Much like the elusive Theory of Everything in physics, with Hills‘ universal psychedelic premise is underlined by almost unaccountable gravity. Released in 2011 through Intergalactic Tactics and Transubstans Records following a 2009 self-titled debut, Master Sleeps basks these 10 years later in its breadth of influence and establishes its aesthetic on a per-track basis, presenting two vinyl sides of resonant, spaced-out intergalactic fare with an awakened nature that’s nothing if not contradictory to the title. It’s a record about which much was said at the time by the in-the-know-telligencia, and that’s cool, because it’s cool, and, hey man, cool, but any and all past hype aside — it’s amazing how the years turn these things into wisps of recollection; the fervent talking-up of records fading to echoes even as attention spans are criticized for their shortness; hypocrites to a hyperlink, everyone — it’s a cool record and to deny it is to deny oneself the pleasure of a 35-minute, mostly instrumental outward journey of jams and in-on-it-early-next-gen heavy psych. Suffice it to say, if this shit was due in June instead of a decade gone, you’d still see as much desperate preening of feathers in order to curry its vaunted favor. And fair enough.

I have the CD, which was the Transubstans version, that I apparently picked up later in 2011, but I’ll be damned if Master Sleeps doesn’t hold up. It was ahead of the game on vinyl structuring, presaging the larger-platter-as-format-of-record (pun absolutely intended) explosion by a year or two, and each of its two sides brought three tracks in a nearly even break of structure to what seems to be utterly fluid throughout the listening experience, opener “Rise Again” and closer “Death Shall Come” creating a loop from one to the other that feels all the more geared to encourage multiple listens in a kind of sonic reincarnation. Accordingly, the more you hear Master Sleeps, the more you hear in it. First? Swirl. “Rise Again” fuzzes and unfolds a careening spaciousness that calls out early space rock and psych drift with shoegaze vocals buried in the mix à la The Heads where you wonder if anything’s really being said or you’re just imagining it and does it really matter anyway. I don’t know.

True to the band’s moniker, the air gets thinner the higher you climb, both into “Rise Again” and across side A and B as a whole, ascending from longer tracks to shorter toward the middle of the record — the two shortest cuts, “Claras Vaggvisa” and “The Vessel,” close side A and open side B, respectively — then longer again at the finish. In case, the sick hypnosis of “Rise Again” holds firm even as Hills wander elsewhere, “Bring Me Sand” tapping Mideast scales and rhythmic patterns in classic fashion, a marked turn from the preceding opener but that’s the point. There’s a heavier burst in the middle — watch out for it — but they’re never so volatile as to lose control, and the far-off-ness of “Claras Vaggvisa,” which an organ line as its most forward factor backed by some quieter but foreboding tom hits and vague, manipulated voice echoes, is intentionally drifting and atmospheric and, yes, weird. Delightfully, delightfully weird. Weird as means and end both, but golly that’s fun.

Even more when “The Vessel” kicks into action, bringing that organ up in volume and putting a reignited kosmiche thrust behind it, the drums still having a chance to swing as they nonetheless push forward amid the channel-shifting, amorphous-sounding guitars. Next time someone asks you what “molten” sounds like, it sounds like Hills playing “The Vessel” on Master Sleeps. There’s a sample there, who knows what, but the point is the jam, and the jam sounds like they took a regular song and melted it into so much lysergic goo. True, they find some shape in the second half, coalescing around a dreamy guitar figure to cap, but the breaking-down-of-elements had to come first. The finish in “The Vessel” makes a suitably right-on lead-in for the soft-boogie drum foundation of “Master Sleeps” itself. Guitars, bass, organ all follow the bounce those drums lay out, grooving casual-like through the initial section of the longest piece of the album that shares its name, and as they jam through, they seem to acknowledge the funk they’re making — a bit of cowbell here, a bit of wah there, some easy-soul vocals, all very deep in the procession, all very spacey, very improv-feeling. And yeah, this sounds like what’s next, still. A band and a record out of time, maybe, leaving everybody else to chase their warp trail around the other side of the planet where some trap or other is set but our sensors can’t get a reading, Cap’n.

