Cali psychedelic space traders Carlton Melton hereby announce their new long-player, Resemble Ensemble, will arrive on earthly terrain Feb. 17, 2023, in cosmic alliance with Agitated Records. “Prescribed Skies” is both the opener and longest track (immediate points) from the offering, which finds the krautrock-informed, drone-prone instrumentalist trio working as a foursome after welcoming aboard guitarist/producer Anthony Taibi of the likewise undervalued White Manna, and to put it plainly, that’s a match that works. Pushed outside atmospheric confines by Andy Duvall‘s drums, “Prescribed Skies” is nonetheless meditative in a way that feels exploratory while sure of its own heading even if the listener ends up who the hell knows where and, indeed, who the hell knows when, how or why.
But some things you just don’t need to know, or maybe shouldn’t, and the jams throughout Resemble Ensemble are nigh philosophical in their acceptance of their own mystery. “Elsewhere (Need to Be)” defies its titular urgency with drumless guitar explorations and “So the Story Grows” builds atop a central drone with far-back percussion like the ground below, while “High Alert” strips it all down for a keyboard-infused getdown, hard funk and a crafted solo feeling like a snippet of a larger adventure that just so happened to work as an outlier among outliers, while “Route Thirteen,” definitive in place and a terrestrial return, plays off classic rock influences in its ramble, swelling in volume behind its second half burner of a guitar solo before capping with a fittingly organic comedown. A moment in the room with the band, offered with a purity of purpose manifest in its own creation.
What more would you ask? Spoiled, perhaps. There’s razzle and there’s dazzle, but the mood-altering effects of Resemble Ensemble are to chill, so do that as you dig into the substantial leadoff premiering below, a herald of what’s to come that doesn’t necessarily speak for the entirety even if it does in not doing so. Be confused. That’s part of the fun.
Album announcement follows. Go on. Make friends:
Carlton Melton, “Prescribed Skies” track premiere
Carlton Melton, from Northern California, are now a practising fourpiece in the arts of melted-minds psychedelia.
With the added kraut-oomph and sike-flutter of fellow Californian Anthony Taibi (whom you may know as being a member of White Manna, and DDT with Andy), Rich Millman, Andy Duvall, and Clint Golden have now embellished the Carlton Melton sound.
Pushing forward as a fourpiece, the band recorded Resemble Ensemble in July 2021 (just before Andy moved back over East!) at Anthony’s home studio, 3D Light in Freshwater, CA. Anthony did all the recording and mixing. The Melton Magick Karpet settled, and our favourite contemporary sikedelic warlords plugged in, amped up and let it flow…and flow it does. From the krautrock fuelled pszych-raga of Prescribed Skies, to the fluid dronescape of Elsewhere that welcomes you into its arms with a warming tone, almost a missing Spacemen 3 demo at the feast here… So The Story Grows has the drone scraping through a murk of dazzling feedback and pummel, with the fuller sounding Melton giving the genre a proper wobble, hold on to your brains people…
High Alert… whas this? Synth and guitar interplay jambusting, this is the Melton wigging out and almost interweaving 70s high table rock with some odd and downright perverse synthfunkpunk rhythms… get weird… or get wired… or both… easily done here. Closing out the album with Route Thirteen is the road trip home…they’ve been, they’ve massaged and mangled your synapses, plug in the satnav and take the higher-route home…if you get our drift.
Carlton Melton, starting 2023 in a better place than most, soaring high on their synaptic-dazzling magick karpet.
Once again mastered by John McBain (legend).
300 on White Splatter vinyl, called “corneal exposure mix”. 300 on Black vinyl, also available with a nice poster of the front cover. 500 Compact Disc, in sturdy card sleeve.
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 3rd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
In case 2008 doesn’t seem like all that long ago, the image below is one I found on Carlton Melton‘s MySpace page. Many of the pictures are gone, but this one with the album info written in what looks like a MS-Paint-with-mouse handwriting was still there, and, since all the images of the album art are teeny-tiny, I figured that would be fun to include instead.
The Mendocino drift-heads released Live in Point Arena as their first CD-R in suitably casual fashion, winding up with about 100 copies made, one of which indeed is listed currently for $100 cash monies on Discogs. Below, guitarist Rich Millman gives some background remembering the get-together where the set was recorded, as well as how it was recorded, and you’ll also find the preorder link for the first official vinyl edition of Live in Point Arena, which will be a 2LP out through Lay Bare Recordings in a they-should-probably-make-more edition of 300, though mind you I have no idea if they’ll actually make any more of them.
