Posted in Whathaveyou on December 4th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Wasn’t it just last week I was talking about Craig Williamson? Just to save you looking, yes, it was, and while that post may have been about his Lamp of the Universe solo-project, I did dare to go so far as drop a hint near the end in case anyone read that deep saying a Datura reissue was in the works. Well, full disclosure, the reason I knew that last week was because it was a couple months ago I suggested Datura to Ripple Music for the ‘Beneath the Desert Floor’ series of underheralded turn-of-the-century reissues. Frankly, there are few bands who come to mind more readily to fit the qualifications.
Datura‘s 1999 sophomore LP, Visions for the Celestial (discussed here), will be out through Ripple Music on Jan. 17. Can confirm it sounds great. You’ll find more background and such from the PR wire below, and of course the full thing is already streaming because it’s been out for 25 years. Go figure, I know.
Dig it:
New Zealand stoner rockers DATURA to reissue “Visions For the Celestial” album on January 17th via Ripple Music; preorders available now.
Early 90s groundbreaking stoner rockers from New Zealand DATURA are set to reissue their quintessential 1999 studio album “Visions For The Celestial” as part of Ripple Music’s “Beneath The Desert Floor” special vinyl series this January 17th.
Formed in August 1992 in Hamilton, New Zealand, DATURA started as a four-piece Sabbath-worshipping outfit. After a few member changes, the group settled on the lineup of Craig Williamson on bass and vocals, Brent Middlemiss on guitar, and Jon Burnside on drums. Three now long-lost cassette demos ensued they hit the studio to record and then release their February ’98 debut album “All Is One”. Quickly moving forward with intermittent touring and continuing to write new material, the band gathered in the studio again in early 1999, to tape what was to be the final album “Visions for the Celestial”.
Written by Williamson and jammed on with the band, “Visions For The Celestial” was his outwardly spacious, psychedelic, mindset at the time — his visions for the outer realms of space and time. With a myriad of inspirations ranging from Hawkwind, John Coltrane, Monster Magnet, Kyuss, Sleep, Man’s Ruin Records and acid folk, DATURA was set. Says the band: “2025 will be 25 years since their sophomore and last studio album was originally released, and Datura are beyond honoured to have Ripple Music re-release “Visions For The Celestial” once again, in glorious vinyl, for you all to experience!”
“Visions For The Celestial” is the 8th chapter of Californian label Ripple Music’s “Beneath The Desert Floor” vinyl series, which unearths treasures from the golden days of stoner and desert rock with releases from Fireball Ministry, The Awesome Machine, Glitter Wizard, Witch White Canyon, Rollerball, The Sabians and Dear Deceased. All reissues can be streamed and purchased at this location: https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/
DATURA “Visions For The Celestial” reissue Out January 17th on Ripple Music (LP/digital)
Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 29th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Because Lamp of the Universe has never stopped growing over the last 23 years since the project’s first release, it’s easy to listen to 2002’s second album, Echo in Light, as a more primitive version of what the solo-project of multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer Craig Williamson (now also Dead Shrine, ex-Arc of Ascent, ex-Datura) has become over time. But, hearing the second Lamp of the Universe full-length unfold over an otherworldly 54 minutes, Williamson was already building on what the one-man-band’s debut, 2001’s The Cosmic Union (reissue review here, discussed here), laid out in terms of scope with its Eastern inner-universe-exploration aesthetic and depth of arrangement, and it’s kind of astonishing in hindsight how much there is happening in songs like “Freedom to Godliness,” which opens with its nuance of sitar and nylon-string acoustic, tabla-style hand percussion, and Williamson‘s sweetly floating melodic vocals, and the sense of adventure brought to the aptly-named “Resonance,” which adds synthesizer drones to the procession; a tantric, cosmic vision of psychedelic folk for which I’ve now spent more than two decades trying to find an analog and failing outright.
To put it another way, there’s plenty of psych-folk out there. No shortage. I’ve never heard anyone else do psych-folk, coming from a background in heavy rock, with a specific bent toward Subcontinental influences but yeah definitely also space, while sounding (A:) not at all like a put-on and (B:) both exploratory and memorable. The repetition of “Resonance” as it moves into its last stretch, organ coming back over sitar and guitar after the vocals have dropped to silence, for example. That’s a march. And in an outwardly-heavier Williamson incarnation like Dead Shrine (also a solo-project), it might hit harder, but Lamp of the Universe‘s gentle, music-as-a-kindness approach doesn’t lose the feeling of worship or ritual or celebration. It is singularly gorgeous and, to my experience, a unique sound built from familiar elements. It occupies its own space in terms of aesthetic and again, I’ve had an ear out for something that might fit a decent “more like this” recommendation for over 20 years to no avail whatsoever. If you’ve got one, I’d love to hear it and be like, “yeah, okay, but not quite,” which is how it usually goes.
Included on Echo in Light are two longer-form mostly-instrumentals, “Our Celestial Flow” (10:38) and the album-closer “Dream Sequence” (16:59), the latter of which uses distant, echoing voice as part of its ambient affect. Both emphasize experimentalism. “Our Celestial Flow” lays out a backing thread of organ and low-mixed rock drums behind mellow strums of wah guitar, as if to remind via the subtlest of funk that the first album was in decent portion about screwing, and unfolds as a graceful self-jam. By the time Williamson is four minutes in, he sounds like a room full of players dug into feeling their way through the proceedings, prescient of mellow-psych as a style and as hypnotic in reality as it seems to be in intent. Lead guitar weaves through most of it, but after the eight-minute mark, there are vocals over the drum fills for a moment, wavering and disappearing again as though to make the long-since-entranced listener question whether or not the actually happened until they’re confirmed by the intertwining voices at the finish. “Our Celestial Flow” is not mistitled.
And neither is “Dream Sequence,” for that matter, with its drifting collage of sound, departing from the love-as-spiritual-act ethic through which much of Echo in Light operates in pieces like the penultimate “Pyramids of Sun,” “Freedom to Godliness” or the flute-laced “Love,” which follows “Our Celestial Flow” by redirecting the mantra rather than breaking it. Cohesive and expressive in its purposes, Lamp of the Universe is of course patient in the execution, but even as it approaches 17 minutes long, “Dream Sequence” doesn’t lose sight of its goal in manifesting a psychedelic impressionism while maintaining the ambience and mood of the album that precedes it, and it even answers some of the wah and soloing of “Our Celestial Flow” as the suitably hallucinatory course unwinds, though the context is more serene in the closer with synth sounding like manipulated birdsong (maybe also being it) and washes of cymbals and chimes filling out the reaches of the mix.
In light of Williamson‘s collaboration earlier this year with Scott “Dr. Space” Heller for the hopefully-not-a-one-off Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space LP, Enters Your Somas (review here), “Dream Sequence” feels particularly prescient of Lamp of the Universe‘s experimentalism in a way that defines a lot of Echo in Light as compares to The Cosmic Union, but even as it expands the parameters, the sophomore outing reaffirms the stylistic lean of the first. In doing so, however, Echo in Light works vividly to set up and set forth a progression in songwriting that Williamson is still following today. Lamp of the Universe‘s last couple standalone albums — let’s say 2023’s Kaleidoscope Mind (review here) and 2022’s The Akashic Field (review here) — have leaned more into a rock-based sound, and that shift feels organic in light of Williamson‘s three ’10s-era albums with Arc of Ascent, which was a full band, and the fact that between those two Lamp records, Dead Shrine made its own full-length debut with The Eightfold Path (review here). It’s not always easy listening from one end to the other as releases vary in their degrees of drone, heft, groove and melody, but there’s an awful lot you can hear informed by the work being done across Echo in Light, and a revisit finds it not only a worthy successor to a first LP that I consider a landmark, whatever anyone else thinks of it, but a preface to continued sonic evolution.
It won’t be long before Williamson is heard from again. Dead Shrine already has a single up from an impending second record, and again, Lamp of the Universe does have a release out this year (the aforementioned Dr. Space collab), so it’s not like there isn’t current work to dig into. And I hear a Datura reissue might be in the works as well. If you want to believe rumors you read on the internet, that is.
As always, I hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading.
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Taking yesterday off for Thanksgiving was the right idea. I spent most of the day back and forth doing hosting stuff. We had 16 people, which is about the usual complement of family and close friends. It was The Patient Mrs.’ show. She baked for days, ran point on turkeys (we had two 18-pound birds; investment in future leftovers) and the timing of everything. It all went well. Nobody left mad, and everybody left full. The Pecan mostly played on the Switch all day, but at least she was around if not at the table with us. We’ll get there. She’s seven.
Today’s Black Friday, which is sad because no one has any money, everything costs a ton and the idea that people are actually saving on sales rings hollow to me. I worked retail. A month before Black Friday, the prices go up. Black Friday doorbusters! Get ’em before the tariffs kick in as if the cost of any such thing would ever be passed anywhere but the consumer. I guess capitalism just makes me sad now. Needless to say I’ve been letting a lot of the big-merch-sale Bandcamp updates that’ve come in this week go unread. Artists shouldn’t be scraping for bucks. Just imagine a better world. For two seconds. It won’t take you long to get there.