That’s right. It’s the kind of record that might make you lapse into fan-fic. No regrets. There’s nothing missing from “Master Sleeps,” and for those Stateside, one might find its inherent swagger similar to the always-off-the-cuff musings of Endless Boogie, but there’s a personality at work here too, and the band are having fun exploring almost in spite of themselves. Thus the drones and chants of “Death Shall Come” arrive to put not just a memento mori on the party they just incited, but an end to the LP as a whole, a patient unfurling across the song’s first half leading to a surprise of a crash about three minutes in as guitars intertwine in loosely mystical fashion and the dirge truly comes together, hitting an apex still somewhat undersold but nothing less than it needs to be to highlight just how individual each part of Master Sleeps is and likewise just how intensely the pieces feed the whole.

Rocket Recordings picked up Master Sleeps in 2013 and likewise stood behind the band’s 2015 outing, Frid, and their 2017 Alive at Roadburn LP, captured the year before at the festival where I’d been lucky enough to see them (review here). The band aren’t so much active at this point, but Rocket has newly issued a debut outing from psych-jazz outfit Djinn, which boasts membership from Hills and sibling purveyors Goat. And that’s not nothing, as you can hear on Bandcamp.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

Distractible, so the internet is probably the worst place for me to be. So it goes. Those eight-year-old SNL clips aren’t gonna watch themselves when I should be writing.

This week… was a thing that happened? I guess the highlight was when I talked to Genghis Tron and they weren’t jerks. I really like that record. Stick around in the interview long enough and you’ll hear me tell them it’s my album of the year so far, and it is. I know there’s a lot to come from some big names, but it’s a high standard just the same, and they’ve set it, and yeah, it’s just always a relief to talk to someone you haven’t interviewed before (actually I’m not 100 percent that I never interviewed them back in the day, but close enough) and they don’t ruin the record by being a dick. That hasn’t happened to me in a while, for which I’m thankful.

Next week I’m doing a cool thing. On Monday. I’m already kind of nervous about it. I’m also interviewing Tommi Holappa from Greenleaf in a couple hours — also quite cool — and I’m kinda nervous about that too, but I know damn well already he’s a good guy based on copious past experience, so no actual worries there other than the usual I’m-talking-to-a-human-being type. Need to send him the Zoom link. I’ll get there.

But the cool thing Monday. Can’t talk about it. Very cool though. Hoping to post about it Tuesday, but timing might be weird, so it may be Wednesday before I get there. So Monday looks like a Snail album review with a video premiere — hey that’s pretty cool too! — and then Tuesday will either be Cool Thing or the Greenleaf interview, and Wednesday is whichever of those two didn’t run on Tuesday. I’ve also got two premieres lined up for Thursday and one for Friday, so the week’s spoken for in its entirety, and that takes us through the end of April. Time both drags and flies. Nothing makes any sense.

Far out.

The Pecan starts tee-ball tomorrow for the first time. We bought him a glove last week, then this week we bought him a glove he can actually squeeze closed, though he hasn’t quite worked out the mechanism of doing so yet. That kid fucking hates me. Oof. Rough week. Everything’s a fight. Everything. The Patient Mrs. comes down the stairs and it’s like he flips a switch and is good to go. She goes back to work and he’s back to whining and bitching about fucking everything. All week. Dude does not believe in union breaks. I’m hoping it’s a phase but I’ve seen zero evidence to-date that it might be. To wit, I couldn’t stand my father pretty much from the outset and now he’s dead, so there you go. Find me a point to anything.

I’d like to record some vocals this weekend for nascent-project, but I’m not sure I’ll get the chance. The weekends lately are the worst. I end up with less time than the weekdays because there’s no preschool in the morning. What a wreck. Sundays are awful, and I still refuse to do anything on Saturday because god damn, give me a day, but then I spend half of Saturday thinking about all the crap I need to get through on Sunday and it’s just a waste anyway and then Sunday’s still a pain in the ass. I guess if you have two kids, or, god forbid, more, you just cancel the rest of your life and that’s what you do. One kid, there’s still some semblance of an existence beyond that kid, so you’re kind of struggling to keep yourself sane. Or you’re negligent as fuck, and certainly there’s an appeal to that as well.

I don’t know anything. I’d like to write a book of essays about it and call it Daddy Issues, but I’m sure that’s taken.

I’ll go shower. That will help.

Have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate, watch your head, all that fun stuff. Back Monday.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch