call to worship for freaks and converted heads on their new album, Evolution. Still headed by guitarist James Wright as on late-2016’s America Here and Now Sessions (review here), the band offer new glories celestial and terrestrial instrumental chemistry throughout the six tracks (seven on the CD) of Evolution, lumbering away on “Echoes of Ether” only after floating in brass-section antigrav conditions on “The Slow Death of Tomorrow.” Can you hang? You’ll know one way or the other as the culminating duo “Second Vision, First Sight” and “First Vision, Second Sight” are done with you, having altered dimensions so thoroughly that the ethereal will either come to feel like home or you will simply have melted. In any case, lash yourself to it. Own that shit.
Peak-era Faith No More reborn in progressive heavy fuzz? What stoner rock might’ve been if it went to college instead of spending all that time hanging around talking about old cars? I don’t know where UK four-piece Boss Keloid ultimately stand on their admirable fifth LP, Family the Smiling Thrush — the follow-up to 2018’s also-well-received Melted on the Inch (review here) — but they most certainly stand on their own. Across seven tracks, the band careen, crash, lumber, rush and ponder — lyrics no less worth a close read than any other component — and from opener/longest track (immediate points) “Orang of Noyn” on, they make it abundantly clear that their style’s unpredictability is an asset, and that just because you might not know where they’re going next doesn’t mean they don’t. Melodic, complex and cerebral, there’s still a human presence here, a sense of a plan unfolding, that makes the album seem all the more masterful.
Though it’s ultimately less electric-kool-aid than endless-churning-abyss-with-psychdelic-saxophone-screaming-up-at-you-like-free-jazz-trapped-in-the-downward-tonal-spiral, Bong-Ra‘s four-tracker Antediluvian is duly experimentalist in being born out of the mind of Jason Köhnen, whose work on this project not only extends more than 20 years, but who has been a part of landmark Dutch outfits like Celestial Season, The Kilmanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, among scores of others. The procession on this full-length, originally released in 2018 through Svart Lava, is wild times indeed, but immersive despite feeling at times like a litmus for how much you can take, with Köhnen‘s bass/keys/etc. and Balazs Pandi‘s drums meeting with Colin Webster‘s saxophone and Chloe Herrington‘s bassoon, willfully plodding through long-ish form improv-seeming movements of atmospheric heft creation.
A coherent and forceful debut full-length, Reek of the Parvenu quickly shows the metallic undercurrent from Athens-based four-piece Zebu on opener “The Setting Dust,” and pushes from there in groove metal fashion, taking some impulses from heavy rock but holding largely to a central aggressive stance and tension in the rhythm that is a backdrop even as the later “Nature of Failure” breaks from its chugging shove for a quieter stretch. That is to say, the next punch is always coming, and Zebu‘s blows are effectively delivered — looking at you, “Burden” — though some of the slower, sludgier cuts like “Our Shame” or the doomier finale “The City” bring a welcome atmosphere to go with the coinciding burl. I’m not sure if “People Under the Stairs” wants to kick my ass or crack a beer, but the songwriting is air tight and the thrashy threat only contributes to the immediacy of the release on the whole. They’re not screwing around.
It’s been 11 years since France’s Los Disidentes del Sucio Motel debuted with Soundtrack From the Motion Picture (review here), an engaging, kind of silly play on stoner rock and B-movie tropes. Beneath that, however, it was also a concept album, and the band — who now seem to prefer LDDSM for a moniker — still work from that foundation on their fourth full-length, Polaris. The difference scope and sonic maturity. Rife with vocal harmonies and progressive flourish, the 10-track answer to 2016’s Human Collapse (review here) smoothly shifts between the patient and the urgent, the intimate and the grand — and that’s in the first two minutes of “Blue Giant” alone — finding their way into a proggy post-heavy rock that’s too clearheaded to be psychedelic, but that balances the crunch of “Horizon” with a sense of the otherworldly just the same.
With their fourth long-player, guitarist/vocalist Anthony Gaglia and drummer Brady Maurer of Portland, Oregon’s LáGoon welcome bassist Kenny Combs to the fold and dive as a trio — their first three-piece outing was last year’s Father of Death EP — headfirst into murky riffing and heady heavy rock, made all the more spacious through cavern echo and the garage doom vocals Gaglia brings on the title-track, as well as the synth that surfaces on the subsequent interlude “Buried” and elsewhere throughout. The earlier “Beyond the Trees” is particularly bleak and otherworldly, but I won’t take away from the further-down procession of “Hill Bomb” and “The Slow Down” into “Final Ride,” the last of which closes out with scummer doom that’s familiar but distinct enough to be their own. There are moments on Skullactic Visions where, for as much as they could sound like Electric Wizard given the ingredients, I’m all the gladder they don’t.
