Released last year by Nasoni, the debut full-length from Spanish rockers Arenna, Beats of Olarizu (review here), was warm and engaging. It seems like the five-piece took those ideas to heart. They’ll be playing Stoned from the Underground in Germany this weekend (more info at their Facebook), and to mark the occasion, they’ve just released their first video, for the song “Fall of the Crosses.”

And in it, basically what you get is a bike ride. Popping a tape (awesome) into a Walkman (I totally had that same one; I bought it at Caldor), our friendly beardo protagonist presses play to start the song and soon sets off on a ride through what looks like beautiful rural Spain, winding up at a garage where — well, I don’t want to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say that the video, though simple, is an excellent extension of the unpretentious wholesomeness the band put forth on the album. Here’s hoping they kill it in Germany this weekend.

Enjoy “Fall of the Crosses”:

Ever since mentioning them in the Astra review the other day, I’ve had my mind on Belgian psych trippers Hypnos 69, and specifically their last album, The Eclectic Measure. Since it’s sunny in the valley for what feels like the first time in a year (though it’s not supposed to last), I thought I’d share this live clip of “The Point of No Return” filmed live in Leuven in 2007. They’re probably my second favorite act on Elektrohasch, which is saying something. Hope you dig it.

Despite the douchebag rantings of privileged US economists to the contrary, the world is far from flat, and so, when I listen to the sweetened, mostly-instrumental post-rock of Melbourne, Australia trio Ahkmed, I can’t help but get a sense of isolation out of the music. A certain loneliness. Even the title of their Elektrohasch debut, Distance, would appear to convey a feeling of separation, and all the more if they’re referring to the emotional spaces between things rather than the physical. Lonely either way.

Think about it: even with the album art above a single iris and the vast reaches of space are pictured, so what’s essentially carried across is a feeling of singularity in something much bigger than one’s self. Even if the sunrise in the pupil as we see it is a reflection of what an interstellar traveler is watching, there’s no denying the weight of cosmic motion is a humbling experience. That kind of thing is bound to make you wistful.

But the music has moments of gorgeousness nonetheless, and the heavily reverbed guitar of Carlo Iacovino and the warm bass of Dan McNamara provide no shortage of them. It’s a tone and technique you could take as far back as Kraut rock, but we’ve seen it most recently and most effectively of late with the likes of Red Sparowes and the neo-Neurot set, though Ahkmed are far less pretentious in their delivery. They refer to their style as post-stoner, and I suppose that works. Psychedelic post-rock would do just as well.

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Psych-metal wunderkind Indy Shome, guitarist/vocalist of the Providence-by-way-of-New–York-by-way-of-Hong–Kong outfit Queen Elephantine and sometime label head of Concrete Lo-Fi Records, returns with his band’s second full-length to be released through a yet-undetermined imprint, Kailash. Named for the Himalayan peak on which Hinduism says resides Lord Shiva, the album was mastered by Billy Anderson, who joins the ranks of Sons of Otis and Elder (with both of whom Queen Elephantine has released splits) on the growing list of names associated one way or another with the band.

With Shome on the experimental outing is vocalist Rajkishen Narayanan, former Agnosis/Tides Within bassist Andrew Jude Riotto, The Cutest Babyhead Ever multi-instrumentalist Brett Zweiman on tabla and other percussion and drummer Chris Dialogue, but contrary to what the personnel might suggest, Kailash relies mostly on a minimalist aesthetic, with few parts that would qualify as conventional doom. Instead, Shome and the band offer sparse, loosely-structured excursions into a spontaneous, improv-sounding creative dimension. There is obviously a plan, but it’s written down on 30 separate pieces of paper and it’s up to you to put them in the right order to find out what the hell it is.

Take the hypobaric drone of opener “Search for the Deathless State,” which, led along the cliffside by a thick Riotto bassline, finds itself falling deep with a spoken word movement and slowly encompassing noise. At 15:39, it is a song almost entirely void of payoff — that is, if you sit through the whole thing expecting Sleep-style guitars to kick in and for Kailash to become an entirely different kind of Holy Mountain, you’re going to be disappointed — but the sense I get is they were going for unsatisfying in the traditional sense.

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