Posted in Whathaveyou on November 11th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Big-drummed heavy-psych Americana rockers Abronia are coming back with their fourth album, Shapes Unravel, on Feb. 20, 2026. Set to release on Cardinal Fuzz in Europe and Feeding Tube Records in the States, it’s the Portland, Oregon, six-piece’s follow-up to 2022’s Map of Dawn (review here) and 2023’s The High Desert Sessions (review here), and the opening track, “New Imposition,” is streaming now to mark the launch of preorders.
I like this band. I’ve liked them since their first record, and that was only eight years ago so I’m not bragging or anything. But they’ve been consistent in some ways — Keelin Mayer remains a core presence on vocals, and the arrangements surrounding with pedal steel, tenor sax and other-than-big-drum percussion have always been there — and as the PR wire posits, are plenty recognizable in terms of their sound. You know them when you hear them, but as “New Imposition” reminds, they’re always up to something a little different than they were last time out.
The track gets a little wild, but well it should for being at the start of the record. I haven’t heard the full-thing yet, but I’m willing to speculate it doesn’t get any less outbound from there. So much the better. I look forward to finding out:
Abronia Announces New LP, Shares “New Imposition” Single + Video
Some bands make it obvious from the first few notes—a single tone, a specific push on the tempo, the way the air moves around the instruments—and you know it’s them. Abronia is one of those bands.
From the first thud of their 32-inch bass drum to the coil of pedal steel winding through the haze, the sound of this Portland-based six-piece is unmistakable. Over the past decade, Abronia has been refining their singular blend of widescreen psychedelia, desert noir, Eastern drone, avant-jazz, doom, post-punk, and acid-folk—channeling something that feels at once ritualistic and cinematic.
Today, the band is announcing their fourth studio album, Shapes Unravel. Sonically, this is Abronia’s most ambitious and compositionally daring record to date—the album moves with a strange gravitational pull, layering grief, haunted memory, and flashes of transcendence into something emotionally expansive and structurally bold. Moments of crushing weight give way to eerie stillness, held together by an urgency that feels vital, not calculated. It’s a record that doesn’t politely wait for your attention; it pulls you into its orbit whether you’re ready or not.
Our first glimpse into Shapes Unravel is the single “New Imposition.” The track opens with echoing guitar plucking and eerie pedal steel and unfolds quickly into a cinematic score, transporting you instantly into the world of Abronia.
When asked about the song, singer/saxophone player Keelin Mayer says, “Going into a Fred Meyer (Pacific Northwest one stop shopping) during the pandemic–walking around the store while your drug addicted boyfriend shove racks of ribs, ice cream and deodorant down his pants, while people are shooting up in the bathroom. We think someone steals his iPhone at the self-checkout, but it turns up shoved between two bags of chips. You only realize your boyfriend was shoplifting when he pulls the stolen things out of his pants in the car. The guilt and shame you feel as you watch so many people succumb to addiction. That Fred Meyer location is now closed because it couldn’t sustain the wave of crime. Watching the fruits of unbridled capitalism and the greed of the ruling elite bloom into full technicolor. Try to run away before the wave gets you too.”
Alongside the release of “New Imposition,” the band is sharing a music video.
“New Imposition” is out today on all DSPs. Shapes Unravel is due for release on February 20th, 2026.
Abronia Live 2/26 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios w/ Jackie-O Motherfucker 2/27 – Seattle, WA @ Add-a-Ball w/ Jackie-O Motherfucker, Von Wildenhaus 2/28 – Bellingham, WA @ Makeshift w/ Jackie-O Motherfucker, The Sheen
Shapes Unravel – Tracklisting: 1. New Imposition 2. Mirrored Ends of Light 3. Weapons Against Progress 4. Walker’s Dead Birds 5. Gemini 6. Petals and Sand 7. Asleep in the Porcelain House
On Shapes Unravel, their fourth studio album, Abronia pushes deeper into both composition and feeling. The band’s lineup has shifted slightly since the last one, but the chemistry remains intact. Shaver has put down the sticks and moved to guitar, Danny Metcalfe has stepped in on bass, and Robert Grubaugh (who previously filled in on a European tour with the band) has taken over on the big drum. Eric Crespo’s guitar and backing vocals remain a driving force, while Rick Pedrosa continues to carve strange and searing shapes with pedal steel. Keelin Mayer’s vocals—whether leaning into viciousness or hypnotic intimacy—are a stronger force than ever, while her tenor sax and, on one song, flute (as showcased on “Gemini”) threaten to send the whole thing into the stratosphere. The addition of strings and brass brings an orchestral depth that expands their sonic language without diluting its punch.
Like their previous three records, this one was tracked at Portland’s legendary Echo Echo studio (formerly Type Foundry). And like their previous studio album, Map of Dawn, it was mixed by Tape Op founder Larry Crane, a longtime ally of the band’s sonic excavations. The band’s commitment to capturing the unfiltered, spontaneous magic of being in the room together remains a cornerstone of their sound, creating a record that is at once chaotic, controlled, and unapologetically alive.