Maha Sohona‘s second album comes some seven years after their self-titled debut, but who cares about time when you’ve got your headphones on and you’re surrounded by the richness of tone on offer throughout Endless Searcher‘s five rolling tracks? Heavy and laid back, the trio of guitarist/vocalist Johan Bernhardtson, bassist Thomas Hedlund and drummer David Lundsten finding some kinship with Polish three-piece Spaceslug in their post-Sungrazer blend of weight and flow, a jam like “Luftslot” nodding and conjuring depth even as it soars. Can’t argue with the quicker push of “A Black Star” or the purposefully straightforward “Scavengers” (where the title-line is delivered) but some of the mellow moments in opener “Leaves” and especially the building instrumental finisher “Orbit X” are even more satisfying for how effectively they move you place to place almost without your realizing it. I’ve got nothing for you if you can’t dig this vibe.
Keen observers will recognize The Bad Sugar Rush vocalist René Hofmann from his work with Wight, but the work here alongside guitarist Josko Joke-Tovic, bassist Minyeong Fischer and drummer Peter Zettl is distinct from that other unit here, even as the Humble Pie-esque “Push Me” and semi-sleeze “Liar” both have some shade of funk to their procession. Both cuts circa four minutes makes for a suitable debut 7″ with respected purveyor H42 Records doing the honors, and the results are an encouragingly catchy display of what a first full-length might accomplish when and however such a thing emerges. There’s classic heavy rock as the foundation, but more than outright ’70s worship — though some of that too — it’s the organic feel of the songs that leaves an impression on the listener, though the background singers on “Push Me” don’t hurt in that regard, certainly. An auspicious and intriguind first showing.
German heavy psych-funk rockers Wight release their new album, Spank the World, on April 24 through Kozmik Artifactz and Fat and Holy Records. Let it suffice to say that Spank the World is the funkdoobiest, trippiest, soul-drippingest apocalyptic sci-fi heavy psych epic you’re going to hear this year, and the fact that it’s likely also the only one you’re going to hear this year has very, very little to do with that. Based in Darmstadt and working as a more involved four-piece with percussionist Steffen Kirchpfening having become more ingrained as a part of the band since joining after most of the skeletal writing for 2016’s Love is Not Only What You Know (review here), Wight moves guitarist/vocalist/key-specialist and directional figurehead René Hofmann into the role of producer as well, tracking over the course of most of last year even as his Wasted Life Studio was being built to completion.
And Spank the World, though it runs a tidy 10 songs and 40 minutes, would not seem to have been a minor undertaking in terms of recording aspirations. Even putting aside the rhythmic complexities brought to bear by Kirchpfening and drummer Thomas Kurek and the shifts in prominence between Hofmann‘s guitar and various keys — organ, clavinet, synthesizers, samplers, etc. (Kirchpfening contributes in this regard as well) — and the swaps between fretted and fretless bass from Peter-Philipp Schierhorn, the guest spots of violin on post-intro opener “Hot,” sax, trombone and trumpet on “Nervous” and “Island in the Sun,” and yes, baritone oud on the three-part pre-outro closer “Bon Apocalypso,” all make for Wight‘s most sonically complex offering to-date, having grown out of the stoner-fuzz beginnings of 2011’s Wight Weedy Wight (review here) and into more psychedelic fare on 2012’s quick-turnaround follow-up, Through the Woods into Deep Water (review here), before restructuring the lineup and bringing in Kirchpfening as a fourth member.
The shift in direction toward broader arrangements seemed at the time to have necessitated that move, and listening to Spank the World, it makes even more sense. Songs like “Island in the Sun,” or the disco-funk tripper “Spiritual Gangster” — a quick instrumental that follows “Hot” and nonetheless serves as more than an interlude in transitioning between the album’s first single and “Nervous” and Motorgroove,” which follow in succession — have a sonic breadth to them that, well, probably would’ve taken much longer than a year to record, even if the three of them had managed to come up with all the same ideas that having a fourth person as a part of the process allowed them to explore. That of course is to say nothing of the aforementioned guest appearances on strings and horns, or the added background vocals, elements of gang shouts, and general twists of mood that come to fruition in the songs themselves, be it the bound-to-be-a-follow-up-single “Time’s Up” on side B or the seven-minute “Bon Apocalypso” itself, which is a somewhat pieced-together freakout jam, less psych than “Motorgroove” at the end of side A, but still flowing and progressive in the finished product. One way or another, people, it all gets pretty wild.