But yeah, I don’t think we’re hitting up the strip mall today. The Patient Mrs. mom has been around the last couple days, and helped out yesterday a lot, which was doubly impressive because she had her knee replaced like a week and a half ago. Gravy would be made, dammit. I’m not that tough. On Tuesday, I drove to Providence, Rhode Island — yes, I made a stop at Armageddon Shop; bought a Blind Guardian CD; they were playing Candlemass when I walked it and it felt welcoming — to pick up two turkeys from the farm we used to get our chicken from when we lived in Massachusetts, and picked up The Patient Mrs.’ mom on my way back south in Connecticut before proceeding to sit in some of the worst traffic of my life. I-95, man. Too many people, not enough road. It took four hours to get from CT to NJ. I’ve done it in less than two.
Living to tell the tale from that doesn’t feel like nothing. Tomorrow we’ll take her back north — she can make gravy, but handling a car would be a big ask — and I assume hang out for a bit in Connecticut, then Sunday we’re having a playdate/brunch for The Pecan because, well, I already vacuumed and when your kid plays with another kid now you hang out with the parents, apparently. When I was a kid that wasn’t the case, I don’t think. But whatever. It’ll be fine.
Whatever you’re up to, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. On the Thanksgiving theme, I am incredibly grateful for the continued support this site gets in its weird, quirky kind of mission to Share Music And Write About Stuff™, and if you’ve never heard Lamp of the Universe before and are listening to Echo in Light now for the first time, golly I hope you dig it.
Posted in Questionnaire on January 5th, 2024 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: Dave Buschemeyer of Omen Astra
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Hi. My name is Dave Buschemeyer. I am a musician, a printmaker/ artist and have been recently diving into performance art. I play guitar in Omen Astra and have spent time in New Day Rising, Spread The Disease, Die In The Light and a bunch more. I came to make music in the hardcore scene in the early 90’s. It quickly became a passion of mine after being introduced to punk (as a thrash metal head) in the late 80’s and going to see shows in the grimy punk scene in Toronto. Shortly after, I became interested in mixed-media art, went to University for Philosophy and ended up developing a love for print. I am currently back in University to finish a BFA in Print Media with an eye to transitioning to an MFA in either print or Interdisciplinary studies. Inside this very shortened timeline… I was a plumber by trade, which is a very long story.
Describe your first musical memory.
I’m unsure it can be considered the first, because memory is always being changed anytime you think of a thing, but I would say that one of the earliest memories I have is as a child watching my mom sing “Only The Lonely” by Roy Orbison in the kitchen. My mom really loved to sing and Orbison was one of her favorites. Years later, as a teen, my parents asked me to go and see him live in concert with them. I said no. I now recount that as one of those regrettable things you do as a young person that thinks they know some things. Of course, I am now a huge fan of Roy Orbison, and I wish I could go back in time and convince my younger self to stop saying No to everything.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Best is a tough thing to consider because I strive pretty hard to avoid summing up experiences in a pyramid. However… I will answer it this way… One of my most notable musical memories is seeing Faith No More in 1990 in Mississauga, Ontario. At this show, I got kicked out for stage diving and security wouldn’t let me back in, but by some luck someone affiliated with the band opened the door and motioned to Security to let the few of us standing out there to come back in. We promised profusely not to stage dive anymore… and then quickly made our way to the front to continue. This was probably the one event that set up my love for Faith No More and almost all things Mike Patton.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
This is a big one for me… as a young adult man I had my ill-informed sense of atheism tested to the core via experiences developed in meditation. In particular, I had a couple “experiences” that made me see just how interconnected all of existence is. This was an incredibly profound shift in my own consciousness that informs who I am today and has sparked a whole printmaking path based on wanting to find ways to visually show something of this inner understanding. Quickly, I recognized that words, being finite packets of meaning, would never be able to show something of the depth of insight as Interconnectedness. So, art being the language of soul and the heart was the closest I could come to doing so. When it comes to music, I am always trying to write something cohesive and final, something closed, something that feels complete and whole. The closest I have come to that is the Omen Astra album. For me, it is a high water mark in my creative music making because it feels the most resolved and completed. I am very fond of that record.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Artistic progression either leads one of two ways. An artist is either singular-minded and decides to forge a path based on their ideological assumptions, or an artist is open to existence and allows the dizzying depths of it to inform them of their path. In this, I am describing stages of how I have approached making creative work. There was a point where I realized that performing an action ideologically, or for ideological reasons, was somehow less important or felt less meaningful than if I made work based on what is bubbling up in me in the moment. Without going into it too much, I am starting to find that art that is based on ideology is often boring and rarely gets me to ask more questions of the work. But art that comes from a sense of openness and free play, and originates from a place of curiosity is often art that has me looking deeper. The first kind of art, as I see it, is making statements about the world, and comes from a place of supposed knowing. The second kind is art that comes from a place of openness and wonder. It is this second kind that I am often drawn to. So, an ideologically driven person will make statements like “you cannot take the politics out of art”. A more nuanced and “open” artist may say “There are political ramifications in everything, but I choose not to engage in that because it only says something about the social realm… whereas I am attempting to talk about the feel of a snowflake on the tip of my tongue.”