Abronia is – Keelin Mayer: Vocals, Tenor Saxophone, Flute Rick Pedrosa: Pedal Steel, Percussion Robert Grubaugh: Big Drum, Percussion, Melodica Danny Metcalfe: Bass James Shaver: Guitar Eric Crespo: Guitar, Backing Vocals
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 23rd, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Well, Bristol psych lejjunds The Heads announced they’d broken up in 2022, so yeah, a somewhat new/compiled improv whathaveyou 5LP slab makes as much sense as anything. Reverberations is the title of what I’m assuming will arrive in some kind of boxed set, and if you look at Volume III below and try to glean when it was recorded from the song titles, you’ll see it’s material from the aughts. I guess it’s a span over the different volumes, because this is The Heads and time means nothing. To wit, the set is out July 11 but streaming in full now through Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records.
The writeup for the release is kind of confrontational — that is to say, I don’t think anyone is actually confirming non-poser status at the Bandcamp or BigCartel checkout — but I guess when you’re putting five platters’ worth of jams into the world, you’re basically throwing down a gauntlet for your fans or just about anyone else who might dare take it up, so fair enough. Accessibility, clearly not priority one here. I like the line about being like a Hawkwind bootleg but heavier and more lost, though.
But whether or not you think you’re freak enough, you probably are. By all means, have at it:
THE HEADS UNLEASH ‘REVERBERATIONS’: A FIVE-LP EXPLOSION OF BASEMENT-BORN, ACID-FRIED SONIC FURY
This isn’t a comeback.
This isn’t nostalgia.
This is a transmission from the other side of the amplifiers, where time folds in on itself like overheated tape and riffs spiral so deep into your skull you’ll swear they’re rearranging your teeth.
Prepare your mind and melt your speakers: the legendary psych high priests of fuzz and feedback — have unearthed five slabs of PURE JAMMED MADNESS from their subterranean lair. It’s called Reverberations and it’s not a box set, it’s a goddamn exorcism.
Forged in the fogged-out depths of their Bristol basement, Reverberations captures The Heads at their heaviest and most unhinged — sprawling, free-form jams that pulse, pummel, and phase into infinity. No edits, no overdubs, no apologies. Just pure, pulverising cosmic communion.
Spanning over 4 hours of fuzz-drenched excursions, hypnotic riff spiral, motorik freakouts and tape-saturated noise walls, this is The Heads as they were never meant to be heard — unless you were in the room, and out of your mind. If you’re looking for catchy hooks, clean vocals, or anything resembling a structure, keep walking. Reverberations is a swirling vortex of cosmic chaos — a brutal baptism into noise, a tidal wave of sound that will drag you kicking and screaming into the outer reaches of your mind.
You ever hear a Hawkwind bootleg on the wrong speed and think “yeah but what if this was heavier and more lost?” That’s Reverberations.
It’s acid-fried, it’s righteous, it’s like crawling through the fuzz-soaked lungs of the universe with only a blown speaker and a half-drunk pint for company.
Five LPs.
No polish. No polishers.
This ain’t your polite “let’s jam and sound pretty” nonsense. No, sir. This is Reverberations — captured in the basement like some kind of sacrificial rite involving pedals, trance states, and a total disregard for your delicate little earbuds.
The guitars don’t play — they detonate.
The drums don’t keep time — they pull it apart, beat by bloody beat.
And the bass? That’s not bass. That’s the sound of tectonic plates grinding their teeth in orgasmic terror.
You don’t listen to this stuff. You submit to it.
And what’s more: this ain’t some polished retrospective with a sticker saying “FOR FANS OF…” No, this is FOR NO ONE. Or maybe everyone. It’s for people who remember what it meant when music could still scare you — when a riff could knock your third eye wide open and leave you babbling in the car park muttering about The Truth.
Each LP in the series is its own trip, housed in Matte Laminated Outer Sleeves and pressed on mixed colour vinyl, for the full synapse-sizzling experience. Issued via Cardinal Fuzz (Europe) & Feeding Tube Records (USA), in strictly limited quantities, Reverberations is a vital document from the outer reaches of Britain’s psych underground.
This is not a reissue. This is not a retrospective.
Five LPs.
Infinite madness.
Zero fucks given.
The Heads have spoken. Are you listening? Or are you still playing it safe with your canned playlists and digital wallpaper?
Get ready to have your face melted, your brain scrambled, and your whole concept of “music” pulverized into psychedelic dust.
Strictly limited. Psychos only. No posers
“Reverberations is a full-frontal assault on your senses, a sonic maelstrom that rips open your skull, drags out your brain, and plays it like a psychotic theremin. It’s as if The Heads have plugged their amps directly into the sun, blasted it through a tornado of distortion, and dared you to survive the fallout. Listening to this is like taking a hit of pure, uncut cosmic insanity — equal parts terrifying, ecstatic, and utterly irresistible. If music is a drug, then Reverberations is the kind that’ll blow your mind and never let go.”*
A new Abronia album barely over a year since they put out their triumphant third record, Map of Dawn (review here)? Sort of. The Portland, Oregon, heavy psych/dark Americana crew offered that under-heralded LP — and it was plenty heralded, just not as much as it deserved — through Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records, and The High Desert Sessions isn’t quite a proper follow-up. The clue is in ‘Sessions,’ in the title. Delivered through the same labels as its predecessor — it came out last Friday and I already missed getting one of the edition-of-80 CDRs; tape is still available as I write this — and what it hints toward is a familiar escapist narrative of a band absconding from real life and its sundry woes, secluding themselves in some remote location, a cabin in the woods or some such, and focusing on nothing but creating music for some given time.
It is an experiment many have undertaken, and Abronia — vocalist/tenor saxophonist Keelin Mayer, guitarists Paul Michael Schaefer and Eric Crespo (the latter also sometimes vocals), bassist Shaun Lyvers, Shaver on the big drum, and Rick Pedrosa on pedal steel — use the opportunity to conjure 12 tracks across a sometimes challenging but still manageable 37-minute LP that, really, you don’t have to worry that it sold out in like a day, because the music itself demands more to be made, let alone the buying public.
Headphones are just about mandatory for what might be Abronia‘s Walden, regardless of the volume or concentration one might otherwise give it. The material is too nuanced, too much going on in the percussion jam of “No Time for a Fire” with the repetitive curls of sax worked into the rhythm, and much of the atmospheric vocal work will simply fade into the background of the varied pieces in which it appears. And it doesn’t always. Most of The High Desert Sessions is instrumental. The album is deeply flowing through many shifts in arrangement, as though each of the 12 inclusions is a snippet of a longer improvisation or exploration, and they’ve been edited and aligned together, bleeding directly from one to the next except where the band has made the choice not to, as with “Rough Eyed J.E.R.K.S.” and “Open the Door for Water,” which follows and is where a vinyl side A and B would split.
Crespo mixed and mastered, and regardless of how much is going on at any given point, whether it’s a piece like “Liar,” which grows relatively minimal in its middle, or “Winged Seeds” with its central guitar conversation. Much of the material is pastoral even before the pedal steel comes in, and The High Desert Sessions, though it goes a number of places Abronia haven’t gone before in terms of actual sounds being made, is consistent atmospherically with Map of Dawn, 2020’s The Whole of Each Eye (review here) and 2017’s Obsidian Visions/Shadowed Lands (review here). The basic fact of the matter is that their style is open enough that they can go where they want and have it fit. If nothing else, The High Desert Sessions argues that decisively.
But there is, of course, more in the pieces themselves. The nine-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Moving Furniture” is an obvious standout and focal point. Where most of The High Desert Sessions could be called interlaced snippets, pieces of jams edited together to create a varied flow across the two sides of the whole work — semi-raga second track “Thrushes” drone-meditating its way into the start of “No Time for a Fire,” the many fadeouts and -ins of side B as “Target Practice” moves from its maybe-a-scream and percussive ritualizing to the mellower and post-rocky “Barely a Season,” which feels more like it could be built into a proper Abronia ‘song,’ with Morricone flourish in the guitar and solidified bass and percussion beneath — and that methodology comports with the off-to-where-people-aren’t narrative behind the record’s making. They may well have had to relocate a couch or two as they got started, and for sure “Open the Door for Water” is the kind of thing one might find on a note or a printed sheet at an AirBNB off in the high desert, but “Moving Furniture” also clues the listener into the personality of the release, which is fortunate since it comprises about a quarter of its runtime.
Listen hard (with those headphones on) and you might hear someone yell ‘stop!’ at 7:43 amid the low-key wash of drones and chimes and various obscure instrumentation — instrument-wise, there is a lot on The High Desert Sessions that could be one thing or could be another, the band employing the usual sax and pedal steel as well as berimbau, dobro, banjo, bowed dulcimer, acoustic and electric guitars, maybe a keyboard in there? — but the song brings itself down gradually in thick-sounding cymbals, maybe-vocal and other drones, and a final move into more urgent big-drum thud, and a couple vocalizations before the serenity of “Thrushes” takes hold.
The experimentalist ethos becomes part of The High Desert Sessions‘ appeal, and whether one sits and picks apart each individual movement, the two-minute “Artemesia” with its rhythmic-pause lyrics, wavy guitar and pedal steel flourish and sudden rise of tape hiss at the end, or the crash-start “Rolling Mass” likewise feeling more ‘song’-ish with a plotted-seeming guitar figure at its core following the drum march, or lets the procession from one to the next hypnotize and carry through the full LP stretch — if you listen digitally or got one of those CDRs, you don’t even have to flip sides; nothing against tapes or vinyl — Abronia reward the experience.
But as to what’s making the string-ish sound in “Rough Eyed J.E.R.K.S.,” for example, I have no idea, though if you took a bowed dulcimer or a berimbau — and ran it through some pedals and were recording it live to an 8-track tape along with some organ and cymbals and drone, it might indeed end up so folkish and biting in the finished product. One way or the other, the bottom line is The High Desert Sessions gives a showcase to the experimental side of what Abronia do, letting listeners perhaps have a deeper look at their process, or at least how they work together with a single creative goal in mind. That it stands so well on its own as a full-length outing and does so much to complement their other work should be taken as another sign of how singular this band is becoming. The kind of outfit who can make moving furniture sound good.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 24th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
I was hoping I guess that at some point in the last 24 hours, Oregonian heavy Americana psych purveyors Abronia would post a track from their upcoming release, The High Desert Sessions, which they make efforts to distinguish from 2022’s Map of Dawn (review here) and whatever their next full-length will be, focusing on the open nature of the reclusion-jam experience, going away to the proverbial cabin in the woods — or in this case, the high(est) desert — to improvise and explore as one might in that less-distracting context. No such luck.
Fortunately, the description below from Feeding Tube Records‘ Byron Coley goes pretty deep in discussing the makings and results of this experiment on the band’s part, broadening the expectations of those familiar with their general songwriting modus while hinting at some of the personality aspects that carry over therefrom. As to whether or not opening track “Moving Furniture” lives up to its name in Abronia relocating a couch so they have room to jam, we’ll just have to wait and see.
From their Bandcamp:
ABRONIA – The High Desert Sessions
Releasing June 30th on cassette via Feeding Tube Records and CD-R via Cardinal Fuzz.
Recorded onto cassette 8 track in Central Oregon by Abronia. Mixed and Mastered at Torch Toucher by Eric Crespo.
From Byron Coley: After recording three studio albums (two of which — 2019’s The Whole of Each Eye FTR498 and 2022’s Map of Dawn FTR669 — we were honored to co-release with Cardinal Fuzz), this amazing Portland OR sextet decided to try something different. An experiment. They packed a vanload of gear and headed out to a rural house in Central Oregon with an 8 track recorder. Besides their standard array of axes, they also brought various “little instruments” as well as acoustic strings and percussives of various stripes, then spent three full days jamming from very early to very late.
There was a lot improvisation, instrument swapping and musical hijinkery quite different from their standard approach. This resulted in a dozen tapes filled with all sorts of ideas and sounds, and the band started fiddling with them as soon as they got home. The High Desert Sessions is the result.
The music is arranged into two side-long suites, which ramble around some very weird stylistic junctures, ranging from dusty slide guitar segments to loud roars of rock aktion, dissonant blares of jazzoid skronk and dreamy smears of shimmering sunshine avant-pop. There are also a few winks of the massive drum/guitar dualism for which Abronia is known. But most of this tape explores previously unvisited sonic regions.
The High Desert Sessions’s first side offers a relatively unhurried flow, the flip has more squirrely segmentation, but it’s all cool as hell. And heard as a whole, it may augur some new points-of-interest that Abronia might be visiting in the future. Or not. Because that is the nature of experimentation. But it’s very hep to have this aural peek into their ongoing process. Especially because it all sounds great.
Can’t wait for the next album!
1. Moving Furniture 2. Thrushes 3. No Time for a Fire 4. Rough Eyed J.E.R.K.S. 5. Open the Door for Water 6. Winged Seeds 7. Rolling Mass 8. Target Practice 9. Barely a Season 10. Liar 11. Artemisia 12. Hot Spirits
Posted in Reviews on September 29th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Welcome to the penultimate day of the Fall 2022 Quarterly Review, and yes, I will make just about any excuse to use the word “penultimate.” Sometimes you have a favorite thing, okay? The journey continues today, down, out, up and around, through and across 10 records from various styles and backgrounds. I hope you dig it and check back tomorrow for the last day. Here we go.
Quarterly Review #81-90:
Motorpsycho, Ancient Astronauts
There is no denying Motorpsycho. I’ve tried. Can’t be done. I don’t know how many records the Norwegian progressive rockers have put out by now, and honestly I wonder if even the band members themselves could give an accurate count. And who would be able to fact check? Ancient Astronauts continues the strong streak that the Trondheim trio of Tomas Järmyr, Bent Sæther, and Hans “Snah” Ryan have had going for at least the last six years — 2021’s Kingdom of Oblivion (review here) was also part of it — comprising four songs across a single 43-minute LP, with side B consumed entirely by the 22-minute finale “Chariot of the Sun/To Phaeton on the Occasion of Sunrise (Theme From an Imaginary Movie).” After the 12-minute King Crimsony build from silence to sustained freakout in “Mona Lisa Azazel” — preceded by the soundscape “The Flower of Awareness” (2:14) and the relatively straightforward, welcome-bidding “The Ladder” (6:41) — the closer indeed unfurls in two discernible sections, the first a linear stretch increasing in volume and tension as it moves forward, loosely experimental in the background but for sure a prog jam by its 11th minute that ends groovy at about its 15th, and the second a synthesizer-led arrangement that, to no surprise, is duly cinematic. Motorpsycho have been a band for more than 30 years established their place in the fabric of the universe, and are there to dwell hopefully for a long(er) time to come. Not all of the hundred-plus releases they’ve done have been genius, but they are so reliably themselves in sound it feels silly to write about them. Just listen and be happy they’re there.