And there’s no doubt left as to that being the band’s precise intent, but that doesn’t mean the songs themselves are haphazard. After “Intro” sets up the rest of what’s to come with synth and various other elements and the robot-voice spoken word of, indeed, ‘The Robot’s Sermon,’ promising a funky end of the world to come, and that’s exactly how the narrative is framed, even as “Hot” — tagged in the liner notes with the line ‘Global Warming’s Not the Only Thing Heating Me Up!’ — and “Nervous” and “Time’s Up” could be just as easily regarded as relationship pieces one way or the other, and are. But, human life being what it is, and with the traditions Wight are working toward on Spank the World, from the mid-’70s P-Funk of Let’s Take it to the Stage to the work of groups like Afreaka!, Mandrill, Cymande and so on, those records never lacked for sex, whatever other issues they might’ve been tackling at the time, so one is inclined to roll with Wight as they accordingly play it loose on the narrative.
As they come out of the subtly jazzy “Interlude” with the spoken delivery of the album’s title line, and embark into “Island in the Sun,” with its laid-back nod tempo and waka-chawaka guitar, they even go so far as to acknowledge the departure they’re making. Again, the liner: ‘C’mon, Everybody Needs It.’ Aside from the statement of class equality inherent in that ‘everybody,’ the simple ‘c’mon’ acts not only as an invitation to the listener to join them on the trip they’re taking sound-wise, but seems to be looking to be cut some slack as well. And it’s slack well earned, because no matter where Wight venture in terms of mood or atmosphere on Spank the World, they do so with precisely as much of a sense of control as they want to convey. “Island in the Sun” shreds out a solo late. “Hot” departs into talkbox psychedelic quirk. “Motorgroove” dream-jams its way into the collection’s crunchiest riff. The minute-long “Outro” distorts electronic beats and bass to act as a bed for a quick description of the aftermath of the funky overlords’ wiping clean the slate of the earth.
But through all of this and everything else, Wight never seem to get lost, and each piece of Spank the World not only feels complete within itself — the instrumentals feel instrumental for a reason; the hooks are well placed — but feeds into the larger progression of the record as a whole. Spank the World is not at all a full-length that one might’ve guessed the band would eventually come up with nine years ago listening to Wight Weedy Wight, but finding out what they’re going to do next has always been part of what makes hearing a new Wight release such an exciting proposition, and as they take the forward steps they do with these tracks, working in and further toward continued mastery of their highly, highly individualized approach, they remain both exciting and unpredictable. This album? It’s a blast. Maybe you can get down and maybe you can’t, but if you find yourself thinking that an LP about giant alien robots coming not to make the Earth stand still, but to boogie into its oblivion is something that doesn’t appeal to you, I dare say it’s time to rethink that position. Today. Do it now.
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I’m thrilled to host the premiere of the video for “Hot” below, and even more thrilled because it comes accompanied with such thorough background on the album from bassist Peter-Philipp Schierhorn. Thanks to the band for letting me host the clip, and to Schierhorn in particular for taking the time. Spank the World is out April 24 on Kozmik Artifactz and Fat and Holy Records.
This is Peter, the bass player from Wight. Rene asked me to write a few words on our new album – right before the release, there are tonloads of stuff to do, and Rene is in charge of most of those. And maybe it’s also not the worst choice to hear the story from the personal perspective of a guy who was involved, but not from THE main guy who did almost everything the entire time.
As you may read in the “official” press text, Rene was definitely in charge of almost everything during the recording as well. At the first glance, that’s only a small change from previous releases, he was quite obviously credited as the producer or pre-producer on all our releases. Which makes sense, the guy went to college for sound engineering and has gathered quite a lot of experience as a live and studio engineer and producer over the years. “Spank the World” is however the first Wight release that didn’t involve at least some external sound engineer getting involved at some point (well, a friend mastered it in the end, but that was when everything was basically finished already).
There is of course a bit more to the story than we put in the official press text. Usually, people never read more than one page (if at all), but Rene told me you may be interested in some more background information. Lots of different things happened since we came back from the last tour in fall 2017. We haven’t been playing live all that much in the meanwhile, but as you can hear on the album we weren’t really lazy either. But we obviously didn’t spend two and a half years recording.
