Posted in Whathaveyou on June 18th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Pulling drive-bys on empty rooms, making tapes outta rekkids, watching the bottom fall out and going on anyway — Lammping‘s new album Flashjacks has enough cool-ass flow to well earn the arrogance it takes to call a song “The Funkiest” and release it to public ears. You start off with an Om ride cymbal in “Intercessor,” but like so much of the 33-minute long-player, it becomes a plaything in Lammping‘s hands. A fuzzy shimmer of nostalgia peppers the straightforward songs with aesthetic, samples and effects adding to the memorable melodies and hooks, hooks, hooks of the thing. Oh, it’s so right on. You gotta understand. You just have to.
Maybe you caught onto the band’s 2020 LP Bad Boys of Comedy (review here). Or maybe it was 2021’s New Jaws EP (review here) that did it. Or maybe it hasn’t happened yet. Point is, listen to this shit and let it click because if you let it it will and then everybody’s life gets better.
DL is out Aug. 27. I’ve got an album stream booked for Aug. 19. That’s right. I dig this so much I locked down an album stream two months in advance. Not taking any goddamn chances.
Preorders and such from the PR wire:
LAMMPING – Flashjacks – Echodelick Records
Digital Release : August 27th, 2021 / Vinyl Release : September 17th, 2021
Toronto psych band Lammping’s sophomore album Flashjacks is coming out digitally August 27th, getting a vinyl release through Echodelick Records on September 17th.
Presale Begins June 25th. Edition of 300. Oxblood/Black swirl. First 75 orders receive a Lammping patch.
After their critically acclaimed debut LP release on Nasoni Records in July 2020, the band got to working on a new collection of songs, further expanding the sonic possibilities of heavy music. The foundation of the sound remains rooted in Jay Anderson’s heavy drumming and Mikhail Galkin’s melodic riffs, but with the addition of samples, drum machines and a variety of instrumentation, the upcoming LP’s sonic palate is just as indebted to Stereolab, De La Soul and Kraftwerk as it is to Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and Sleep.
Thematically, the record is about a general sense of urban paranoia, exploring themes of social division, gentrification, memory and spirituality against that backdrop. It is also an ode of sorts, to Toronto, and the good and the bad of the city’s history and fabric.
Flashjacks attempts to eschew cliched stoner and psych-rock tropes and to forge a new path in heavy psychedelia. From the Madlib-esque crunch of the drums on Lammping to the sample-laden Other Shoe, the album bends unwritten rules of the genre, while building on the foundation of well crafted, melodic songs.
Good stuff, almost entirely new. Hell, three of these records came out on the same day last Friday, so yeah, it’s fresh stuff one way or the other, even if I think I’ve played Genghis Tron three times now since they announced the release of their Dream Weaponalbum. And Yawning Sons definitely more than once too. Whatever. Call me repetitive. I like doom. “Repetitive” is a compliment to me.
The show opens and closes north of 10 minutes, but only hits that mark one other time, which is in “Fawn” by Body Void. Fair enough for the ultra-sludge charred-black morass that track elicits. With new King Buffalo, Somnuri and Domkraft singles and that hidden gem by Alastor tucked in ahead of Acid Mothers Temple-offshoot Mainliner’s massive jam at the end, this is a good god damn show. If I’d heard the new Heavy Temple in time to include that, I probably would have. Note to self for the next one.
Thanks for listening and/or reading. As always I hope you enjoy.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 04.02.21
Chamán
Concreto
Maleza
VT
Lammping
Other Shoe
New Jaws EP
Domkraft
Seeds
Seeds
King Buffalo
Hebetation
The Burden of Restlessness
DVNE
Court of the Matriarch
Etemen AEnka
Jess and the Ancient Ones
Summer Tripping Man
Vertigo
Greenleaf
Bury Me My Son
Echoes From a Mass
VT
Yawning Sons
Gravity Underwater
Sky Island
Genghis Tron
Great Mother
Dream Weapon
Arepo
Nonmaterial
Arepo
Body Void
Fawn
Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth
Somnuri
Beyond Your Last Breath
Nefarious Wave
Alastor
Death Cult
Onwards and Downwards
VT
Mainliner
Hibernator’s Dream
Dual Myths
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is April 16 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in Reviews on March 29th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
The Spring 2021 Quarterly Review begins here, and as our long winter of plague-addled discontent is made glorious spring by this son of York Beach, I can hardly wait to dig in. You know the drill. 50 records between now and Friday, 10 per day. It’s a lot. It’s always a lot. That’s the point.
Words on the page. If I have a writing philosophy, that’s it. Head down, keep working. And that’s the challenge here. Can you get over your own crap and say what you need to say about 10 records every day for five days straight out? I’ll be exhausted by the end of the week for sure. I’ll let you know when we get there if it feels any different. Till then, let’s roll.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Wolvennest, Temple
The second full-length offering — and I mean that: ‘offering’ — from Belgium’s Wolvennest is an expansive and immersive follow-up to their 2018 debut, Void, as the Brussels six-piece offers next-stage extreme cult rock. Across 77 willfully-unmanageable and mind-altering minutes, the troupe caroms between (actual) psychedelic black metal and sheer sonic ritualism, and the intent is made plain from 12:26 opener/longest track (immediate points) “Mantra” onward. Wolvennest are enacting a ceremony and it’s up to the listener to be willing to engage with the material on that level. Their command is unwavering as the the heft and wash of “Alecto” and the ethereal swirl and dual vocal arrangement of “All that Black” show, but while King Dude himself shows up on “Succubus,” and that’s fun, especially followed by the penultimate downward march of “Disappear,” the greatest consumption is saved for “Souffle de Mort” (“breath of death,” in English; it’s not about eggs). In that 10-minute finale, marked out by the French-language declarations of Shazzula Vultura, Wolvennest not only make it plain just how far they’ve brought you, but that they intend to leave you there as well.
A 15-minute playful jaunt into the funk-grooving max-fuzzed whatever-works garage headtrip if Toronto’s Lammping is right on the money. The four-piece start channel-spanning and mellow with “Jaws of Life” — which is a righteous preach, even though I don’t know the lyrics — and follow with the complementary vibe of “The Funkiest,” which would seem to be titled in honor of its bassline and conjures out-there’est Masters of Reality in its face-painted BlueBoy lysergics over roughly traditional songwriting. Is “Neverbeen” weirder? You know it. Dreamily so, and it’s followed by the genuinely-experimental 40 seconds of “Big Time the Big Boss” and the closer “Other Shoe,” which if it doesn’t make you look forward to the next Lammping album, I’m sorry to say it, but you might be dead. Sorry for your loss. Of you. This shit is killer and deserves all the ears it can get with its early ’90s weirdness that’s somehow also from the late ’60s and still the future too because what is time anyway and screw it we’re all lost let’s ride.
Tales to Be Told is the late-2020 third long-player from Swedish classicists Lykantropi, following 2019’s Spirituosa (review here) with a warmth of tone that’s derived from ’70s folk rock and vaguely retro in its tones and drum sounds, but remains modern in its hookmaking and it’s not exactly like they’re trying to hide where they’re coming from when they break out the flute sounds. Harmonies in “Mother of Envy” make that song a passionate highlight, while the respective side-endings in “Kom Ta Mig Ut” and “Världen Går Vidare” add to the exploratory and roots-proggy listening experience, the album’s finale dropping its drums before the three-minute mark to allow for a drifting midsection en route to a class finish that answers the choruses of “Spell of Me” and “Axis of Margaret” earlier with due spaciousness. Clean and clear and wanting nothing aesthetically or emotionally, Tales to Be Told is very much a third album in how realized it feels.
Japanese trio Mainliner — comprised of guitarist Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mothers Temple), bassist/vocalist Kawabe Taigen (Bo Ningen) and drummer Koji Shimura (Acid Mothers Temple) — are gentle at the outset of Dual Myths but don’t wait all that long before unveiling their true freak-psych intention in the obliterating 20 minutes of “Blasphemy Hunter,” the opener/longest track (immediate points) that’s followed by the likewise side-consuming left-the-air-lock-behind-and-found-antimatter-was-made-of-feedback “Hibernator’s Dream” (18:38), the noisier, harsher fuckall spread of “Silver Guck” (19:28) and the gut-riffed/duly scorched jazz shredder “Dunamist Zero” (20:08), which culminates the 2LP beast about as well as anything could, earning the gatefold with sheer force of intent to be and to harness the far-out into some loosely tangible thing. Stare into the face of the void and the void doesn’t so much stare back as turn your lungs into party balloons.
On a certain level, what you see is what you get with the Orion slavegirl warriors, alien mushrooms and caithan beast that adorn DayGlo Mourning‘s debut album, the six-song/35-minute Dead Star, in that they’re suitably nestled into the sonic paraphernalia of stoner-doom as well as the visual. With bassist Jerimy McNeil and guitarist Joseph Mills sharing vocal duties over Ray Miner‘s drums, variety of melody and throatier shouts are added to the deep-toned largesse of riff, and the Atlanta trio most assuredly have their heads on when it comes to knowing what they want to do sound-wise. The hard-hit hi-hat of “Faithful Demise” comes with some open spaces after the fuzzy lumber that caps “Bloodghast,” and as “Ashwhore” and “Witch’s Ladder” remind a bit of the misogyny inherent in witchy folklore — at the end of the day it was all about killing pretty girls — the grooves remain fervent and the forward potential on the part of the band likewise. It’s a sound big enough that there isn’t really any room left for bullshit.
Issued in the waning hours of Dec. 2020, Chamán‘s 70-minute, six-song debut album, Maleza, is a psicodelico cornucopia of organic-toned delights, from the more forward-fuzz of “Poliforme” — which is a mere six and a half minutes long but squeezes in a drum solo — to the 13-plus-minute out-there salvo that is “Malezo,” “Concreto” and “Temazcal,” gorgeously trippy and drifting and building on what the Mendozza, Argentina, three-piece conjure early in the proceedings with “Despierta” and “Ganesh,” each over 10 minutes as well. Even in Maleza‘s most lucid moments, the spirit of improv and live recording remains vibrant, and however these songs were built out to their current form, I’m just glad they were. Whether you put it on headphones and bliss out for 70 minutes or you end up using it as a backdrop for whatever your day might bring, Chamán‘s sprawling and melted soundscapes are ready to embrace and enfold you.
Italian duo Sonic Demon bring a lethal dose of post-Electric Wizard grit fuzz and druggy echoed snarl to their debut full-length, Vendetta, hitting a particularly nasty low end vibe early on “Black Smoke” and proving willing to ride that out for the duration with bouts of spacier fare in “Fire Meteorite” and side A capper “Cosmic Eyes” before the second half of the 40-minute outing renews the buzz with “FreakTrip.” Deep-mixed drums make the guitar and bass sound even bigger, and such is the morass Sonic Demon make that even their faster material seems slow; that means “Hxxxn” must be extra crawling to feel as nodded-out as it does. Closing duo “Blood and Fire” and “Serpent Witch” don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said, style-wise, but they feel no less purposeful in sealing the hypnosis cast by the songs before them. If you can’t hang with repetition, you can’t hang, and the filth in the speedier-ish last section of “Serpent Witch” isn’t enough to stop it from being catchy.
Sow Discord is the solo industrial doom/experimentalist project of David Coen, also known for his work in Whitehorse, and the bleak feel that pervades his debut full-length under the moniker, Quiet Earth, is resonant and affecting. Channeling blowout beats and speaker-throbbing crush on “Ruler,” Coen elsewhere welcomes Many Blessings (aka Ethan Lee McCarthy, also of Primitive Man) and The Body as guests for purposefully disturbing conjurations. Cuts like “Desalination” and “Functionally Extinct” churn with an atmosphere that feels born of a modern real-world apocalypse, and it’s hard to tell ultimately whether closer “The World Looks on with Pity and Scorn” is offering condolence or condemnation, but either way you go, the bitter harshness that carries over is the thread that weaves all this punishment together, and as industrial music pushes toward new extremes, even “Everything Has Been Exhausted” manages to feel fresh in its pummel.
Formed by members of Lord Humungus, Frank Sabbath and Carpet Burns, Cerbère offer three tracks of buried-alive extreme sludge on their self-titled debut EP, recorded live in the band’s native Paris during a pandemic summer when it was illegal to leave the house. Someone left the house, anyhow, and the resultant three cuts are absolutely unabashed in their grating approach, enough so to warrant in-league status with masters of misanthropy like Grief or Khanate, even if Cerbère move more throughout the 15-minute closing title-track, and dare to add some trippy guitar later on. The two prior cuts, “Julia” — the sample at the beginning feels especially relevant in light of the ongoing Notre Dame rebuild — and “Aliéné” are no less brutal if perhaps more compact. I can’t be sure, because I just can’t, but it’s entirely possible “Aliéné” is the only word in the song that bears its name. That wouldn’t work in every context. Here it feels earned, along with the doomier lead that follows.
They’ve cooled down a bit from the tear they were on for a few years there, but Dali’s Llama‘s new Dune Lung EP is no less welcome for that. The desert-dwelling four-piece founded by guitarist/vocalist Zach and bassist Erica Huskey bring a laid back roll to the nonetheless palpably heavy “Nothing Special,” backing the opener with the fuzzy sneer of “Complete Animal,” the broader-soundscape soloing of “Merricat Blackwood,” and the more severe groove of “STD (Suits),” all of which hit with a fullness of sound that feels natural while giving the band their due as a studio unit. Dali’s Llama have been and continue to be significantly undervalued when it comes to desert rock, and Dune Lung is another example of why that is and how characteristic they are in sound and execution. Good band, and they’re edging ever closer to the 30-year mark. Seems like as good a time as any to be appreciated for the work they’ve done and do.
Posted in Radio on January 22nd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
I was pretty late turning in the playlist for this episode. Not as late as I could’ve been, mind you, but late enough. It kind of got away from me, as will happen from time to time with… everything, I guess. But I got it done and decided against doing a voice track to go with it because I didn’t want to take the extra time from the engineer, a nice guy named Henry who puts up with my late ass on the regular, when he has other stuff to work on. Plus, there’s some good flow to these tracks and I don’t need to screw that up sounding like a doofus, so yeah.
A couple of tracks from the upcoming Heavy Psych Sounds stuff — Cosmic Reaper and Acid Mammoth. You’ll note too the new Monolord single “I’m Staying Home” opens the thing. Kudos to those guys on being topical, even if the track was recorded in 2019. And then we do some long songs in the middle and get heavy and aggro at the end, just to change it up a little bit. Keep things lively some 51 episodes in. Still can’t tell you how flabbergasted I am Gimme has let this go on so long. I’m just gonna ride it out and see where it goes, like I do.
Thanks for listening and/or reading. Hope you dig the show if you check in.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 01.22.20
Monolord
I’m Staying Home
I’m Staying Home
Cosmic Reaper
Hellion
Cosmic Reaper
Lammping
Jaws of Life
New Jaws
Scorched Oak
Desert
Withering Earth
Kabbalah
Stigmatized
The Omen
Acid Mammoth
Berserker
Caravan
Kombynat Robotron
Signal Hill
Spontane Emission
Hammada
Domizil
Atmos
Giants, Dwarfs and Black Holes
In the Circle
Everwill
Sarkh
Morast
Kaskade
Wowod
Proschenie
Yarost I’ Prochenie
Dread Sovereign
Nature is the Devil’s Church
Alchemical Warfare
Nomadic Rituals
Them
Tides
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Feb. 5 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in audiObelisk on June 11th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Lammping will release their debut album, Bad Boys of Comedy, July 21 through Nasoni Records. The unpretentious eight-song/36-minute jaunt makes itself comfortable amid a lush sunshine of melodic vibe, the Toronto-based duo of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Mikhail Galkin and drummer Jay Anderson (Stonegrass, Comet Control) taking advantage of the studio setting to do the work of at least four players between layers of guitar, synth, bass and drums. Effects ebb and flow in a wash that reminds at times of the ’90s revivalist psych that ultimately spawned shoegaze, but there’s something classically playful about the insistent rhymes of the lyrics in opener “Forest for the Trees” and the subsequent “Soakin'” as well that seems to offer a kind of garage-rocking wink to the listener, as if to say, “S’all a joke, innit?” and already know the answer.
