Album Review: Speck & Interkosmos, Split LP
Posted in Reviews on March 13th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Maybe there’s some secret improv-based heavy psychedelic jam group on Facebook or something where everyone talks about the proper water temperature for tea and how to build delay pedals and cosmic synthesizers out of common items found around the household — or, you know, they played a show together or something — but however Speck and Interkosmos know each other, they’re a good fit.
Speck are from Vienna, Austria, and Interkosmos hail from various locales in Germany. Both explore space through spontaneous excursions of aural weaving, shaping organic vibes with electric means, finding their way as they go and making that process — at least on this shared full-length release issued through Sulatron Records — the basis of their expression. The explorations, abidingly mellow but not at all staid or unipolar, are the point, in other words. And with Speck‘s “The Metz Session” (23:16) on side A and Interkosmos unfurling “Beyond Hibernation” (22:32) on side B, it’s about as packed as a 12″ platter can be with dug-in, out-there brainmelter kosmiche-ism, both bands aware and ready to incorporate the tenets of space rock, but refusing to subsume their impulses to the tenets of genre.
Taken as an entirety, the split heralds a vitality of approach shared across both outfits, while each showcases a personality and progression of its own, working largely instrumentally — there’s some conversation at the end and a “woo!” in the second half takeoff in “The Metz Session”; no argument — to carry them ever deeper toward the center of lysergic creativity, the root of all things, maybe the weird 400-mile-wide iron ball said to rest at the core of the Earth, and so forth. Wherever they’re headed, it’s not unimportant, but the focus is on how they get there rather than a landing spot.
That said, Speck do offer a rousing, blaster crash wash and ripper solo shred — dig that punker snare too amid the push — starting around 21 minutes into “The Metz Session,” devolving the piece named after its recording circumstance into noise before capping with residual undulations of echoing guitar, then sharing a good laugh after. The three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Marcel Cultrera, bassist Lisa Winkelmüller and drummer Patrick Säuerl jammed out “The Metz Session” as the first part of a video series (with sound and video helmed by Sebastian Hödlmoser and Lukas Sukal, respectively), and begin with the drums tapping themselves to life on the ride cymbal before launching a relatively uptempo beat as the foundation. Guitar and bass join, and before the extended piece is even a minute in, everyone is present and accounted for in a stretch deceptive in its tension but still fluid enough for the band to ride it as long as they do.
It’s an exciting start. Not so much in a way that has you waiting for the payoff — the song’s 23 minutes long, and the patience to let Speck unfold it as they see fit is an inherent ask — but in a way that offers rewards even before they get to the already-noted finish, whether that’s Cultrera‘s solo after the three-minute mark, expansive and shimmering over the somewhat-understated-for-now bass from Winkelmüller or the turn to deeper-distorted chug at around five minutes in that shifts almost immediately to a more drifting comedown, drums stopping and turning at 5:43 to mark the beginning of the next stage. With wah to spare, Speck work their way into another build, and at 9:28 they start to more directly coalesce around a fuzzy cosmic thrust that is all the more sweeping when the guitar howls out its acid-drenched lead atop the now-solid groove beneath.
More chug and a furious round of crashing follows, but the stretch is relatively shortlived, shifting before the 13-minute mark into a long opposite-of-a-build unmaking — highlight bass work included after 14 minutes in — that brings “The Metz Session” eventually down to just floating guitar as the setup for the all-the-way-back return of volume splurge that finishes. Do I need to use the word “dynamic” when dynamic is the whole point? I don’t know, but Speck offer full-spectrum audio anyhow, and the laughter and chat at the end offers a palpable sense of exhale, putting the listener even more in the room with the band for the session recorded in 2021, just about two years after they formed.