How do you define success?
I have no specific definition of success, except that for me if it feels right, and everything is aligning after all of the effort, then it is successful.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I have witnessed a couple people die in front of me. And there have been times where I wish I was spared that somehow, but I’m honestly of a different mind now. I think those experiences have served to give me a much greater appreciation for people and life. I try to say Thank You, and to smile, and to be helpful as much as possible… all because I’ve seen just how short and tragic human existence can be. I guess the answer is… at this point in my progression there isn’t anything I wish I hadn’t seen/ witnessed.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I have this notion that at some point I will make some visual representation of my experiences in meditation that will be so compelling and so profoundly understood that I will no longer wish to keep creating because no better example is possible. Of course, I do realize that this will never happen, but at some point, this became heavy motivation for me to keep trying new things in my print practice in order to discover some new way of communicating it. In writing this out, I am struck by just how romantic this sounds… and also possibly how futile it really is.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Art is a mirror for the soul. It’s most essential function is to draw out those key qualities in human existence that transcend ephemerality…. At heart, I suppose I am a Platonist. For me, the reason why great art talks to us is because on some level it’s tickling at an understanding that is already within us. And so the role of art in this way is to show our deepest, truest selves to ourselves. It is very fashionable to talk about Ephemerality and to assume that change is the nature of the entirety of existence. But, for me, when you’re art is about a pre-ephemeral state of being, about something that stands resolutely outside of change and decay, I have to reject it as a fundamental, but keep working within it to show it’s opposite. Dont’ get me wrong… ephemerality is the playstuff of the artist. I lean into it without even recognizing it, but ultimately I am always striving to say something lasting. And perhaps it is the striving itself that outlasts. I am aware that these ideas fly in the face of post-modernism and I wrestle a lot with the contradiction and feel like I’m a man displaced out of his rightful time. LOL
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I am looking forward to art openings, record releases and any other creative thing I can get my hands into. Thank you for this interview.
Posted in Reviews on December 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Lamp of the Universe‘s Kaleidoscope Mind is the second full-length of 2023 from Hamilton, New Zealand’s Craig Williamson. Delivered through Sound Effect Records, it bookends the year with The Eightfold Path (review here), the debut from Williamson‘s Dead Shrine project, which is the rock-psych to Lamp of the Universe‘s psych-rock as lines that used to be more stark blur with time. Williamson late in 2022 also oversaw a reissue through Sound Effect of Lamp of the Universe‘s 2001 debut, The Cosmic Union (review here; discussed here), that followed the early-2022 LP, The Akashic Field (review here). These, together with the seven-song/40-minute Kaleidoscope Mind, are the latest manifestations of a creative progression that’s been under way for over 20 years, before Williamson even began the one-man psych-folk outfit that’s grown so cosmically expansive in the years since, weaving through bands like Arc of Ascent and Dead Shrine with an inescapable love of heavy riffing while keeping the e’er molten Lamp of the Universe separate, distinct, in its own special place.
And keeping it his own. Williamson — who sounds like he’s having fun drumming on “Ritual of Innerlight” and in the funky “Codex Moon” — plays all the instruments, as always, for Lamp of the Universe. Synth to sitar, flutes and chimes, guitar, bass, the aforementioned drums that a couple records ago were unheard of from this band, vocals, probably this or that vintage keyboard, all written, arranged, performed and recorded DIY — it is the very definition of ‘dug in.’ At nine-plus minutes, “Ritual of Innerlight” is both opener and longest track (immediate points) on Kaleidoscope Mind, and it welcomes returning and new listeners alike with a hypnotic backing drone and swirling, ethereal verses. Grounded by the drums in a way that the additional hand percussion bolsters rather than detracts from, the songs that follow the extended leadoff are by and large shorter, with the let’s-make-feedback-sexy “Codex Moon” and the righteously organ-happy, blown-out-the-drums finisher “Transfiguration,” the central riff remains extrapolated from Sleep, however far that extrapolation has taken it.
But, much like the 60-ish-year history of psychedelic rock music, Williamson has no trouble bringing these ideas into his own aural context. At the same time, it has to be pointed out that after two decades, Lamp of the Universe‘s continuing evolution is something unto itself in underground acid psych, prog, space rock, cosmic folk or whatever other genre you want either to name or make up. Kaleidoscope Mind might be the 14th full-length under the Lamp of the Universe moniker — that doesn’t include splits, etc. — and it is both in line with the trajectory of everything that’s come before it and a realization unlike anything else in the band’s catalog for the places it goes in terms of songwriting. As second cut “Golden Dawn” backs up “Ritual of Innerlight,” there’s a discernible pivot toward more straightforward structures. The song moves smoothly and fluidly over its drumbeat with a pulsing kick, and the vocals are still mellow and softly delivered, but harmonized layers are used to emphasize the chorus, and when the electric guitar sweeps in for a solo before the three-minute mark, it becomes clear that Lamp of the Universe might just be writing rock tunes this time out.
This is not a thing about which one might complain. At all. With the penultimate “Immortal Rites” notwithstanding, as that 4:42 piece is laden with sitar and acoustic guitar, very much to the roots of Lamp of the Universe on records like the aforementioned The Cosmic Union. But even that is catchier and more forward structurally. And before it, the centerpiece “Procession” anchors itself to its Mellotron line and complements it with organ and delay in low guitar notes so that even as it fades out, the presence and atmosphere remain, and the subsequent “Live of the Severing” is perhaps the most blatant hook I’ve ever heard from Lamp of the Universe, and it works. A wah solo follows the chorus and bridges to the verse, but the next chorus isn’t far off, and Williamson has organ, guitar, massive drums and a general impression of breadth in four and a half minutes. This is a project that in the past has had songs longer than 20 minutes, and whose work has in the past been expansive meditations on spirit and the universe. Four of the seven cuts here don’t hit five minutes.
Clearly some shift in methodology has taken place, but the truth is that, as noted above, Lamp of the Universe has never really been about doing the same thing over and over. Williamson‘s style is highly identifiable and characteristic — you know it when you hear him sing, and that’s true here or in Dead Shrine — and often in Lamp of the Universe is used to enhance the fluidity or the melody of the arrangements surrounding. That’s happening on KaleidoscopeMind, but to hear Williamson bringing together ideas from the more rock-aligned side of his craft into Lamp of the Universe is satisfying, and frankly, there’s more of it. Tracks on The Akashic Field were shorter than on some other Lamp records too, and Kaleidoscope Mind is a another progressive step in that direction. But what has to be emphasized is that it’s another progressive step — on the 14th album! It’s the 14th progressive step (unless I have my numbers wrong). Williamson has been exploring just what the hell a Lamp of the Universe might be for the last 22-plus years and he’s still finding out.
That journey, and this record’s place in it, is singular. It is Williamson‘s own, and if one is a longtime fan — as I’ll profess to being, not so much as a brag as an admission of dorkdom — then Kaleidoscope Mind, with its wide open third eye and expanded definitions of heavy, is a pun-totally-intended no-brainer. That the album has “Ritual of Innerlight,” “Codex Moon,” and “Transfiguration” only makes it multifaceted and all the more a demonstration of the various places Lamp of the Universe can and does go, in this dimension and otherwise.
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 10th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
For however long I’ve run this site (and I know how long, I just don’t feel like talking about it), a consistent thread has been nerdery for the work of Craig Williamson, also known as the psych-mantra-folk solo-outfit Lamp of the Universe. The first post about the band on this site was in May 2009, and I’d already been a geek for that stuff for years at that point. Based in New Zealand, Williamson has stayed active all the while, putting out more than a handful of Lamp of the Universe records, as well as doing three albums with the trio Arc of Ascent — a more heavy rock-based outfit; Williamson began Lamp of the Universe following the demise of Datura, in which he played. Earlier this year, he branched back into rock territory with the new solo band Dead Shrine.
And this whole time, I’ve gone on and on about how righteous all this stuff is, how affecting and engrossing the psychedelia of Lamp of the Universe is, the creative range that takes Williamson through inner and outer universes, blah blah blah blah blah. Years of this.
So you know what happened? I saw Kaleidoscope Mind — the new album from Lamp of the Universe out Nov. 10 — was coming in the Sound Effect Records newsletter, and next thing I know I’m stopping myself from writing Williamson an email being like “OMG ANOTHER RECORD CAN I HEAR IT????” A few days later, he reached out, and I got to feel a little less embarrassed for myself.
But yeah, I’ve heard this one, and as I invariably would, I think it’s brilliant. He’s trying some new stuff, working in some funk and sexy grooves. Also sounds like he bought some new mics for his studio, and it’s pretty clear in listening that particular attention has been given to the vocals, which I don’t know if that’s true or not but it sure is what it sounds like. And the drums are killer as well. So basically, here I am, nerding out again to a Lamp of the Universe record, and I guess I don’t give a shit if I look like a goon because now I’ve told you this entire story. Is it a little embarrassing at this point? Yes. Is that going to stop me from reviewing the album? Come on.