Among the admirable traits of the new version is that it doesn’t cost a hundred bucks. Plus availability. Plus headpsych.
Have at it:
CARLTON MELTON – PRE ORDER DEC 3RD 10:00 cet DOME ROCK AT ITS FINEST!
Carlton Melton’s CD-r version of ‘Live in Point Arena’ finally on heavy weight vinyl (2LP).
Honoured to announce that the ‘Live in Point Arena’ CD-r version from Carlton Melton finally will be released on heavy weight coloured vinyl as 2LP.
‘Live In Point Arena’ was recorded during a full moon on the evening of July 18th, 2008. It wasn’t a live show but more a gathering of friends and folks to play some ‘head music’ at Brian’s home which happened to be a geodesic dome and ideal for those types of sounds. I recorded the evening on a M-Audio handheld recorder duct taped to the wall/ceiling of the North side of the Dome. When I got back to San Francisco a few days later I immediately crushed the audio to 4-track cassette tape on a Tascam 424. Upon listening back I thought this stuff sounded cool and shared it with Andy. We then burned some cd-r’s to give to friends and likeminded folks. Andy dropped off a copy to Scott Hewicker at aQuarius records in San Francisco and they liked it enough to request a few cd-r’s to sell at the shop and also posted a kind review by Scott. Then there were more requests for the cd-r’s and we burned some more ( like 70 or so ) and that was that…
Until now 13 years later and our friend Désirée kindly asking if she can release the cd-r recording on vinyl on her label with some added bonus bits recorded that same evening. We thank you Désirée and Lay Bare Recordings.
Andy had brought up his guitar and amp and used it on ‘happy song’, ‘against the wall’, ‘full moon ridge’, and the bonus tracks ‘thirst cycle’ and ‘purer’ (extended). Andy also got on the drums for ‘fucking funky shit’ and bonus tracks ‘another log on the fire’, ‘speeditup’, and ‘rubbery room’. Brian got on the drums for ‘happy song’, ‘against the wall’ and the bonus track ‘purer’ (extended). Andreas stopped by and played drums on ‘full moon ridge’. I played guitar and synth throughout the evening. Some other folks stopped by throughout the night offering shout outs and guidance. It was a special night and eventually forged the beginnings of the musical group Carlton Melton. We hope you can find some joy and amusement with this blast from the past. Long Live Dome Rock.
– Rich April 2021
Tracklisting: Happy Song Against The Wall Fucking Funky Shit Inter Mission Root Ball Full Moon Ridge Legion of Doom Thirst Cycle Another Log On The Fire Speeditup Rubbery Room Purer ( extended )
Lineup: Andy Duvall / guitar, drums Brian McDougall / drums Rich Millman / guitar, synthesizers John Steuernagel / bass
This will be a two-week Quarterly Review. That means this Monday to Friday and next Monday to Friday, 10 releases per day, totaling 100 by the time it’s done.
Me? I’m taking it one week, one day, one album at a time. It’s the only way to go and not have it seem completely insurmountable. But we’ll get through it all. I started out with the usual five days, and then I went to seven, then eight, and at that point I felt like I had a pretty good idea where things were headed. The last two days I filled up just at the end of last week. Some of it is I think a result of quarantine productivity, but there’s a glut of relevant stuff out now and some of it I’m catching up on, true, but some of it isn’t out yet either, so it’s a balance as ever. I keep telling myself I’m done with 2020 releases, but there’s one in here today. You know how it goes.
And since you do, I won’t delay further. Thanks in advance for reading if you do.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Carlton Melton, Night Pillers
Rangey mellow psych collected together with the natural shimmer of a Phil Manley (Trans Am) recording and a John McBain master, the new mini-LP from Mendocino medicine makers Carlton Melton is a 31-minute, five-song meditative joy. To wit, “Safe Place?” Is. “Morning Warmth?” Is, even with the foreboding march of drums behind it. And “Striatum,” which closes with interplay of keys and fuzzy leads and effects, giving a culminating seven-minute wash that doesn’t feel like it’s pushing far out so much as already gone upon arrival, indeed seems like a reward for any head or brain that’s managed to make it so far. Opener “Resemblance” brings four minutes of gentle drone to set the mood ahead of “Morning Warmth” — it might be sunrise, if we’re thinking of it that way — and centerpiece “High Noon Thirty” bridges krauty electronic beats and organic ceremony that feels both familiar and like the band’s own. They may pill at night, but Carlton Melton have a hell of a day here.