To contrast, Interkosmos are an entity reborn, and perhaps that’s where the title “Beyond Hibernation” comes from, since their only prior release, the extended full-length Hypnotizer, came out in 2008 (there was also a 2016 remaster). Whatever the case, the trio of guitarist Sergio Ceballos (also Mohama Saz, RIP KC way back when, etc.), guitarist, synthesist/sampler, recording engineer, mixer and label head Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt (ex-Electric Moon, Krautzone, Zone Six, Sula Bassana, Weltraumstaunen, etc.), and drummer Bernhard “Pablo Carneval” Fasching (Electric Moon, Sula Bassana‘s Dark Days LP, and so on) are short neither on pedigree nor chemistry, lacing “Beyond Hibernation” with an ambient backdrop of synth around which the guitars curl and reshape themselves according to the whims of the moment.
A more gradual beginning has some kind of sampled echoing loop fading in even before the guitar starts to wake up, serene and less raga than the notion of waking up implies. The drums start soft shortly before 90 seconds in, more the presence of a thud at first than anything so rampantly active, but there’s a space-jazz sensibility to the rhythm behind the post-rock drift and entwining swirl of the guitars, and when taken together, it is duly entrancing. Again, it’s the drums that signal the shift into business-proper, at 3:24 establishing a more forward beat, still gentle but solidified, and the current of that groove pulls Ceballos and Schmidt along as well, threatening space rock takeoff at about five minutes in with the synth rising in the mix, but keeping to its course, not forcing “Beyond Hibernation” to go someplace it doesn’t seem to want to go; band and song working together to make the thing what it is.
Hitting another echelon in minute six, they’re underway and headed into the unknown with an ultra-flowing movement, calm on the surface in the synth and space-noodling guitar but decisively busier on the drums as they dig into the part and let it go, gradually reshaping it until as they approach the 12-minute mark, it seems almost like the guitar is noting the tension that’s come about in the piece itself not because they’re in a build, but because it’s starting to sound like the jam is coming apart. It’s not, actually, of course, but that danger is there as the drums fade back momentarily to regroup. By 12:45, they’re back at it in constructing a new procession, trying one way, then another, before at 14 minutes they seem to rally and find their way into a more angular manifestation, guitar and snare bouncing playfully and almost bluesy, lighthearted.
They hit into the twisting path of guitar and maybe-bass-or-just-other-guitar that at 17 minutes in enters a build in earnest and the somewhat understated — at least it’s not as noisy as Speck‘s was — crescendo for side B, which both feels earned and rests easily as the culmination of the release as a whole, particularly with the residual layers of guitar and synth and the flourish of cymbals that accompany the settling-down at the very end, a corresponding “woo!” thrown in as if to underscore the excited sentiment put forth on side A, though this time it was an audience response, as the “Beyond Hibernation” was recorded in 2008 at Space Farm Ahoi Festiva in Austria, with overdubs added last year.
In its very last seconds, not looking at the clock but just listening on headphones, there is a sense that Interkosmos might pick back up and keep going, but no, thepy don’t. The fact that “Beyond Hibernation” was captured on stage suits the feel of the split in general — live creation is the throughline of both sides, it’s the context that differs — but there’s no appreciable dip in sound quality from Speck (who were in a studio) to Interkosmos either, and that bolsters continuity as well. To be perfectly honest, however, if Speck doesn’t draw you in at the outset, by the time Interkosmos take over, you’ve probably already checked out.
There is, then, a kind of for-the-converted mindset to the proceedings, but aside perhaps from the intimidation factor of taking on longform jammy psych instrumentals for the first time, the barriers to entry are negligible, if not entirely absent. All gates open. Both Speck and Interkosmos welcome their audience (figurative and literal) with steady immersion, and if you’re not careful, you might find yourself back in reality when it’s done wondering where you’ve just been. And maybe that’s the ideal anyhow, since getting lost in it and taken by the moment as it happens could hardly be truer to what each act presents in their given time is the result of the players doing much the same, submerging in the musical conversation taking place right then, come what may in terms of the actual realized material. Boldly impulsive, the split underscores the appeal of psych-jamming more generally in that, and whether one actively follows along or allows the totality to speak to the subconscious, the only wrong answer in terms of how to approach it is to ignore.