Did you think Abrams would somehow not deliver quality-crafted heavy rock, straightforward in structure, ’00s punk undercurrent, plus metal, plus melody? Their first offering through Small Stone is In the Dark, the follow-up to 2020’s Modern Ways (review here), and it finds guitarist/vocalist Zachary Amster joined by on guitar by Patrick Alberts (Call of the Void), making the band a four-piece for the first time with bassist/vocalist Taylor Iversen and drummer Ryan DeWitt completing the lineup. One can hear new textures and depth in songs like “Better Living” after the raucous opening salvo of “Like Hell” and “Death Tripper,” and longer pieces like “Body Pillow,” the title-track and the what-if-Blizzard–of–Ozz-was-really-space-rock “Black Tar Mountain,” which reach for new spaces atmospherically and in terms of progressive melody — looking at you, “Fever Dreams” — while maintaining the level of songwriting one anticipates from Abrams four records in. They’ve been undervalued for a while now. Can their metal-heavy-rock-punk-prog-that’s-also-kind-of-pop gain some of the recognition it deserves? It only depends on getting ears to hear it.
Australia-based electronic prog outfit All India Radio — the solo ambient/atmospheric endeavor of composer and Martin Kennedy — has been releasing music for over 20 years, and is the kind of thing you may have heard without realizing it, soundtracking television and whatnot. The Generator of All Infinity is reportedly the final release in a trilogy cycle, completely instrumental and based largely on short ambient movements that move between each other like, well, a soundtrack, with some more band-minded ideas expressed in “The New Age” — never underestimate the value of live bass in electronic music — and an array of samples, differing organs, drones, psychedelic soundscapes, and a decent bit of ’80s sci-fi intensity on “Beginning Part 2,” which succeeds in making the wait for its underlying beat excruciating even though the whole piece is just four minutes long. There are live and sampled drums throughout, shades of New Wave, krautrock and a genuine feeling of culmination in the title-track’s organ-laced crescendo wash, but it’s a deep current of drone that ends on “Doomsday Machine” that makes me think whatever narrative Kennedy has been telling is somewhat grim in theme. Fair enough. The Generator of All Infinity will be too heady for some (most), but if you can go with it, it’s evocative enough to maybe be your own soundtrack.
Mississippi-based heavygaze rockers Nighdrator released the single “The Mariner” as a standalone late in 2020 as just the duo of vocalist/producer Emma Fruit and multi-instrumentalist JS Curley. They’ve built out more of a band on their self-titled debut EP, put to tape through Sailing Stone Records and bringing back “Mariner” (dropped the ‘The’) between “Scarlet Tendons” and the more synth-heavy wash of “The Poet.” The last two minutes of the latter are given to noise, drone and silence, but what unfurls before that is an experimentalist-leaning take on heavier post-rock, taking the comparatively grounded exploratory jangle of “Scarlet Tendons” — which picks up from the brief intro “Crest/Trough” depending on which format you’re hearing — and turning its effects-laced atmosphere into a foundation in itself. Given the urgency that remains in the strum of “Mariner,” I wouldn’t expect Nighdrator to go completely in one direction or another after this, but the point is they set up multiple opportunities for creative growth while signaling an immediate intention toward individuality and doing more than the My-Bloody-Valentine-but-heavy that has become the standard for the style. There’s some of that here, but Nighdrator seem not to want to limit themselves, and that is admirable even in results that might turn out to be formative in the longer term.
William Graham Randles, who is the lone figure behind all the plucked acoustic guitar strings throughout Seven Rivers of Fire‘s three-song full-length, Sanctuary, makes it easy to believe the birdsong that occurs throughout “Union” (16:30 opener and longest track; immediate points), “Al Tirah” (9:00) and “Bloom” (7:30) was happening while the recording was taking place and that the footsteps at the end are actually going somewhere. This is not Randles‘ first full-length release of 2022 and not his last — he releases the new Way of the Pilgrim tomorrow, as it happens — but it does bring a graceful 33 minutes of guitar-based contemplation, conversing with the natural world via the aforementioned birdsong as well as its own strums and runs, swells and recessions of activity giving the feeling of his playing in the sunshine, if not under a tree then certainly near one or, at worst, someplace with an open window and decent ventilation; the air feels fresh. “Al Tirah” offers a long commencement drone and running water, while “Bloom” — which begins with footsteps out — is more playfully folkish, but the heart throughout Sanctuary is palpable and in celebration of the organic, perhaps of the surroundings but also in its own making. A moment of serenity, far-away escapism, and realization.
Half a decade on from The Electric Dunes of Titan (review here), Melbourne sludge rock bruisers Motherslug return with Blood Moon Blues, a willfully unmanageable 58-minute, let’s-make-up-for-lost-time collection that’s got room enough for “Hordes” to put its harsh vocals way forward in the mix over a psychedelic doom sprawl while also coexisting with the druggy desert punkers “Crank” and “Push the Venom” and the crawling death in the culmination of “You (A Love Song)” — which it may well be — later on. With acoustic stretches bookending in “Misery” and the more fully a song “Misery (Slight Return),” there’s no want for cohesion, but from naked Kyussism of “Breathe” and the hard Southern-heavy-informed riffs of “Evil” — yes I’m hearing early Alabama Thunderpussy there — to the way in which “Deep in the Hole” uses similar ground as a launchpad for its spacious solo section, there’s an abiding brashness to their approach that feels consistent with their past work. Not every bands sees the ways in which microgenres intersect, let alone manages to set their course along the lines between, drawing from different sides in varied quantities as they go, but Motherslug do so while sounding almost casual about it for their lack of pretense. Accordingly, the lengthy runtime of Blood Moon Blues feels earned in a way that’s not always the case with records that pass the single-LP limit of circa 45 minutes, there’s blues a-plenty and Motherslug brought enough riffs for the whole class, so dig in, everybody.