Weaving in and around genres with fluidity that’s tied together through dark industrial foundations, Crown are as much black metal as they are post-heavy, cinematic or danceable. “Gallow” or the earlier “Neverland” call to mind mid-period, electronica-fascinated Katatonia, but “Extinction” pairs this with a more experimental feel, opening in its midsection to more unsettling spaces ahead of the dance-ready finish. There’s nothing cartoonish or vamp about The End of All Things, which is the French outfit’s fourth album in 10 years, and it’s as likely to embrace pop (closer “Utopia”) as extremity (“Firebearer” just before), grim atmospherics (“Nails”) or textured acoustics (“Fleuve”), feeling remarkably unconcerned with genre across its 45 entrancing minutes, and remarkably even in its approach for a sound that’s still so varied. It’s not an easy listen front to back, but the challenge feels intentional and is emotional as much as cerebral in the craft and performance.
Swedish duo Noêta offer their second record for Prophecy Productions in Elm, comprising a deceptively efficient eight songs and 38 minutes that work in atmospheres of darker but not grim or cultish folk. Vocalist Êlea is very much a focal point in terms of performance, with Andris‘ instrumentals forming a backdrop that’s mournful on “Above and Below” while shimmering enough to bring affirmation to “As We Are Gone” a short while later ahead of the electrified layering in “Elm” and the particularly haunted-feeling closer “Elm II.” “As I Fall Silent” is a singularly spacious moment, but not the only one, as “Fade” complements with strings and outward-sounding guitar, and some of Elm‘s most affecting moments are its quietest stretches, as “Dawn Falls” proves at the outset and the whispers of “Elm” reaffirm on side B. Subdued but not lacking complexity, Noêta‘s songs make an instrument of mood itself and are pointedly graceful in doing so.
Unostentatious, which is presumably not to say “humble,” may or may not be Polymerase‘s debut release, but it follows on from several years of inactivity on the part of the Philippines-based mostly-instrumentalist heavy psych trio. The band present four duly engaging and somewhat raw feeling jams, with a jump in volume as “Lightbringer//Lightgiver” picks up from “A Night with a Succubus” and opener “The Traveler” and a final touch of thickened, fuzzy sludge in the rolling “Green is the Color of Evil,” which closes at a lurch that comes across at significant remove from the title-hinted brightness of the song just before it. Uneven? Maybe, but not egregiously so, and if Polymerase are looking to give listeners an impression of their having a multifaceted sound, they most assuredly do. My question is over what span of time these tracks were recorded and what the group will do in moving forward from them, but I take the fact that I’m curious to find out at all as a positive sign of having interest piqued. Will hope for more.
Lucid indeed. The band’s self-applied genre tag of “adult AOR” is more efficient a descriptor of their sound than anything I might come up with. Glasgow’s Lucid Sins released their acclaimed debut, Occultation, in 2014, and Cursed! is the exclamatory seven-years-later follow-up, bringing together classic progressive rock and modern cult heavy sensibilities with a focus on songwriting that’s the undercurrent from “Joker’s Dance” onward and which, as deep as “The Serpentine Path” or the title-track or “The Forest” might go, is never forgotten. To wit, the penultimate “By Your Hand” is a proto-everything highlight, stomping compared to the organ-prog “Sun and the Moon” earlier, but ultimately just as melodic and of enviable tonal warmth. Seven years is a long time between records, and maybe this material just took that long to put together, I don’t know, but I had no idea “cult xylophone” was a possibility until “The Devil’s Sign” came along, and now I’m not sure how I ever lived without it.
