Posted in Questionnaire on September 7th, 2021 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: Bence Ambrus of River Flows Reverse, Lemurian Folk Songs & Psychedelic Source Records
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I’m a simple semi-musician, who is not talented and diligent enough to live from music. This why I started to collect talented musicians from surrounding bands. I organize jam sessions, where all tunes are recorded. I also play on guitar or bass most of the times. When I work I’m a gardener, so in winter times I do my own projects, like River Flows Reverse and the project under my name. In these days I spend hours in a small dirty shed outside the house, surrounded with funny toy-instruments, boar skulls, candles, banjos and a big picture of Alvin Lee.
Describe your first musical memory.
I was 5-6 years old and my father brought me a Mickey Mouse cap for some children’s day or what, then took me to a gig of his friends in next town. I don’t remember the music, but the Mickey-cap, yes, and that I really liked the blues.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
I have a lot, almost all are best. I loved the times when around 2015 we lived on the coasts and hills of Andalusia with my girl Kriszti and my dingo Rozi. We played Western-style street music with a guitar and a mandolin, when we had enough gold we continued to walk through. If we made more, we bought ticket to the ferry to Canarian Islands. Then we continued there. It was even the best time in my life. Cave dwelling, busking, spending time stoned only outside in the mountains and seacoast.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
It’s always being tested when you look around in the music business and see the bands, shitty pop stars, radio programs, and realize that, this is really the level what the people need, and you are just a freak with false thinking and feelings, and the real music is there in the TV and radio and giant festivals.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Hopefully not back in the ’80s haha.
How do you define success?
If you see there are people who really appreciate and like your work. If there is one guy who says he loved the gig, or if someone who send you an email from the Philippines, that your music has changed his or her life etc. Or when some label ask you if they can print your music to vinyls. These things are enough satisfying for me.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
If you travel on foot with no money, etc., you can see the real face of the world. The most beautiful coasts and mountains, communities, but the other side too. For example, if looking for hidden places to sleep around cities where are less possible that the police or a thief will alarm you, you can find the places where those people used to meet or hide who don’t want you to see them. Suppressed souls on the edge of society. Perverts, prostitutes, killers, thieves. I have seen cabins built by caines with bloody condoms thrown around, 17 year old heroinists who just wanted to have fun in Barcelona, then they stucked on speed and ketamin living in a bush. But the worst thing to see is the youngsters of today (I’m 29). I really feel like 90 percent of them don’t have any sense of life. Only cellphones, Instagram stupid talking taking light drugs. Respect to the exceptions.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
To build a worldwide organization to help poor, and talented musicians with good taste. Organize tours, vinyl releases gigs on the beach like Duna Jam, make small festivals. To give this to someone to work with, and then build my own roadhouse style studio-bar-laboratory by a big lake surrounded big olden pine trees, no neighbours. And just live with the loveds and the banjo.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To realize and manifest spiritual contents, projecting symbols of the sub and superconscious. Help the dying soul. This was the original basis of alchemy not to make material gold. To slowly create a symbol from yourself, a vertical quintessence of all arts in the world. This why I really like the original alchemist art, so concrete and straightforward. For me this old knowledge turned into the music of eternal soul. For example an Øresund or Tia Carrera or Causa Sui jam session is real art, fills more this expression then a million-dollar modern copper statue, etc.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Posted in Reviews on March 26th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Thursday. Everyone doing well? Healthy? Kicking ass? Working from home? There seems to be a lot of that going around, at least among the lucky. New Jersey, where I live, is on lockdown with non-essential businesses shuttered, roads largely empty and all that. It can be grim and apocalyptic feeling, but I’m finding this Quarterly Review to be pretty therapeutic or at least helpfully distracting at a moment when I very much need something to be that. I hope that if you’re reading this, whether you’ve been following along or not, it’s done or can do the same for you if that’s what you need. I’ll leave it at that.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Slift, Ummon
The second album from French space/psych trio Slift is a 72-minute blowout echoshred epic — too aware not to be prog but too cosmic not to be space rock. Delivered through Stolen Body Records and Vicious Circle, Ummon is not only long, it speaks to a longer term. It’s not an album for this year, or for this decade, or for any other decade, for that matter. It’s for the ongoing fluid now. You want to lose yourself in the depths of buzz and dreamy synth? Yeah, you can do that. You want to dig into the underlying punk and maybe a bit of Elder influence in the vocal bark and lead guitar shimmer of “Thousand Helmets of Gold?” Well hell’s bells, do that. The mega-sprawling 2LP is a gorgeous blast of distortion, backed by jazzy, organic drum wud-dum-tap and the bass, oh, the bass; the stuff of low end sensory displacement. Amid swirls and casts of melodic light in “Dark Was Space, Cold Were the Stars,” Slift dilate universal energy and push beyond the noise wash reaches of “Son Dong’s Cavern” and through the final build, liftoff and roll of 13-minute closer “Lions, Tigers and Bears” with the deft touch of those dancing on prior conceptions. We’d be lucky to have Ummon as the shape of space rock to come.
Two LPs telling two different stories released at the same time, Grinding Teeth/Zero Sleep (on Consouling Sounds) brings Josh Graham‘s aural storytelling to new cinematic reaches. The composer, guitarist, synthesist, programmer, visual artist, etc., is joined along the way by the likes of Jo Quail, Ben Weinman (ex-The Dillinger Escape Plan), Dana Schecter (Insect Ark), Sarah Pendleton (ex-SubRosa) and Kim Thayil (Soundgarden) — among others — but across about 90 minutes of fluidity, Graham/IIVII soundtracks two narratives through alternatingly vast and crushing drone. The latter work is actually an adaptation from a short sci-fi film about, yes, humanity losing its ability to sleep — I feel you on that one — but the former, which tells a kind of meth-fueled story of love and death, brings due chaos and heft to go with its massive synthesized scope. Josh Graham wants to score your movie. You should let him. And you should pay him well. And you should let him design the poster. And you should pay him well for that too. End of story.
Following the initial sax-laden prog-rock burst and chase that is opener “Gadfly,” Berlin’s Coogans Bluff bring a ’70s pastoralia to “Sincerely Yours,” and that atmosphere ends up staying with Metronopolis — their fifth album — for the duration, no matter where else they might steer the sound. And they do steer the sound. Sax returns (as it will) in the jabbing “Zephyr,” a manic shred taking hold in the second half accompanied by no-less-manic bass, and “Creature of the Light” reimagines pop rock of the original vinyl era in the image of its own weirdness, undeniably rock but also something more. Organ-inclusive highlight “Soft Focus” doesn’t so much touch on psychedelics as dunk its head under their warm waters, and “The Turn I” brings an almost Beatlesian horn arrangement to fruition ahead of the closer “The Turn II.” But in that finale, and in “Hit and Run,” and way back in “Sincerely Yours,” Coogans Bluff hold that Southern-style in their back pocket as one of several of Metronopolis‘ recurring themes, and it becomes one more element among the many at their disposal.
An underlying current of social commentary comes coated in Rough Spells‘ mysticism on Ruins at Midday, the Toronto unit’s second LP. Recorded by Ian Blurton and presented by Fuzzed and Buzzed and DHU Records, the eight-track LP has, as the lyrics of “Chance Magic” say, “No bad intentions.” Indeed, it seems geared only toward eliciting your participation in its ceremony of classic groove, hooks and melodies, even the mellow “Die Before You Die” presenting an atmosphere that’s heavy but still melodic and accessible. “Grise Fiord” addresses Canada’s history of mistreating its native population, while “Pay Your Dues” pits guitar and vocal harmonics against each other in a shove of proto-metallic energy to rush momentum through side B and into the closing pair of the swaggering “Nothing Left” and the title-track, which is the longest single cut at five minutes, but still keeps its songwriting taut with no time to spare for indulgences. In this, and on several fronts, Ruins at Midday basks in multifaceted righteousness.
