Quarterly Review: James Romig & Mike Scheidt, Mythic Sunship, Deville, Superdeluxe, Esel, Blue Tree Monitor, Astrometer, Oldest Sea, Weddings, The Heavy Crawls
Posted in Reviews on September 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
I’m in it. The only reason I even know what day it is is because I keep notes and I set up the back end of these posts ahead of time. They tell me what number I’m on. As for the rest, it’s blinders and music, all all all. Go. Go. Go. I honestly don’t even know why I still write these intro paragraphs. I just do. You know the deal, right? 10 records yesterday, 10 today, 10 more tomorrow. At some point it ends. At some point it begins again. Presumably before then I’ll figure out what day it is.
Quarterly Review #71-80:
James Romig & Mike Scheidt, The Complexity of Distance
James Romig is a Pulitzer-finalist composer, and Mike Scheidt is the founding guitarist/vocalist of YOB. I refuse to cut-and-paste-pretend at understanding all the theory put into the purported ’13:14:15′ ratio of beat cycles throughout The Complexity of Distance — or, say, just about any of it — but the resulting piece is about 57 minutes of Scheidt‘s guitar work, as recorded by Billy Barnett (YOB‘s regular producer). It is presented as a single track, and with the (obviously intentional) chord progressions in Romig‘s piece, “The Complexity of Distance” is a huge drone. If you ever wanted to hear Scheidt do earlier-style Earth guitar work — yes, duh — then this might satisfy that curiosity. There’s high-culture intersecting with low here in a way that takes Scheidt out of it creatively — that is to say, Romig did the composing — but I won’t take away from the work in concept or performance, or even the result. Hell, I’ll listen to Mike Scheidt riff around for 57 minutes. It’ll be the best 57 minutes of my god damned day. Perhaps that’s not universal, but I don’t think Romig‘s looking for radio hits. Whether you approach it on that theory level or as a sonic meditation, the depths welcome you. I’d take another Scheidt solo record someday too, though. Just saying.
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Mythic Sunship, Light/Flux
Copenhagen’s Mythic Sunship turned Light/Flux around so quick after 2021’s Wildfire (review here) they didn’t even have time to take a new promo photo. There is no question the Danish five-piece have been on a tear for a few years now, and their ascent into the psych-jazz fusion ether continues with Light/Flux, marrying its gotta-happen-right-this-second urgency to a patience in the actual unfolding of songs like the sax’ed out “Aurora” and the more guitar-led “Blood Moon” at the outset — light — with the cosmic triumphalist horn and crashes of “Decomposition” leading off side B and moving into the hey-where’d-you-come-from boogie of “Tempest,” presumably flux. Each half of the record ends with a standout, as “Equinox” follows “Blood Moon” with a more space rock-feeling takeoff pulse, right up to the synth sweep that starts at about 2:50, and “First Frost” gives high and low float gracefully over steady toms like different dreams happening at the same time and then merging in purpose as the not-overblown crescendo locks in. May their momentum carry them ever forward if they’re going to produce at this level.
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Deville, Heavy Lies the Crown
What a fascinating direction the progression of Sweden’s Deville has taken these 15 years after Come Heavy Sleep. Heavy Lies the Crown finds the Swedish journeymen aligned to Sixteentimes Music for the follow-up to 2018’s Pigs With Gods (review here), and is through its eight tracks in a dense-toned, impact-minded 33 minutes with nary a second to spare in cuts like “Killing Time” and “Unlike You” and “A Devil Around Your Neck.” Their push and aggressive edge reminds of turn-of-the-century Swedish heavy rockers like Mustasch or Mother Misery, and even in “Hands Tied” and “Serpent Days” — the two longest cuts on Heavy Lies the Crown, appearing in succession on side A — they maintain an energy level fostered by propulsive drums and a rampant drive toward immediacy rather than flourish, but neither does the material feel rushed or unconsidered right up to the final surprising bit of spaciousness in “Pray for More,” which loosens up the throttle a bit while still holding onto an underlying chug, some last progressive angularity perhaps to hint at another stage to come. One way or the other, in craft and delivery, Deville remain reliable without necessarily being predictable, which is a rare balance to strike, particularly for a band who’ve never made the same record twice.