Australia’s history in heavy rock and roll is as long as that of heavy rock and roll itself and need not be recounted here, except to say that Hekate, from Canberra and Sydney, draw from multiple eras of it with their debut long-player, Sermons to the Black Owl, pushing ’70s boogie over the top with solos on “Carpathian Eagle” only after “Winter Void” and “Child of Black Magick” have seen the double-guitar-and-let’s-use-both four-piece update nascent doom vibes and “Burning Mask” has brought a more severe chug to the increasingly intense procession. A full production sound refuses to let the quick eight-tracker be anything other than modern, and though it’s only 28 minutes long, the aptly-titled “Acoustic Outro” feels earned atmospherically, even down to the early-feeling cold finish of “Cassowary Dreaming.” The balance may be then, then, then, and now, but the sense of shove that Hekate foster in their songs gives fresh urgency to the tenets of genre they seem to have adopted at will.
One does not evoke elephantine images on a heavy record, even on a debut release, if aural largesse isn’t a factor. New Hampshire trio Abel Blood — guitarist/vocalist Adam Joslyn, bassist Ben Cook, drummer Jim DeLuca — are raw in sound on their first EP, Keeping Pace with the Elephants, but the impact with which they land “The Day that Moby Died” at the outset is only encouraging, and to be sure, it’s not the thickest of their wares either. “Enemies” already pushes further, and as centerpiece “UnKnown Variant” would seem to date the effort in advance, it also serves the vital function of moving the EP in a different, more jangly, grungier direction, which is a valuable move with the title cut following behind, its massive cymbals and distorted wash building to a head in time for the nine-minute finale “Fire on the Hillside” to draw together both sides of the approach shown throughout into a parabolically structured jam the middle-placed surge of which passes quickly enough to leave the listener unsure whether it ever happened. They’re messing with you. Dig that.
Begun in 2011 by guitarist/vocalist Stanislav Govorukha and based in Sweden by way of Poland and the Ukraine, death-doom lurchbringers Suffer Yourself are not strangers to longer-form material, but to my knowledge, “Spit in the Chasm” — the opening and longest track (immediate points) on their third record, Rip Tide — is the first time they’ve crossed the 20-minute mark. Time well spent, and by that I mean “brutally spent,” whether its the speedier chug that emerges from the willful slog of the extended piece’s first half or the viciously progressive lead work that tops the precise, cold end of the song that brings final ambience. Side B offers two shorter pieces in “Désir de Trépas Maritime (Au Bord de la Mer Je Veux Mourir),” laced with suitably mournful strings and a fair enough maritime sense of gothic drama emphasized by later spoken word and piano, and the brief, mostly-drone “Submerging,” which one assumes is the end of that plotline playing out. The main consumption though is in “Spit in the Chasm,” and the dimensions of that fissure are significant, figuratively and literally.
High order Sabbathian doom rock from my own beloved Garden State, there’s very little chance I’m not going to dig Green Dragon‘s Dead of the Night, and true to type, I do. Presented by the band on limited vinyl after digital release late in 2020, the four-song, 24-minute outing brings guitarist/vocalists Zach Kurland and Ryan Lipynsky (the latter also adding keys and known for his work in Unearthly Trance, etc.), bassist Jennifer Klein and drummer Herbert Wiley to a place so dug into its groove it almost feels inappropriate to think of it as a peak in terms of their work to-date. They go high by going low, then. Fair enough. “Altered States” opens with a rollout of fuzz that miraculously avoids the trap sounding like Electric Wizard, while “Burning Bridges” murks out, “The Sad King” pushes speed a bit will still holding firm to nod and echo alike, and “Book of Shadows” plunges into effects-drenched noise like it was one of the two waterslides at the Maplewood community pool in summertime.
The kind of record that probably won’t be heard by enough people but will inspire visceral loyalty in many of those who encounter it, the self-titled debut from French collaborative outfit Age Total — bringing together members from Endless Floods out of Bordeaux and Rouen’s Greyfell — is a grand and engrossing work that pushes the outer limits of doom and post-metal. Bookending opener “Amure” (14:28) and closer “The Songbird” (16:45) around the experimentalist “Carré” (4:06) and rumbling melodic death-doom of “Metal,” the album harnesses grandiosity and nuance to spare, with each piece feeling independently conceived and enlightening to musician and audience alike. It sounds like the kind of material they didn’t know they were going to come up with until they actually got together — whatever the circumstances of “together” might’ve looked like at the time — and the bridges they build between progressive metal and sheer weight of intention are staggering. However much hype it does or doesn’t have behind it, Age Total‘s Age Total is one of 2021’s best debut albums.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 13th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Let’s assume a night piller is one who pills at night. Whatever the case, Night Pillers, the new mini-LP from Carlton Melton, was recorded at the same time as the band’s 2020 offering, Where This Leads (discussed here), and it brings an ultra-diggable hypnotic half-hour of dream-laced exploration to bear across five tracks that, well, I’m only on “High Noon Thirty” so far and I’m board for wherever they’re headed. The trio are no strangers to setting their course into the farther reaches of “Far out, man,” and if you’re not up for taking the trip, so be it — they’re already gone.