Keep an ear out because you’re going to be hearing more of this kind of thing in the next few years. On their third album, Planetarium Module, Cheater Pipe blend Oliveri-style punk with early-aughts sludge tones and sampling, and as we move to about 20 years beyond acts like Rebreather and -(16)- and a slew of others including a bunch from Cheater Pipe‘s home state of Louisiana, yeah, there will be more acts adapting this particular stoner sludge space. Much to their credit, Cheater Pipe not only execute that style ably — Emissions sludge — on “Fog Line Shuffle,” “Cookie Jar” or “White Freight Liner Blues” and the metal-as-punk “Hollow Leg Hobnobber,” they bring Floor-style melody to “Yaw” and expand the palette even further in the second half of the tracklist, with “Mansfield Bar” pushing the melody further, “Flight of the Buckmoth” and closer “Rare Sunday” turning to acoustic guitar and “The Sad Saga of Hans Cholo” between them lending atmospheric breadth to the whole. They succeed at this while packing 11 songs into 34 minutes and coming across generally like they long ago ran out of fucks to give about things like what style they’re playing to or what’s ‘their sound.’ Invariably they think of these things — nobody writes a song and then never thinks about it again, even when they tell you otherwise — but the spirit here is middle-fingers-up, and that suits their sound best anyway.
The largely solo endeavor of Brian Lucas of Dire Wolves and a merry slew of others, Old Million Eye‘s latest full-length work arrives via Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube with mellow psychedelic experimentalism and folk at its core. The Air’s Chrysalis Chime boasts seven pieces in 43 minutes and each one establishes its own world to some degree based around an underlying drone; the fluidity in “Louthian Wood” reminiscent of windchimes and accordion without actually being either of those things — think George Harrison at the end of “Long Long Long,” but it keeps going — and “Tanglier Mirror” casts out a wash of synthesizer melody that would threaten to swallow the vocals entirely would they not floating up so high. It’s a vibe based around patience in craft, but not at all staid, and “White Toads” throws some distorted volume the listener’s way not so much as a lifeline for rockers as another tool to be used when called for. The last cosmic synthesizer on “Ruby River,” the album’s nine-minute finale, holds as residual at the end, which feels fair as Lucas‘ voice — the human element of its presence is not to be understated as songs resonate like an even-farther-out, keyboard-leaning mid-period Ben Chasny — has disappeared into the ether of his own making. We should all be so lucky.
“Bury” is the newest single from Swedish heavy rockers Zoltar, who, yes, take their moniker from the genie machine in the movie Big (they’re not the only ones either). It follows behind two songs released last year in “Asphalt Alpha” and “Dirt Vortex.” Those tracks were rawer in overall production sound, but there’s still plenty of edge in “Bury,” up to and including in the vocals, which are throatier here than on either of the two prior singles, though still melodic enough so that when the electric piano-style keys start up at about two and a half minutes into the song, the goth-punk nod isn’t out of place. It’s a relatively straight-ahead hook with riffing made that much meatier through the tones on the recording, and a subtle wink in the direction of Slayer‘s “Dead Skin Mask” in its chorus. Nothing to complain about there or more generally about the track, as the three-piece seem to be working toward some kind of proper release — they did press up a CD of Bury as a standalone, so kudos to them on the physicality — be it an EP or album. Wherever they end up, if these songs make the trip or are dropped on the way, it’s a look at a band’s earliest moves as a group and how quickly that collaboration can change and find its footing. Zoltar — who did not have feet in the movie — may just be doing that here.
Sardinia’s Fabrizio Monni (also of Black Capricorn) has unleashed a beast in Ascia, and with III, he knows it more than ever. The follow-up to Volume II (review here) and Volume I (review here) — both released late last year — is more realized in terms of songcraft, and it would seem Monni‘s resigned himself to being a frontman of his own solo-project, which is probably the way to go since he’s obviously the most qualified, and in songs like “The Last Ride,” he expands on the post-High on Fire crash-and-bash with more of a nodding central groove, while “Samothrace” finds a place for itself between marauder shove and more direct heavy rock riffery. Each time out, Monni seems to have more of an idea of what he wants Ascia to be, and whether there’s a IV to come after this or he’s ready to move onto something else in terms of release structure — i.e., a debut album — the progression he’s undertaken over the last year-plus is plain to hear in these songs and how far they’ve come in so short a time.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 27th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Portland, Oregon’s Abronia released their third album, Map of Dawn (review here), earlier this year on Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records and spent a couple hot weeks in July on the road in Europe supporting it. As Fall comes to the Pacific Northwest, leaves changing color amid the evergreens, the band settle into the post-release comedown, going from, “We just put out a new LP,” to, “We released a record this year.”