Here’s news. A single will be premiering this week. Not here, but you’ll be able to see it on the embed below. Something to enjoy on the 12th:
Lamp of the Universe – Kaleidoscope Mind
Release date : 10th November 2023
Sound Effect Records presents the new album from New Zealand’s Psychedelic artist, Lamp of the Universe.
Multi-instrumentalist and Psych guru Craig Williamson returns with an album of classic Lamp of Universe tunes. Full of artifacts from the original era, including Mellotron, fuzz guitar, Sitar, swirling effects and trippy vocal harmonies, this album touches the Psychedelic Psoul.
7 new songs re-calling times of yester-year, and also the unlimited expanses of the future. Take a dive into the Kaleidoscope Mind.
[Click play above to stream Dead Shrine’s “Enshrined.” The Eightfold Path is out this Friday, Feb. 24, on Kozmik Artifactz and Astral Projection.]
Dead Shrine‘s The Eightfold Path is a debut album with deep roots. The band — complete with backing vocals on “Through the Constellations,” liberal doses of organ on side A’s “Kingdom Come,” the megafuzzed “The Blackest Sun,” maybe even a bit of Echoplex on its two longer tracks, “Enshrined” and “Incantations Call,” and no shortage of depth, reach and swirl throughout — is Craig Williamson, whose more-than-two-decade pedigree in Datura, Lamp of the Universe and Arc of Ascent has made him the most crucial figure in New Zealand heavy rock and psychedelia since the days of Human Instinct and The Underdogs half a century ago.
He’s the only person involved — writing, performing all the instruments and vocals, recording, mixing, mastering; a genuine auteur — but Dead Shrine is very much a band that, if he wanted to assemble a lineup, could play live, and seems to draw from similar impulses that led to the formation of the trio Arc of Ascent circa 2010. By that time, Williamson had already established himself as a solo artist through the experimentalist acid folk of Lamp of the Universe, a go-everywhere project with a foundation in traditions psychedelic and earthbound that in recent years, and particularly on 2022’s The Akashic Field (review here), has pushed in a direction hinting toward a heavier rock sound. The dissolution of Arc of Ascent after their 2018 split with Germany’s Zone Six (review here) left Williamson without a ‘band,’ and Dead Shrine emerges as the answer to that problem, combining the solo-act construction of Lamp of the Universe with a heavier sound not unlike that fostered by Arc of Ascent but even more kin in style to Datura, who formed in 1992 and released two LPs in their time, 1998’s Allisone and 1999’s Visions for the Celestial (discussed here).
Perhaps a bit of nostalgia on Williamson‘s part? Could be, but one hesitates to assign motive. If you said he started Dead Shrine as an excuse to wail on drums and try to find the heaviest bass sound he could harness, it would be impossible to listen to The Eightfold Path opener “The Formless Soul” or the lumbering “Kingdom Come,” which follows, and not find that statement believable. Still, songs like “As Pharaohs Rise,” with its backward cymbals at the outset, open-air soloing and casual riding groove, or “Through the Constellations” on side B, executed with a languid swing and classic acid rock flourish on top of a firmly-held verse-chorus structure, resonate with a vibe that seems in conversation with both Lamp of the Universe‘s lyrical mysticism and turn-of-the-century era heavy/stoner rock more generally, playing to strengths hardly dormant in Williamson‘s output over the last 10 years but given new focus as this outfit — which is named after Lamp of the Universe‘s 2020 album (review here) — branches off to follow its own, well, path.
But whatever birthed it, and however far out it ranges in terms of heavy psych atmospheres, The Eightfold Path is a rock record and arranged accordingly. A bit of sampling at the launch of side B with “Rainbow Child” provides the only use of sitar (also some chanting), and the songs are drawn together through elements like the weight of the low end, Williamson‘s vocal patterning and melodies, the consuming levels of fuzz that drench these riffs and the blowout that ends each half of the LP in “Enshrined” and “Incantations Call” — which, as noted, are the two longest inclusions; placed penultimate “The Blackest Sun” tops six minutes, while none of the remaining cuts hits five — the former which rolls gradually into cosmic oblivion and the latter inclusive either of Mellotron or some synth adjacent to it in sound as oscillations of guitar circle across channels even after the self-jam march has hit its last crash.
