I had been looking forward to hearing the self-titled debut from Dutch rockers Sungrazer for a while before it showed up. The album, which was originally released by the band before they got picked up for CD/vinyl issue through Germany’s Elektrohasch Schallplatten, is comprised of six tracks of warm, heady and definitively European psychedelia, given to regular jams among the three members and an overwhelming natural flow. They work in a few stoner rock elements – the occasional catchy chorus or heavy riff section – but Sungrazer, who formed in 2009 and are already at work on the follow up to Sungrazer stay true to the bright colors of the album art with rich, encompassing sounds, like the layered harmony vocals of “Somo” or the sax-laden explorations of “Intermezzo.”

They open with the laid back “If,” setting the tone for Sungrazer immediately with the soothing vocals of guitarist Rutger Smeets and bassist Sander Haagmans. The album inevitably falls under the heading “mostly instrumental” for its extended jam sections, but it’s worth noting that when there are vocals, as on “If” and “Somo” and the later “Zero Zero,” they come on with structure behind – actual verses and choruses, in other words. Sungrazer don’t feel by any means tied to a formula, and drummer Hans Mulders has his work cut out for him keeping the jams tied to the ground throughout the album. To his credit, he does, and even at these songs’ farthest out, there’s something for listeners to hold onto. It’s part of the overall balance that Sungrazer seem to have a natural hold of, between stoner rock, jam and psych. As “If” gives way to “Intermezzo” – which wasn’t included on the original CD issue of the album and features guest sax from Conny Schneider – the transition is smooth enough to run your hand over, and likewise “Intermezzo” into “Somo.” The sax goes away, but it’s so easy to get lost in the vibe of the album, you might miss the change from one song to the other.

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Well, the follow-up to Colour Haze‘s brilliant All is called She Said, but as guitarist/vocalist Stefan Koglek explains in the latest newsletter for his label, Elektrohasch Schallplatten, no one quite knows when the hell it will be out. The difficulties, as it goes, are technical, and it’s a definite bummer, but better that they hold it back than release something they’re not 100 percent behind.

Here’s the latest from Koglek via the PR wire:

Since June 2010 we are working on our new album. Due to several private and artistic reasons, we needed to build up our own analogue studio for this, which we did since March 2010 with great effort. Temporally and financially we went far over the actual maximum of our possibilities, totally nuts – but the world already suffers enough from reasonable economic decisions ; ) – We think that with this creatively and artistically we made a great step onwards and recorded our best, most sophisticated and most psychedelic album so far.

Unfortunately on the one hand we also had a cascade of bad luck with the gear, so all the time (expensive…) technical problems had to be solved. Furthermore because of a nearly unbelievable chain of acoustical problems on the recording side – a seemingly okay sounding room which caused some problems in the background and a basically correct but in combination difficult mic-ing – and nobody heard it all the time, several studied audio-technicians had the stuff on their ears over the course of months – all our well played and in the single signals beautifully recorded music resisted every attempt to mix it down properly yet – I invested five weeks of 11-14 hours behind the console so far – well with high-end gear you can also cause high-end problems ; ) … In the last days we analyzed the material digitally and found a few things which might work and haven’t been tried yet.

We gave everything – and everybody who knows us knows that we always try to give our very best – and with our attitude of unconditional giving we achieved so much over the years, not only for ourselves… but at the moment we came to a dead end with the new album.

Therefore we delay the release to an uncertain point later on this timeline ; ) – we won’t give up for sure – but we have to work it out now calmly, without time pressure and with deliberation…

In the meantime, you lucky European types can catch Colour Haze on the Up in Smoke tour. More info on that here.

I don’t want to say I was prepared to be let down by Hypnos 69‘s maybe-final LP, Legacy, when it was released earlier this year on Elektrohasch Schallplatten, but basically I was. Nothing against the Belgian classic proggers, but in my mind, an album of the same quality as 2006’s The Eclectic Measure just wasn’t a fair expectation to put on a band. I mean, The Eclectic Measure was a landmark, a thing of beauty. A once-in-a-career achievement.

Spoiler alert for anyone who doesn’t yet know: They did it. Legacy is a better album than The Eclectic Measure. It’s more developed in every way — guitarist/vocalist Steve Houtmeyers proving to be as talented a singer as he is a songwriter and a soloist — and although even as I gushed all over the record in my review, I wasn’t sure if the songs therein would prove as memorable as those from The Eclectic Measure, Legacy has proven strong in this regard as well. I’m just as likely to hum a flute part as I am to sing a lyric. The blend of elements on a track like the 18-plus-minute closer “The Great Work” is nothing short of majestic.

It’s not that they’re genre-less, or not completely aware of the context in which they’re making music. It’s simply that Hypnos 69 are in a class of their own. Legacy is a staggering collection of songs. There are days when I feel like I’m too tired to listen to it because I won’t have the energy to fully enjoy the experience, but my own worthiness aside, the growing and morphing appeal of Legacy‘s rich melodies and complex arrangements only means that the pleasure in listening is going to increase with age. One of the year’s best and then some.