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Superdeluxe, Superdeluxe
Guitarist/vocalist Bill Jenkins and bassist Matthew Kahn hail from Kingsnake (begat by Sugar Daddie in days of yore), drummer Michael Scarpone played in Wizard Eye, and guitarist Christopher Wojcik made a splash a few years back in King Bison, so yes, dudes have been around. Accordingly, Superdeluxe know off the bat where their grooves are headed on this five-song self-titled EP, with centerpiece “Earth” nodding toward a somewhat inevitable Clutch influence — thinking “Red Horse Rainbow” specifically — and seeming to acknowledge lyrically this as the project’s beginning point in “Popular Mechanix,” driving somewhat in the vein of Freedom Hawk but comfortably paced as “Destructo Facto” and “Severed Hand” are at the outset of the 19-minute run. “Ride” finishes out with a lead line coursing over its central figure before a stop brings the chorus, swing and swagger and a classic take on that riff — Sabbath‘s “Hole in the Sky,” Goatsnake‘s “Trower”; everybody deserves a crack at it at least once — familiar and weighted, but raw enough in the production to still essentially be a demo. Nonetheless, veteran players, new venture, fun to be had and hopefully more to come.
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Esel, Asinus
Based in Berlin and featuring bassist Cozza, formerly of Melbourne, Australia’s Riff Fist, alongside guitarist Moseph and drummer 666tin, Esel are an instrumentalist three-piece making their full-length debut with the live-recorded and self-produced Asinus. An eight-tracker spanning 38 minutes, it’s rough around the edges in terms of sound, but that only seems to suit the fuzz in both the guitar and bass, adding a current of noise alongside the low end being pushed through both as well as the thud of 666tin‘s toms and kick. They play fast, they play slow, they roll the wheel rather than reinvent it, but there’s charm here amid the doomier “Donkey Business” — they’ve got a lot of ‘ass’ stuff going on, including the opener “Ass” and the fact that their moniker translates from German as “donkey” — and the sprawling into maddening crashes “A Biss” later on, which precedes the minute-long finale “The Esel Way Out.” Want to guess what it is? Did you guess noise and feedback? If you did, your prize is to go back to the start and hear the crow-call letters of the band’s name and the initial slow nod of “Ass” all over again. I’m going to do my best not to make a pun about getting into it, but, well, I’ve already failed.
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Blue Tree Monitor, Cryptids
With riffs to spare and spacious vibes besides, London instrumentalists Blue Tree Monitor offer Cryptids, working in a vein that feels specifically born out of their hometown’s current sphere of heavy. Across the sprawl of “Siberian Sand” at the beginning of the five-song/38-minute debut album, one can hear shades of some of the Desertscene-style riffing for which Steak has been an ambassador, and certainly there’s no shortage of psych and noise around to draw from either, as the cacophonous finish manifests. But big is the idea as much as broad, and sample-topped centerpiece “Sasquatch” (also the longest cut at 8:41) is a fine example of how to do both, complete with fuzzy largesse and a succession of duly plodding-through-the-woods riffs. “Antlion” feels laid back in the guitar but contrasts with the drums, and the closer “Seven” is more straight-ahead heavy rock riffing until its second half gets a little more into noise rock before its final hits, so maybe the book isn’t entirely closed on where they’ll go sound-wise, but so much the better for listening to something with multifaceted potential in the present. To put it another way, they sound like a new band feeling their way forward through their songs, and that’s precisely what one would hope for as they move forward from here.
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Astrometer, Incubation
Vigilant in conveying the Brooklynite unit’s progressive intentions, from the synthy-sounding freakout at the end of “Wavelength Synchronizer” to the angular beginning of “Conglobulations,” Incubation is the first two-songer offering from Astrometer, who boast in their ranks members of Hull, Meek is Murder and Bangladeafy. The marriage of sometimes manically tense riffing and a more open keyboard line overhead works well on the latter track, but one would at no point accuse Astrometer of not getting their point across, and with ready-for-a-7″ efficiency, since the whole thing takes just about seven and a half minutes out of your busy day. I’m fairly sure they’ve had some lineup jumbling since this was recorded — there may be up to three former members of Hull there now, and that’s a hoot also audible in the guitars — but notice is served in any case, and the way the ascending frenetic chug of the guitar gives way to the keyboard solo in “Wavelength Synchronizer” is almost enough on its own to let you know that there’s a plan at work. See also the melodic, almost post-rock-ish floating notes above the fray at the start of “Conglobulations.” I bought the download. I’d buy a tape. You guys got tapes? Shirts?
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Oldest Sea, Strange and Eternal
Somewhere between a solo-project and an actual band is Oldest Sea. Led by songwriter, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer Sam Marandola — joined throughout the four tracks of debut EP Strange and Eternal by lead guitarist/drummer Andrew Marandola and on 10-minute closer “The Whales” by bassist Jay Mazzillo — the endeavor is atmospherically weighted and given a death-doom-ish severity through the echoing snare on “Consecration,” only after opener “Final Girl” swells in distortion and melody alike until receding for string-style ambience, which might be keyboard, might be guitar, might be cello, I don’t know. Marandola also performs as a solo folk artist and one can hear that in her approach to the penultimate “I’ll Take What’s Mine,” but in the focus on atmosphere here, as well as the patience of craft across differing methodologies in what’s still essentially an initial release — if nothing before it proves the argument, certainly “The Whales” does — one hears shades of the power SubRosa once wielded in bringing together mournful melody and doomed tradition to suit purposes drawing from American folk and post-metallic weight. At 25 minutes, I’m tempted to call it an album for its sheer substance. Instead I’ll hang back and just wait and get my hopes up for when that moment actually comes.
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Weddings, Book of Spells
Based in Austria with roots in Canada, Spain and Sweden, Weddings are vocalist/guitarist Jay Brown, vocalist/drummer Elena Rodriguez and bassist Phil Nordling, and whether it’s the grunge turnaround on second cut “Hunter” or the later threatening-to-be-goth-rock of “Running Away” — paired well with “Talk is Cheap” — the trio are defined in no small part by the duet-style singing of Brown and Rodriguez. The truly fortunate part of listening to their sophomore LP, Book of Spells, is that they can also write a song. Opener “Hexenhaus” signals a willful depth of atmosphere that comes through on “Sleep” and the acoustic-led gorgeousness of “Tundra,” and so on, but they’re not shy about a hook either, as in “Greek Fire,” “Hunter,” “Running Away” and closer “Into the Night” demonstrate. Mood and texture are huge throughout Book of Spells, but the effect of the whole is duly entrancing, and the prevailing sense from their individual parts is that either Brown or Rodriguez could probably front the band on their own, but Weddings are a more powerful and entrancing listen for the work they do together throughout. Take a deep breath before you jump in here.
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The Heavy Crawls, Searching for the Sun
A classic rock spirit persists across the nine songs of The Heavy Crawls‘ sophomore full-length, Searching for the Sun, as the Kyiv-based trio of guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Max Tovstyi, bassist/backing vocalist Serj Manernyi and drummer/backing vocalist Tobi Samuel offer nods to the likes of the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, among others, with a healthy dose of their own fuzz to coincide. The organ-laced title-track sounds like it was recorded on a stage, if it wasn’t, and no matter where the trio end up — looking at you, Sabbath-riffed “Stoner Song” — the material is tied together through the unflinchingly organic nature of their presentation. They’re not hiding anything here. No tricks. No BS. They’re writing their own songs, to be sure, but whether it’s the funky “I Don’t Know” or the languid psych rollout of “Take Me Higher” (it picks up in the second half) that immediately follows, they put everything they’ve got right up front for the listener to take in, make of it what they will, and rock out accordingly, be it to the mellow “Out of My Head” or the stomping “Evil Side (Of Rock ‘n’ Roll) or the sweet, sweet guitar-solo-plus-organ culmination of “1,000 Problems.” Take your pick, really. You’re in good hands no matter what.
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