As a songwriter, Williamson has little to prove, and “The Formless Soul” sets out on The Eightfold Path with a definite in-wheelhouse vibe that those who know his work will recognize, but it’s worth noting that in the long history behind him, Williamson has never made an album like this on his own. That in itself stands Dead Shrine apart, be it for newcomers or longtime followers, and is maybe some of what led to it being a new project rather than a redirection for Arc of Ascent, but these administrative concerns are tertiary at best when set alongside the realization that after about 30 years of making heavy music, Williamson is still finding yet-untrod avenues and modes of expression for his craft. That the record sounds so full — so very, very full; so very, very, very fuzzed — is a testament to his growth as a producer/engineer as well, as with even just the kick drum at the start of “Kingdom Come,” he makes clarions to the converted out of what to most groups would be passed-over afterthoughts and missed opportunities.
And the more one listens, the more is revealed throughout The Eightfold Path‘s 44 minutes (note there are eight tracks, and four plus four in 44 minutes makes eight; the concept also comes from the Shaolin branch of Buddhism). Groove is paramount across the leadoff salvo and it’s that much easier to get on board for it, but the expansion in “Enshrined” that continues to flesh out on “Rainbow Child” and “Through the Constellations” — which are exploratory and structured in kind — ahead of the all-in wah and thick bottom end wallop of “The Blackest Sun” and the not-coming-back fourth dimensional alignment in “Incantations Call,” with the vocals drawing closer to Lamp of the Universe even as the surrounding heft pushes farther into its own sphere, isn’t to be ignored. One hesitates to make predictions when it comes to an artist whose work has already proven so distinctive and multifaceted, but if this is the launch of a new progression for Williamson either aside from or more likely coinciding with Lamp of the Universe, then the scope of Dead Shrine even at this potentially nascent stage is all the more welcome.
I’ve said on multiple occasions that I’m a fan of Williamson‘s various outfits and incarnations, and the excitement of doing something new on The Eightfold Path is palpable, whether one has the context of prior bands and albums or not. Contrary to the moniker, Dead Shrine sounds very much alive, vital, and ready to move forward from here. Fans new and old, myself included, should be so lucky.
Posted in Reviews on December 29th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
This is not a new album, but it is a new release. Based in Hamilton, New Zealand, the solo-project Lamp of the Universe debuted in the long-ago memory fog of 2001, issuing The Cosmic Union (discussed here) through Cranium Records. The lone figure behind the outing, who has kept the project to himself ever since, was and remains Craig Williamson, who at the time was only two years out from the breakup of his prior band, the more directly riff-rocking and still-prime-for-reissue Datura, and though he might not have guessed it at the time, The Cosmic Union would become the starting point for one of the most engaging progressions in psychedelic music of any stripe.
Through the years since, that’s been true be it the Eastern-informed acid folk represented in this first offering or subsequent adventures in tantric drone, krautrock-style synth and keyboard work, or even more band-style heavy psych rock, all taking place under the umbrella of Lamp of the Universe and the auteurship of Williamson. Also reissued in 2011 through Williamson‘s Astral Projection imprint and through Krauted Mind in 2018, The Cosmic Union finds a ‘definitive’ vinyl incarnation through Greece’s Sound Effect Records, and I won’t even pretend to pretend I’m not happy to have the excuse for a revisit.
From the first strums of acoustic guitar and sitar on “Born in the Rays of the Third Eye” across the vast distance to the tabla-percussed pre-Om meditative sprawl folk of “Tantra Asana” and the subsequent chime-peppered stretch of sitar, chimes, and keyboard-string sounds that cap the record, The Cosmic Union has a patience and a presence unto itself. In its full eight-song/53-minute run — the digital version also includes the bonus track “By the Grace of Love,” not on the vinyl — it does not feel like a minor undertaking, because it isn’t. This was the CD era, and Williamson‘s experimentalist crux in the lysergic, vaguely-Britfolk “Give Yourself to Love,” here the closer of side B on the first LP, and the relative minimalism in the echoing, purposefully-left-open spaces of “Her Cosmic Light” require a conscious engagement.
While it’s never overbearing even in its lushest arrangements, the trade for that is that following Williamson along the album’s complex, universally molten and slowly shifting course can be a challenge for short attention spans. Different listeners will have different experiences; duh. In mine, The Cosmic Union is singular in its beauty and effect on the listener. I’ve chased down records upon records, styles upon styles trying to get some semblance of what comes together so fluidly and naturally in these songs — even some albums recommended by Williamson himself — and I’ve never found one that delivers its vibe with such grace. It is an album that, when heard properly, slows time.
“Born in the Rays of the Third Eye” and “Lotus of a Thousand Petals” brought together and isolated, just the two of them, on side A feels like a landmark, even 21 years after the fact. Those two songs, in almost unassuming fashion, would become touchstones for Lamp of the Universe, and as Williamson moved forward quickly with 2002’s Echo in Light, 2005’s single-song-broken-into-parts long-player, Heru (discussed here), and 2006’s assemblage of mostly longform pieces From the Mystical Rays of Astrological Light, they would remain definitive — there’s that word again — in terms of serving as a primer for the heart of Lamp of the Universe‘s aesthetic project.