Upside the head extreme sludgeoning! UK trio Goblinsmoker take on the more vicious and brutal end of sludge with the stench of death on A Throne in Haze, A World Ablaze (on Sludgelord Records), calling to mind the weedian punishment of Belzebong and others of their decrepit ilk. Offered as part two of a trilogy, A Throne in Haze, A World Ablaze is comprised of three tracks running a caustic 26 minutes thick enough such that even its faster parts feel slow, a churning volatility coming to the crash of “Smoked in Darkness” at the outset only to grow more menacing in the lurch of centerpiece “Let Them Rot” — which of course shifts into blastbeats later on — and falling apart into noise and echoing residual feedback after the last crashes of “The Forest Mourns” recede. Beautifully disgusting, the release reportedly furthers the story of the Toad King depicted on its cover and for which the band’s prior 2018 EP was named, and so be it. The lyrics, largely indecipherable in screams, are vague enough that if you’re not caught up, you’ll be fine. Except you won’t be fine. You’ll be dead. But it’ll be awesome.
Progressive metal underpins French trio Homecoming‘s aptly-titled first record, LP01, with the guitars of second cut “Rivers of Crystal” leading the way through a meandering quiet part and subsequent rhythmic figure that reminds of later Opeth, though there’s still a strong heavy rock presence in their tones and grooves generally. It’s an interesting combination, and all the more so because I think part of what’s giving off such a metal vibe is the snare sound. You don’t normally think of a snare drum determining that kind of thing, but here we are. Certainly the vocal arrangements between gruff melodies, backing screams and growls, etc., the odd bit of blastbeating here and there, bring it all into line as well — LP01 is very much the kind of album that would title its six-minute instrumental centerpiece “Interlude” — but the intricacy in how the nine-minute “Return” develops and the harmonies that emerge early in closer “Five” tell the tale clearly of Homecoming‘s ambitions as they move forward from this already-ambitious debut.
Tracked in the same sessions as the Budapest outfit’s 2019 album, Ima (review here), it should not come as a major surprise that the six-track/49-minute Logos from Lemurian Folk Songs follows a not entirely dissimilar course, bringing together dream-drift of tones and melodies with subtle but coherent rhythmic motion in a fashion not necessarily revolutionary for heavy psych, but certainly well done and engaging across its tracks. The tones of guitar and bass offer a warmth rivaled only by the echoing vocals on opener/longest cut (immediate points) “Logos,” and the shimmering “Sierra Tejada” and progressively building “Calcination” follow that pattern while adding a drift that is both of heavy psych and outside of it in terms of the character of how it’s played. None of the last three tracks is less than eight minutes long — closer “Firelake” tops nine in a mirror to “Logos” at the outset, but if that’s the band pushing further out I hear, then yes, I want to go along for that trip.
Progressive heavy rockers Ritual King display a striking amount of grace and patience across their Ripple Music-issued self-titled long-player. Tapping modern influences like Elder and bringing their own sense of melodic nuance to the proceedings across a tightly-constructed seven songs and 42 minutes, the three-piece of vocalist/guitarist Jordan Leppitt, bassist Dan Godwin — whose tone is every bit worthy of gotta-hear-it classification — and drummer/backing vocalist Gareth Hodges string together linear movements in “Headspace” and “Dead Roads” that flow one into the next, return at unexpected moments or don’t, and follow a direction not so much to the next chorus but to the next statement the band want to make, whatever that might be. “Restrain” begins with a sweet proggy soundscape and unfolds two verses over a swaying riff, then is gone, where at the outset, “Valleys” offers grandeur the likes of which few bands would dare to embody on their third or fourth records, let alone their first. Easily one of 2020’s best debuts.