The difference in mindset isn’t nothing, especially after a tour like they did, going abroad for what I’m pretty sure was their first time as a band, on the strength of their finest work to-date, living what many in the US continue to think of as ‘the dream’ for celebrating a new release. And hey, the vinyl’s sold out internationally (still some left for North America), so in addition to the aesthetic accomplishments of Map of Dawn, it’s also been well received. You would mark it a win, is what I’m saying.
But that aftermath can be a doldrum stretch for a group. Less going on at home than away, some of the hoopla surrounding the actual release process lessened over time, and so on. So they’ve got a new video for “Plant the Flag,” which is the second cut on Map of Dawn behind the opener “Night Hoarders,” and it’s creative right unto being presented in a box-tv format. I’m assuming that’s a social media thing, but it does cleverly capture more of a phone screen, and it looks different than most of what’s out there and shooting for cinematic in terms of aspect ratios.
Further, the video emphasizes the depth of atmosphere that Abronia have made their own in the spheres of psychedelic Westernism and heavy psychedelia, encapsulating the cohesion with which they bring these ideas together through songwriting quickly in under four minutes. It thereby serves all the more useful as a post-release single to draw in those who either missed the release in May, meant to dig deeper into the record and got distracted by something else — that happens, even with really good records — or who’ve never heard the band before and might not have an idea what they’re about.
Not that “Plant the Flag” is a complete summary, but on Map of Dawn, it is effective in drawing you deeper into the album, and as a standalone it was certainly more than enough that I went ahead and started streaming the full thing again which, if it needs to be said, is not a thing I regret as “Plant the Flag” gives way to “Games” with such fluidity. Maybe you’ll feel the same. Bandcamp player’s near the links at the bottom if you’d like to find out after you watch the video.
Which is right here, followed by some comment from the band and credits and whatnot. Enjoy:
Abronia, “Plant the Flag” official video
Eric Crespo on “Plant the Flag”:
This video was made by our pedal steel Rick Pedrosa. It includes images that we cut out as potential collage fodder for our album covers, but didn’t end up using. For this video he place the images behind glass and poured different colored dyes over the glass.
Video by Rick Pedrosa and Abronia–”Plant the Flag” from the album “Map of Dawn” released on vinyl by Cardinal Fuzz (UK/EU/The World) and Feeeding Tube Records (North America).
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 21st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
From Portland, Oregon, Abronia are set to travel at the end of this month to begin a round of European and UK shows that includes stops in Croatia, Italy, Germany and France (as well as the UK, duh). They’ll be abroad for 17 dates — a healthy tour, and if I’m not mistaken their first on the continent — and while the impetus occasion seems to be a slot at Supersonic in Birmingham, they’ll also be at Eastfilly Fest in Stuttgart, Germany to close out the run.
Fair enough, and if you’re wondering, yes, I’m having a good time posting all these tour dates the last few weeks. If I told you how I’d missed it, you wouldn’t believe me. All the better to see Abronia get across the Atlantic, since they go in support of their third full-length and finest work to-date, Map of Dawn (review here), newly out on Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube Records.
I’m on board with the whole idea, fine, but my question is whether or not the “big drum” that they use in place of a standard kit will be making the journey or if there’s some contingency in place. Do you ship it ahead of time? Line up a rental or a borrow for the shows? Buy one and use it as a raft to float back? These are logistical questions only the band can answer, and frankly, I’d feel silly if I asked.
Dates from socials:
ABRONIA EURO & UK TOUR
Final European/UK Tour Dates:
Thu.30.6.22 HR ZAGREB – Club Mochvara Fri.1.7.22 IT BOLOGNA – Freakout Sat.2.7.22 – IT GAVERIN TERME – Colle Gallo (House Concert) Sun.3.7.22 DE MUNICH- Neitzsche-Keller Mon.4.7.22 DE BERLIN -Schokoladen Tue.5.7.22 DE KUSEL – Schalander Wed.6.7.22 FR ROUEN – Le 3 Pieces Thu.7.7.22 UK HASTINGS – The Piper Fri.8.7.22 UK BIRMINGHAM – Supersonic Festival Sat.9.7.22 UK LONDON – 229 London Sun.10.7.22 UK MANCHESTER – Retro Manchester Mon.11.7.22 UK DUMFRIES – The Venue Tue.12.7.22 UK BRISTOL -The Lanes Wed.13.7.22 UK BRIGHTON – The Hope and Ruin Thu.14.7.22 FR PARIS – Olympic Cafe Fri.15.7.22 DE SAARBRÜCKEN – The Silo Sat.16.7.22 DE STUTTGART – Eastfilly Fest
Abronia are middle of the night music. If you should encounter the Portland, Oregon, psychedelic Americana troupe’s third album, Map of Dawn outside in the dark, surrounded by insects chirruping, crackling firewood or pre-dawn birdsong, so much the better, but one way or the other, the spirit of the songs is a nighttime spirit. Or at very least, a spirit in which each nuanced twist warrants appreciation, between the guitars of Paul Michael Schaefer and Eric Crespo (also vocals), each extra push behind the commanding vocals of Keelin Mayer, each wispy uncurling of Rick Pedrosa‘s pedal steel, the sundry percussion around Shaver‘s big drum, Shaun Lyvers‘ bass holding it all together and the occasional bit of tenor sax, also courtesy of Mayer‘s lungs. The way one guitar plays to the calm background while the other noodles out the lead line of “Night Hoarders,” or the theatrical poetics of centerpiece “Wave of the Hand,” or the way the big-drum rhythmic pattern of the subsequent “What We Can See” becomes subsumed by layers of melody, even as those layers follow the pattern, before Crespo and Mayer‘s shared verse gives over to hand drums and pedal steel with that strum still behind.