Hearing them coupled with side B’s “In the Mystic Light” with its scorching solo work, hand-drumming and one-man jam, and the aforementioned keys-forward twist of “Give Yourself to Love” only emphasizes the point, as well as the breadth that was in Lamp of the Universe from its very beginnings. I’ve tended in recent years to think of Williamson as growing more inclusive of synth and keys with time, and maybe that’s true in terms of adjusting a balance from one element to the next in his composing methods or arrangements, but so much of what Lamp of the Universe has become in the years since is laid out here, or at very least hinted toward, even the bluesy lead rollout and on-a-kit-toms and snare of “Freedom in Your Mind” are prescient, let alone the flowing organ and tambourine that are added later, to fold together on side C with “Her Cosmic Light,” about half as long at 4:12, but resonant just the same in its melodic seeking.
There is not one among the eight songs on The Cosmic Union that doesn’t include the word “love” somewhere in its lyrics. And that’s what the album is. Just as side A sets the foundation for the rest of what unfolds (here and beyond), maybe the strumming circa-1965 George Harrison singer-songwriterism of “What Love Can Bring” and the pushed-farther-out moment when sitar and keys align after the 3:30 mark in “Tantra Asana” on side D are a foundation of their own, if one built in ether. They are united, certainly, as all the material on The Cosmic Union is, by Williamson‘s voice, by their light-touch, inclusive but never overwrought arrangements — that’s a high compliment for an album that has this much sitar and flute and keys, etc. — and by the feeling of love that pervades as the central thematic. As the cover more than hints, The Cosmic Union has a very terrestrial, sometimes downright dirty if you’re lucky, interpretation, but it’s the sharing and proliferation of love that comes through most of all, and if this edition of the album is definitive, it is that love that defines it.
Williamson‘s early-2022 offering, The Akashic Field (review here) — maybe his 13th under the Lamp of the Universe banner — provided hints of what’s to come in 2023 as he moves forward with the heavier as-yet-still-solo band Dead Shrine, whose debut album is impending, but even it was in conversation in some ways with The Cosmic Union, in songs like “Minds of Love” or “Mystic Circle.” This shouldn’t surprise, necessarily, anyone who has charted Williamson‘s progression lo these last two decades, but it does emphasize just how expansive, how inclusive and how crucial The Cosmic Union is. I’ve said before and I’ll say here that on a personal level, this is a record I love. Hearing it again in this new form — new to me, anyhow, since I didn’t have it on vinyl before — it is all the more special for the conversation the material has with itself as well as the surrounding spectra. If you seek healing, this is music that heals.
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 26th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Don’t get me wrong, there’s precious little in this world for which I’d trade the acid-drenched psych and cosmic explorations of Lamp of the Universe, but damn, when Craig Williamson hits into a riff, fuzz on, amp loud, drums behind, bass under, you gotta just let that groove ride. Dead Shrine — a solo-project for the Hamilton, New Zealand, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer — is an extension of impulses previously shown in Arc of Ascent and Datura in the long-long-ago, and “The Formless Soul,” which you can and should hear at the bottom of this post, is the opening track and one of the eight appearing on The Eightfold Path, the debut full-length that’s due out next year through Kozmik Artifactz.
If you’ve hung around here a while, chances are you’ve heard me at some point or other going on about how fucking righteous this dude’s work is. And not to toot my own horn there, but I’m only correct in doing so. The Eightfold Path plays out like a heavy rock and psychedelic bonfire, rolling through two sides of epic nod on the way to the absolute blowout that is “Incantations Call” at the back end. I hate to be all “if you know you know,” because the truth is you know way more than I do about basically everything, but god damn, what a record this is. No bullshit, it’s the first name on my best-of-2023 list, which, yes, I’ve started.
From YouTube and Williamson direct:
DEAD SHRINE – The Eightfold Path
Release date: Late February 2023 on Kozmik Artifactz and Astral Projection (Vinyl/CD/Digital)
The new album, and “band” as I like to call it has been a long running idea I’ve had since the Datura days, and that was to continue to play in a heavier 70s acid rock way on my own… in Datura and especially in Arc of Ascent I’d write the songs, produce them, record parts … even extra guitars, percussion and keyboards on the albums… so really, its been a natural progression to starting the Dead Shrine thing. I guess mostly it’s a return to a more rock thing as I used to do 20 plus years ago in Datura, still heavier, still with the Psych overtones…