After “Love Is Not Only What You Know”, we were really figuring out how to work as a four piece band. Steffen wrote and recorded percussion for the album, but only got involved after the rest of the music had already been written. We then had to see how to perform live and quickly found out while percussion and synthesizers were a nice addition to our sound, they bounced us from being the easiest-to-mix rock trio in the world to being every FOH engineer’s nightmare. On top of that, we carried a full recording rig with us on one of the tour legs, which resulted in the “Fusion Rock Invasion – Live over Europe” live album. That one turned out nicely, but the tour was semi-hellish especially for our sound guy Josko (the guy who mastered our album) and Rene, who was of course supporting him besides being the front man of the band. Over time, we found a couple of solutions that made everyone’s life easier, such as having a sub-mixer on stage and only sending out a stereo signal of percussion and synths to the FOH. But that was only the beginning.
We also found out we could do a lot more musically with the additional member and a multitude of additional instruments, but that also meant that our usual approach of jamming in the rehearsal room, then playing the songs live until they were really tight, and then recording them in one go, no longer really worked. There are a few old-style jam tracks on the album, but at some point we decided to really focus on a studio recording. Finish and arrange stuff in the studio, use whatever means necessary to produce a great record, and then try and arrange those songs we wanted to play into proper live versions.
I don’t remember exactly when the decision was taken, but I remember that before the last “LINOWYK” tour in late 2017, Rene proposed a live hiatus afterwards, which we should use to help him build a studio so we could record our next album all by ourselves and take all the time we needed. He only had this tiny little studio, but the room next door in the building had just become available, he had rented it and wanted to make a proper recording room out of it.
That’s what we ended up doing, but it didn’t really go as planned. The more predictable bit was that Rene ended up doing most of the work himself, but as it was to be his workplace afterwards anyways, that wasn’t really that big of a problem (Rene may have a slightly different opinion here ;-)). Us other Wight members and many other friends helped and did some work, but of course the bulk got stuck with Rene himself, who basically spent every day in there for almost half a year.
But things didn’t end there – Thomas suddenly fucked off to the US, as he had taken a session job with an American band for four months, Rene’s wife became pregnant (ok, that one was planned I guess), my engineering job suddenly kicked into overdrive and had me flying all over the world, and on top of that, Rene and I got a bit sidetracked with Glanville, the heavy metal band we had founded as a fun little project a while earlier. The studio was usable by late 2018, but the band Wight hadn’t really played at all in the meanwhile. We had a few songs written before and started recording those right after Christmas 2018, but ended up spending most of 2019 rehearsing, writing and recording.
That actually kind of went in waves. The first couple of basic tracks went in pretty quickly, we went back to rehearsing, made a few more, back to the studio, same drill. At the same time, Rene kicked his brain into producer mode and kept layering stuff over the band tracks. There’s a new synth sitting in the studio? Let’s try that out. This sounds like we need horns – call up some friend that play sax and trombone here. Periklis Tsoukalas of Baba Zula is in town? Oh well, let’s see whether we can fit his electric oud in somewhere.
That entire process culminated somewhat in September of last year. We needed one more song for the album (as well as, of course, more overdubs), Rene had a basic structure and a few chords he had made up while lying on the beach in Thailand a few months earlier, and we took one week in the studio to make it into a song. I ended up playing the bassline one evening while high as fuck, with Rene telling me to change individual notes from time to time, but the rest of the week was basically Rene going crazy in there, calling up different guests for features, having Thomas and Steffen arrange some percussions and synths, and trying out every instrument that happened to be in the studio. Can you tell which song was the result of that?
Short story long, there were a few things more to be done, and I think Rene recorded the last bits and pieces only in December 2019 while already in the mixing process. Funnily enough, the cover artwork had been finished a long time before. Rene and our artwork guy, Ingo, hat met up God knows how long before and developed this piece with the huge intergalactic robot appearing over the Darmstadt skyline to destroy the world. That also ended up pushing the lyrical content of the album into a certain direction. Or did it? I’m still a bit surprised that basic love songs like Hot and Time’s Up actually ended up working very well in this entire apocalyptical context, but hey, sometimes things just work. And maybe Rene also knows what he’s doing a bit more than we sometimes give him credit for.
So the album was on its way, but we figured we needed a video. Not the usual live or live-ish video, but a proper music video like in the old days. We met in January 2020 to record the live scenes to the Hot music video, in one of our favorite pubs in town. The entire video was concepted by film students of Darmstadt’s University of Applied Science, with some input from Rene. One of the reasons why I’m writing this already overly long email is that Rene was just finishing the last shoots for the video this weekend… well, as you have the video or will get it very soon, I won’t lose any extra words on it, just see for yourself. And enjoy our new album – you now have the full background story, and I realize that I just made it sound like a mad journey full of “we don’t know what the hell we’re doing” and “oh shit, we didn’t see THAT coming”, but that is also kind of what happened. Does the album reflect that? I’ll let you be the judge. At least you know how it came to pass now, which may ease your confusion… or contribute to it.