Each instrument throughout the seven-song/39-minute spread dances out in layers, each layer linked to a performance. You can trace the layers as you go, follow any number of paths as you listen. You can walk through Map of Dawn any way you want. The sun’s coming up no matter what. A solidified lineup has allowed Abronia room to grow as a unit and they have not squandered that opportunity.
As the follow-up to 2020’s The Whole of Each Eye (review here) and 2017’s Obsidian Visions/Shadowed Lands (review here), Map of Dawn bears a confidence of approach befitting the group’s five years of experience. For sure they’re still exploring new reaches here, new ways of harnessing mood in their sounds — atmosphere is and has been paramount, if it needs to be said, but Mayer as a singer is able as well to convey a range of emotion, which is why “Wave of the Hand” works — toying with Morricone and a creeper riff on “Games” after the heavy folk of “Plant the Flag” pays off in a single, sudden burst, which in itself feels pretty daring, or the way in which the penultimate “Invite Jeffrey Over” leaves so much empty room even with the pedal steel humming deep in the mix like a Hammond organ otherwise might.
Map of Dawn might play to a similar style as Abronia‘s past offerings — like cult rock if the cult was the mythologies of the American West — but it does so with a firmer grasp of intent. Certainly Shaver‘s big drum is a consistent distinguishing presence, the band eschewing a full kit in favor of forcing the hand of creativity in terms of percussion. That can mean a shaker here or a tambourine there, which can change the entire effect a given song has on the listener, so the “drums” in terms of the-part-of-a-track-where-someone-is-banging-on-or-shaking-something become no less of an arrangement element than pedal steel, adding to the complexity of the material even as they remove one of rock’s most common standbys.
Being one of three songs over six minutes long — the others are “Invite Jeffrey Over” (6:06) and the subsequent closer “Caught Between Hives” (8:24) — it’s obvious going into Map of Dawn that “Night Hoarders” is meant to draw the listener into the world the band are portraying, and so it does. By the time it’s two minutes in, Mayer‘s vocals are echoing out noted proclamations and the guitars are strumming in seeming triumph while the pedal steel follows their root notes, then the sax notes blow and they shift into a drippy, Dead Meadow-style wah lead. You understand at this point that the song is halfway over. It spins like a loom, steady. The transition back to the verse and the declarative chorus is easily enough made, sax included, there’s a stop before the last reprise, then the drum gradually drops out and the guitars (pedal steel included) carry out the last minute quietly.
Comparatively, the uptempo start of “Plant the Flag,” with its vaguely surf rock outset feels like a stark turn, but it’s not. Crespo joins Mayer in the verse lines, setting up “What We Can See” on side B, and Abronia build on the work they’ve already done establishing the ambience in “Night Hoarders,” subtly moving from building that world to inhabiting it and having already brought the audience into that experience as well. They peruse different breadths in “Games,” in “Wave of the Hand” with its midsection freakout wash feeling all the more vital for being the album’s midsection, then cutting to the track’s all-in ending. Each song is a potential highlight depending on the path you’re walking, which layer you’re following.
The pairing of “Invite Jeffrey Over” and “Caught Between Hives” feels intentional, and the latter provides an ending that is resonant to the proceedings as well as a sonic payoff. More controlled than the wash of “Wave of the Hand” but coming apart in a way that feels suitably organic at the finish. I’d add “What We Can See” to the concluding salvo, as well. While it’s somewhat shorter, its specifically ’60s psychedelia is a standout moment as a showcase for Mayer‘s and Crespo‘s voices working together and for the range of what Abronia bring to their aesthetic palette, harnessing ideas of desert mysticism and lysergic hypnosis while building a tension soon enough to be dropped outright in favor of the shift to the quiet start of the soon-to-be-plenty-intense “Invite Jeffrey Over.”
It’s a moment where Abronia prove they can do whatever they want from their sonic foundation. They know who they are as a band and they understand how to manifest that in a studio setting. Map of Dawn isn’t a record a band could make their first time out, but it could make a vital introduction to new listeners. The manner in which it engages their half-decade of growth, their process of sorting out their identity, and the way it still looks ahead to what might come are little if not an invitation to follow along. Whichever route you go, whichever evocative layer catches your fancy, go safely. Don’t twist an ankle while you dance the sunrise.