You know what? Never mind. You ain’t weird enough for this shit. Nobody’s weird enough for this shit. I have a hard time believing the two souls from Portugal who made it are weird enough for this shit. Think I’m wrong? Think you’re up for it and you’re gonna put on Sunflowers‘ Endless Voyage and be like, “oh yeah, turns out mega-extreme krautrock blasted into outer space was my wavelength all along?” Cool. Bandcamp player’s right there. Have at it. I dare you.
Italian heavy rockers Maya Mountains formed in 2005 and issued their debut album, Hash and Pornography, through Go Down Records in 2008. Era, which follows a narrative about the title-character whose name is given in lead cut “Enrique Dominguez,” who apparently travels through space after being lost in the desert — as one does — and on that basis alone is clearly a more complex offering than its predecessor. As to where Maya Mountains have been all the time in between records — here and there, in other bands, etc. But Era, at 10 tracks and 44 minutes, is the summation of five years of work on their part and its blend of scope and straight-ahead heavy riffing is welcome in its more heads-down moments like “Vibromatic” or in the purposefully weirder finale “El Toro” later on. Something like a second debut for the band after being away for so long, Era at very least marks the beginning of a new one for them, and one hopes it continues in perhaps more productive fashion than the last.
There’s some stuff here that was recently premiered — Moura, King Buffalo, the Thunderbird Divine track that went up today — but I’m also bringing in a few things from the Quarterly Review that I’ve got slated for next week. That’s stuff I haven’t had the chance to write about yet like Mindcrawler and Lemurian Folk Songs, Ritual King and Dystopian Future Movies. I know I’m biased here and I always say this — if you dig back through the old podcasts, I used to say it about those too, but I think it’s a pretty good show.
It was a little weird cutting voice tracks for it yesterday though, I’ll say that. Yeah, it’s awesome new music and that’s always great to be excited about, but it feels a little lightweight to be stoked on cool songs when there’s a pandemic on and obviously bigger issues at play. The way I look at it is music is ultimately that escape that people need and if I can maybe give someone something they haven’t heard before and might dig, then I guess that’s not nothing. It ain’t driving a truck for Meals on Wheels when it comes to lending a hand — I should be doing that shit, as should we all, all the time — but it’s what I’ve got, anyhow.
Thanks for listening if you do, and if you see this and don’t listen, then thanks just for reading.
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is April 3 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in Reviews on November 7th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Sonic escapism can take any number of shapes or any number of non-shapes, and Lemurian Folk Songs do likewise. The first thing one hears on the nine-minute opener “Highself Roadhouse” is a chant-like vocal from singer/keyboardist Benus Krisztina that’s just two words: “Eternal circle.” Amid echo and reverb spaciousness comes a tonal warmth that extends from Ambrus Bence‘s guitar and newcomer Nemesházi Attila‘s bass to Baumgartner István‘s snare drums, adding to a fluid mix of fuzz and psychedelic vibing that becomes the running theme throughout the four-song/38-minute long-player, Ima. The title of the album is properly written with a kind of pyramid symbol next to the word (I can never get those things to show up in text; this site runs on a very old framework), but it would seem to tie into the pyramid-minded artwork, conjuring visions of ancient astronaut weirdness and all sorts of amalgamated who-knows-what.
And fair enough, since the Para Hobo Records-released album operates in a not completely dissimilar manner, with each song finding its own way around that central warmth as the Budapest-based four-piece steer its direction through airy post-whatnot or psychedelic boogie in second track “Füst,” indeed a bit of folk serenity in the penultimate “Pillanat,” and, on the 15:42 closer “Melusina III,” a deluxe, nod-ready fuzzed-out jam that resolves itself in a wash of noise and residual effects, seeming to leave nothing behind as the guitar line drifts out and leaves the bass and drums to hold out the central rhythm until that too dissipates, leaving just the lasers-in-space of guitar, which also fades out over the final minute-plus. That’s an as-reasonable-as-anything ending for a record like Ima — which is the band’s second behind 2017’s Maro and their 2016 debut EP, Nommo, from before Krisztina joined — but of course the focus such as it is is much more centered around the journey to get there rather than what happens at the end. That’s the nature of an offering such as this, but it’s a form in which Lemurian Folk Songs thrive, finding a home for themselves among a host of otherworldly sensibilities.