I first noted The Machine‘s sonic similarities to Colour Haze after their set at Roadburn this year, and lo, here we are a scant six months later and the praiseworthy Dutch psychedelonauts have signed to Elektrohasch for the immanent release of their appropriately-titled third album, Drie. In the picture to the right, you can see the band hard at work on the recording.

Now, I’m not saying I’m solely responsible for getting The Machine signed to Elektrohasch — which is owned by Colour Haze guitarist/vocalist Stefan Koglek — or anything like that. Actually, screw it. That’s totally what I’m saying. Sorry folks. This one was all me. Full credit. All mine.

Congratulations to all parties involved, myself included. Here’s what Koglek, who’s apparently also knee-deep in recording the next Colour Haze album, had to offer as far as info on the release in his latest newsletter:

The Elektrohasch debut of Dutch guitar-psychedelicians The Machine is in print on CD and will be available for 13 Euro plus postage directly at www.elektrohasch.de, or at your favorite dealers. The DLP will follow up soon.

Double-guitar Austrian four-piece BeenObscene make their Elektrohasch debut with The Magic Table Dance, an album that finds the band unpretentiously duna-jamming their way through eight organic tracks of Euro-fuzz reminiscent at times of earliest Natas and keeping a spontaneous feel despite being mostly led by the riffs. The album starts instrumentally, and listening to it, it wouldn’t have surprised me had all of The Magic Table Dance been entirely sans vocals, as the flow of the five-minute opening title cut is so easy that, on the first time through, you might just assume the tracks that follow are as well. It’s most of the way through the second song, “Uniform,” before guitarist Thomas Nachtigal sings at all, and though he’s joined on the record by a number of guest performers, BeenObscene’s first offering feels more focused on the music. Given some of the grooves they elicit, that’s not a complaint.

“Come Over,” which follows the start-stop riffing of “Uniform,” is the first of several tracks on which drummer Robert Schoosleitner really makes his presence known, keeping the presentation classy under the guitar grooves of Nachtigal and fellow guitarist Peter Kreyci with popping snare hits that add a jazz feel to what many other percussionists would probably straight-ahead on the hi-hat. He and bassist Philipp Zezula show off some angularity on the shorter, instrumental “Freakin’ Rabbit,” lending the track a feel similar to what Swedish fuzz-mongers Asteroid did on their second album. The Magic Table Dance feels like a quick mover by the time you get to “Impressions,” where Orange-hued riffage meets more traditional stoner structures offset by snare ghost-notes from Schootleitner, but the 14-minute “Demons” changes the feel of the album entirely, showing BeenObscene, in addition to being able to jam harmless and charming tunes out with the best of them, can also affect some serious epic songwriting.

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aOT9

This is the mother of them all. Short of doing three songs in as many hours, which I could have done just as or even more easily, I don’t see how any audiObelisk Transmission could get heavier than this one. It’s just a little bit of an excuse on my part to have an easily accessible copy of Dopesmoker at all times, but with new music as well from Hypnos 69, a classic dirge from Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine and one of Boris‘ most avant garde moments, Transmission Zero Zero Nine is an absolute monster. I hope you dig it.

No need to hide the tracklist after a jump since it’s only four songs. Click the banner at the top of this post to get the file, or stream it on the player above. Here’s what we’ve got:

0:00:08 Sleep, “Dopesmoker” from Dopesmoker (Tee Pee, 2003)
There was no way I was going to make this podcast and not include this song. It’s the riff that launched a thousand clone bands, and Sleep‘s shining hour. Literally, an hour. Plenty of time to worship.

1:03:42 Hypnos 69, “The Great Work” from Legacy (Elektrohasch, 2010)
New music from these Belgian classic proggers. It’s the last cut on their new album, Legacy, and maybe their most aptly-titled song ever. Their sense of melody is second to none and the progressive elements in their approach have never shined brighter than they do here.

1:21:53 Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine, “He Who Accepts all That is Offered (Feel Bad Hit of the Winter)” from Rampton (Southern Lord, 2002)
The lineup of Lee Dorrian (Cathedral), Stephen O’Malley (SunnO)))/Khanate), Justin Greaves (Iron Monkey/now-Crippled Black Phoenix) and Greg Anderson (Goatsnake) only put out one album under this cumbersome moniker, taken from a song title on Earth‘s Earth 2. It’s a good thing. I don’t think the universe could handle a second without ripping in half.

1:51:35 Boris, “Flood” from Flood (MIDI Creative, 2000)
Is that guitar forward or backwards? Both? I doubt anyone really knows what Boris are getting up to for the entirety of this song, Boris included. I remember interviewing drummer Atsuo Mizuno a couple years back and he looked at me like my head was on backwards when I asked about it. See if you can figure it out.

Download audiObelisk Transmission 009 here.

They’ve been in the business of instrumental stoner prog since 1998, and on their aptly-titled fourth album, 4, the Berlin trio Rotor (which might also be found written as RotoR) show no signs of slowing with age or growing lazy in their songwriting. If anything, 4 (released through Elektrohasch Schallplatten) is their most progressive offering yet, with quickly turning riffs and dynamics that run somewhere between raucous and tight-woven, the band themselves sounding remarkably crisp while forgoing almost entirely the bombast that’s associated these days with terms like “prog” and “stoner.” Though many would argue those words are inherently a contradiction, Rotor have no trouble putting them together to create an album that relies on overarching groove even as it indulges technical prowess.

You can hear it on a track like “Karacho/Heizer,” toward the end as the drums do a timing shift under an angular but still nod-worthy riff. Rotor sound confident in all aspects of their approach, and even in the brash starts and stops of “Derwisch,” on which the bass notably takes the fore, there is a balance to be found in what 4 offers. The band has grown over time to embrace their prog side more and more, but neither do they shy away from driving a riff home, as they do both on “Derwisch” and the less-overtly active later cut “Die Weisse Angst.” Guitarist/vocalist André “An3” Dietrich of countrymen noisemakers Dÿse shows up on the chemically-formulated track “An3R4,” donating one of the two vocal appearances to 4 and adding an aggression to the song that’s both surprising and a little undercutting of what Rotor does otherwise, but that’s an effective change from the rest of the record anyway.

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If this is going to be Hypnos 69’s legacy, so be it. After the Belgian psychedelic progressives put out The Eclectic Measure in 2006, I didn’t imagine they’d be able to top it, since the album had such an individual balance of quirk and sonic familiarity, taking elements of earliest King Crimson and melding them with the more straightforward early ‘70s British rock style, but on their new offering, Legacy (Elektrohasch Schallplatten), the four-piece lean heavily on the prog end of their sound and push even further into the unhinged creative. The album is seven tracks that play out over a staggering 72 minutes and can be equally potent either in one extended sitting or over the course of a few sessions. Several of these songs, including opener “Requiem (for a Dying Creed),” are like an album in and of themselves.

What’s increasingly come to make Hypnos 69 unique sound-wise is the band’s use of jazz structures and classic prog instrumentation – King Crimson’s sax, Jethro Tull’s flute, everyone’s mellotron, etc. – but the band fuses these aspects of their sound together with a driving rock that’s grown over time to be the expansive, encompassing presentation of Legacy. The album starts and ends with tracks both over 17 minutes long (who doesn’t love a long opener?), and though we’re treated to a variety of sounds and styles in between, somehow Hypnos 69 manage to remain Hypnos 69 for the duration. The guitars of Steve Houtmeyers (also vocals and theremin) would seem to lead most when playing leads (rather than riffs), but the material on the album is just as likely to be driven by sax, organ, flute, drums or bass. Parts come introduced by one instrument then echoed on another, giving the songs a structured, cyclical feel. Even on “An Aerial Architect,” on which Houtmeyers’ guitar runs in tandem with Steven Marx’s saxophone à la “21st Century Schizoid Man” – at least for part of the track – the interplay between instruments is tastefully and intricately composed. Often Houtmeyers’ leads seem restrained, not trying to do too much, to just play the notes that need to be played rather than give some needlessly showy display of technicality. That comes up on later outings like the airy “Jerusalem” or the aptly-named 18:27 closer, “The Great Work.”

Basically, what Hypnos 69 are doing on Legacy is taking the style of play they introduced on The Eclectic Measure (you could argue their jazzier side showed up on 2004’s The Intrigue of Perception, or that it’s been there since their 2002 debut, Timeline Traveller, and you wouldn’t really be wrong, but it’s a question of focus more than mere elemental presence) and setting it to a completely different scale. Even the subdued “My Journey to the Stars” presents growth in its soft, memorable vocal melody, and though drummer Dave Houtmeyers “sits out” the acoustic-led “The Sad Destiny We Lament,” he finds other work on various percussion and glockenspiel while Marx fills out the track with overriding synth and bassist Tom Vanlaer thickens up the bottom end. The percussive Houtmeyers gets his revenge on the 10:48 “The Empty Hourglass,” which is as driven rhythmically as anything Hypnos 69 has ever done, the band stopping and turning on a dime under the six-string Houtmeyers’ lead, only to have Marx do a call-and-response on sax with the vocals during the verses. If it sounds like there’s a lot going on with the band, song and album, there is, but Hypnos 69 manage not to overwhelm even at their busiest, though I’ll say that it’s inevitably going to take a couple listens before the full breadth of Legacy reveals itself to the listener. In both creative scope and sheer length, it is a massive undertaking.

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