All around, languid instrumental flow taps varied realizations of psych — some poppy, some not — and meandering excursions that resonate with an improvised feel if not actual improvisation. Galkin and Anderson may be crafting a full-band sound, but the sense of space in the recording also becomes a presence as the echoes stretch out, coming and going to allow for the Hawkwind-via-Monster–Magnet crunch of “Lightheaded” and the Dead Meadow buzztone boogie in “Greater Good” to shine though no less awash in purpose than they are in reverb.
Let’s get personal for a minute. This is about where my head’s at these days. That’s as honest as I can be with you. I put this record on for the first time a couple weeks ago and it was an utter relief to hear it. “Oh good,” I said. Really. Sweetly melodic, heavy enough to have a presence and some physicality behind the psychedelia, and given some structure of songwriting to complement the fluid rhythms that persist throughout. It’s not in a rush, it’s not trying to blow you away with how aggressive, or progressive, or regressive it is. It’s just two players collaborating on songs that they obviously dig. No doubt there’s some Beatles-awareness happening as they don Middle Eastern scales in “Within You,” but the dream-toned gorgeousness that rolls out with Anderson‘s cymbal crashes is righteously their own. I dig the hell out of this record. It’s not going to be the biggest release of the year. The hype machine probably won’t be about it. It won’t be “of the moment” or whatever we’re valuing right now. All it is is everything it needs to be.
“Within You” swirls into a fade ahead of the more percussively intense “Eater” but laid back vocals bring to mind some of The Heads‘ freakouts even as some of Anderson‘s tom sounds feel recognizable from his work in Comet Control. Another jam fades into the tambourine-included “Tumble,” which might be named for something falling over at the end, but uses a steady beat during its four minutes to keep the drift in check as much as possible, or at very least as much as it wants to. Side B is more hypnotic than not, which serves the album well as it moves toward “Closer to the Sun” at the finish. My only complaint with the finale, which tops six minutes, is that it isn’t longer, as I have no trouble imagining Galkin and Anderson diving headfirst into longer-form rehearsal-room improvisations, following the whims of one or the other of them wherever they might go. Particularly interesting in the closer is that the bass seems to come into the forward position where so much of Bad Boys of Comedy to that point is led by the guitar.
Again, I’ll take it either way — if I haven’t gotten the point across yet, I’m on board for what Lammping are doing here — but putting the low-end fuzz up front allows the guitar to jam out overtop all the more at the outset of the track, and that is immersive and satisfying, making the two minutes before the first verse that much more evidence of the natural chemistry between Galkin and Anderson. That, of course, is the foundation of everything that plays out across Bad Boys of Comedy, and it remains a palpable unifying factor in the material.
With the release still a month-plus off, Nasoni are taking preorders on their site, and the band has elected to premiere “Greater Good” and “Within You.” The two songs appear in succession on Bad Boys of Comedy and I’m thrilled to host them here for the reach they represent as a whole.
I hope you dig them half as much as I do:
‘Greater Good’ is the second single off Lammping’s debut LP ‘Bad Boys of Comedy’, out July 2020 on Nasoni Records. The drum heavy, riff driven exploration of working class paranoia is side A of this release, with the introspective, psychedelic “Within You” on side B.
Lammping is a new psych-rock outfit from Toronto, formed by multi-instrumentalist Mikhail Galkin and drummer Jay Anderson. The album incorporates a wide range of influences that Jay and Mikhail bonded over, from Tropicalia and Turkish psych to classic NY boom-bap drum patterns and CSNY-style vocal harmonies.
While rooted in riffs and heavy drumming, the debut LP showcases a fresh, eclectic approach to modern psychedelia, eschewing cliched musical categorizations.
Lammping is: Mikhail Galkin: Guitar, bass, vocals, etc. Jay Anderson: Drums