They would seem to be aware of such a trajectory, as well. Even the band’s moniker refers to some vision of a lost world, with Lemuria having been a once-postulated sunken continent that united India, Madagascar and Australia via what’s now the Indian Ocean. Obviously it would’ve been a sizable continent, but it was theorized because of similarities primate fossils in those places — thus Lemuria from “lemur.” Some Tamil writers adopted Lemuria as an interpretation of their own legendary sunken continent, Kumari Kandam (thanks Wikipedia), and others have taken on the idea of a lost civilization and so on. Lemurian Folk Songs, then, would be what these mythical people in this forgotten culture sang, whoever and whenever they were. So it is that the ethereal is manifest throughout Ima, and though the moniker is more a framework than a conceptual lens — that is, I don’t think they’re actually trying to write a lost culture’s folk music so much as they’re trying to write quality heavy psychedelia; a goal they achieve and then some, by the way — the feeling of being in another place is nonetheless crucial to the affect of the material.
From those initial chants, “Highself Roadhouse” sets itself out across a sonic sprawl that’s immersive and rife with intertwining energies, hypnotic in its repetitions but with enough change throughout to stave off being redundant. The trajectory is outward, but “Highself Roadhouse” is less about space than spirit, and as one can’t see a song title containing the word “roadhouse” without thinking of The Doors, it’s worth noting that Krisztina does work a bit of Jim Morrison swagger into her cadence on the opener. That’s all the more fitting as Ima shifts gears into “Füst,” which is faster and more physical in its movement, Bence showcasing choice lead work as Attila‘s bass tone continues to be a highlight unto itself. I am an eternal sucker for righteous low-end warmth, but even so, the work done here in anchoring the proceedings in complementing István in the rhythm section as well as the Bence‘s guitar is the kind that only makes a good album or band that much better.
“Füst” smooths and chills out effectively over its 8:25 run, and that makes the transition into the shorter “Pillanat” that much more of a highlight unto itself. The line between “Highself Roadhouse” and “Füst” was drawn with a quiet guitar and silence before the boogie riff started, but with “Füst” and “Pillanat” it’s more direct, an echoing vocal ending the second track shortly before the third picks up with its soft and melodic line. And “Pillanat” may be the briefest cut on Ima at just over five minutes, but it’s a beautifully meditative moment that does much to enrich the record as a whole in vibe, mood and aesthetic, showcasing a patience and broader dynamic than Lemurian Folk Songs have yet shown while also acting as a setup for “Melusaina III,” the rolling fuzz of which hits immediately and in hell-yes fashion, with Bence wasting no time in establishing the central riff as effects come to swirl around it, the drums take a laid back push and the bass, as ever, thickens the proceedings engagingly, given further dimension to the space the tones occupy.
It’s also Attila‘s bass that holds to the central figure as Bence‘s guitar goes wandering in the closer’s midsection, eventually working its way back to the roll and out again as Krisztina‘s keys fill out the melody. From there, there’s just about no coming back and Lemurian Folk Songs know it. But “coming back” was seemingly never in the plans anyway, and their already-noted departure-via-noise gives a last-minute flourish of experimentalism that comes across as underscoring the live feel of the performances preceding. I don’t know if they recorded live or not, but there’s a vitality to the work throughout Ima that very much suits Lemurian Folk Songs, and with the range of their songcraft and the meld of spontaneity and structure they bring to the offering, the converted among heavy psych heads should be well on board for the voyage as they present it. A sleeper, maybe, but not to be missed, with each track doing something to enhance the entirety in such a way as to make it all the more resonant by the time it’s done.
