Dead Meadow to Release Force Form Free Dec. 9
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 17th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The title tells you what’s happening here. Dead Meadow are taking formed, coherent riffs and progressions, and pushing them into unbounded places. Some of that means jamming and some of it means psychedelic melancholy, but either way, Force Form Free is not exactly a standard album so much as a kind of outsider collection that invariably shares aspects with their other studio work while carving its own place in their discography. It’s not quite the Dead Meadow you’re used to, but then again, what’s that mean anyhow?
Force Form Free was/is an installment in PostWax Vol. II, for which I did the liner notes, and arrives to the broader public on Dec. 9. They’ve got a video up now for “The Left Hand Path,” and it gives a suitable showcase for some of the record’s more out-there aspects. You’ll like it. It’ll be fine.
Also of note, Jason Simon has a new solo collection out called Hindsight 2020 that’s available here: https://jasonsimon.bandcamp.com/album/hindsight-2020-2
From the PR wire:
DEAD MEADOW to release new album “Force Form Free” on Blues Funeral Recordings; first track and preorder available!
US psychedelic rock luminaries DEAD MEADOW unveil all details for their new album “Force Form Free” to be issued first as part of Blues Funeral Recordings’ revered PostWax series, and then as a worldwide standalone release on December 9th. First track “The Left Hand Path” and preorders are available now!
Formed in the fall of 1998, DEAD MEADOW emerged from the Washington, D.C. indie/punk scene to fuse their love of early ’70s hard rock and ’60s psychedelics into a unique marriage of dreamy guitar-fuzz bliss and stoney riffs. Over the course of seven studio albums, three live records and a Peel Session, they incorporated darker eastern influences and increasingly dense and hypnotic layering as they toured such far-reaching places as Russia and Australia and performed at renowned festivals including Roadburn and Levitation fest. They’ve become an inarguable pillar of the modern heavy psych movement alongside contemporaries like Black Mountain, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and the Black Angels.
In 2021, they began work on a collection of jams and experiments for Blues Funeral Recordings’ PostWax series, working up a disparate yet cohesive group of songs that placed new works alongside the culmination of ideas they’d been tinkering with since the band’s genesis. The result of these efforts is “Force Form Free”, a spacey and dreamy record at times, grimly propulsive at others, and which captures Dead Meadow continuing their effortless exploration of the transporting, astral-gazing form they’ve spent their entire existence pushing forward.
Watch Dead Meadow’s trippy new video “The Left Hand Path.”
About the song, guitarist and vocalist Jason Simon comments: “The Left Hand Path starts out ‘Force Form Free’ and in fact, it was written with this in mind. It serves as a statement of purpose of sorts for this unhurried and exploratory record. I find it reminiscent of the long guitar-driven drones of “Shivering King and Others”. There’s something cleansing and soothing in the swirling sea of fuzz and the repetitive dirge-like nature of the song. We want to clear a space in the listener’s head for their mind to wander and create, for the listener to paint their own mental pictures influenced by the sounds and the songs. The title itself refers to the less traveled often-maligned spiritual path that favors self-willed action and creativity over traditional dogma and belief, though in this case, it also serves as a symbol of the road less traveled, which I’ve often found to be the far more interesting route to take.”
New album “Force Form Free” will be available worldwide on December 9th, 2022 (with the ultra-limited PostWax edition shipping this October to PostWax Vol. II subscribers) on various vinyl formats and limited digipack CD. Preorder on
Blues Funeral Recordings website: https://www.bluesfuneral.com/search?q=dead+meadow
Bandcamp: https://bluesfuneralrecordings.bandcamp.com/
Euro shop: https://en.bluesfuneral.spkr.media/
DEAD MEADOW “Force Form Free”
Out December 9th on Blues Funeral Recordings
Get more info & subscribe to PostWax Vol. II at this location: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bluesfuneral/postwax-vol-ii
TRACKLIST:
1. The Left Hand Path
2. The Lure Of The Next Peak
3. Valmont’s Pad
4. To Let The Time Go By
5. Force Form Free
6. Binah
DEAD MEADOW is
Jason Simon – vocals, guitars
Steve Kille – bass, sitar
Mark Laughlin – drums
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https://www.instagram.com/blues.funeral/
https://bluesfuneralrecordings.bandcamp.com/
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