The drift and drone here is resonant and mellow and if you can get on board now’s a good time. I’m sure they’ll do preorders and all that stuff. It’s a Record Store Day thing, 600 copies. I don’t even know if they’re gonna stream it, but oh it’s cool if you can catch it somehow some way.
Info follows:
Announcing New CARLTON MELTON RSD Release
Carlton Melton drift in on their sike-magick-karpet with a 30 minute mini album to celebrate the impending Summer Solstice, phasers and drones set to STUN! Released on RSD June 12th for maximum Solstice benefit.
Tune in, Drone on, Drop Out……..
5 Newly mastered tracks from the same session that spawned 2020’s 2LP release “Where This Leads” Spaced sike-drone fizzle and eyeball-shaking distorto rock leading the way on this late night head-nodder!
Californian Magick Karpet riders, Carlton Melton, soar high on this Mini album, recorded/engineered by Phil Manley/El Studio and Mastered as ever by John McBain. Almost phasing out further than before, some of Millman’s lead guitar hits sike stratospheres and orbits we cant even dream of, more synth, a drum machine, more guitars and Clint Golden holding down the back line whilst Andy and Rich duel in space with riff-lazers… well, thats what we thought late on saturday night…flyyyy onnnnnn…….
600 copies WHITE VINYL ONLY!
LP Released 12th June 2021 on Agitated Records
Tracklist 1. Resemblance 2. Morning Warmth 3. High Noon Thirty 4. Safe Place 5. Striatum
Carlton Melton is: Andy Duvall (drums, guitar) Clint Golden (bass) Rich Millman (guitar, synths)
Everyone comes to it at their own speed, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all, but when you’re really ready to let it all go, Carlton Melton will be waiting. It’s no easy feat to discard all your hangups, all those things in you that don’t feel right or like they help push you forward rather than hold you back, that don’t — in the parlance of our times — “bring you joy” from within yourself, but maybe you’ll be one of the lucky few who get to that plane. I imagine it’s a bit like the pointillist pastoralia of the cover art to Carlton Melton‘s upcoming album, Where This Leads. I wouldn’t know myself, but maybe that’s how some people see the world.
In my mind everyone out in Northern California (at least what’s left of it after years of unprecedented wildfires) is a pot farmer, and if Carlton Melton aren’t, the made-for-TV-but-for-his-horrifying-ex-girlfriend governor Gavin Newsom should do everything in his power to subsidize them in that regard, but of course their meditations are more than weedian worship, and the sweet psychedelia they bring to bear across Where This Leads — beginning with the side A-consuming exploration “The Stars are Dying” and running from there into varied progressions of hold-your-breath-and-dive-in fluid immersion across a 70-minute entirety, offering spacious complement in side C’s “Smoke Drip Revisited,” brash cascade in “Three Zero Two” and alt-jazz expectation-defiance on “Dezebelle” along the way — is the stuff of afternoon daydreams.
They call it “dome rock.” Okay. Put it in your dome.
Along with the album announcement below, I have the distinct pleasure to host the premiere of “Waylay” from Where This Leads, which you’ll find at the bottom of this post. No single song on the record speaks for the whole of it (not even that opener), but I’m not kidding when I tell you it’s an honor to host this track, and I’d appreciate it if you could take the time to listen and (and you know I rarely ask this so directly) please share accordingly.
Breathe deep. Here goes:
CARLTON MELTON – Where This Leads Agitated Records 2LP / CD / DL Released 30th October 2020
Nestled deep in the forests of Mendocino County in Northern California, huddled under the protective shade of towering redwoods and within earshot of frothy waves crashing against the Pacific coastline, squats a geodesic dome that has served as crucible for the experimental genius of Carlton Melton. Nature and Man operate under different logics. But here, Carlton Melton wholly entrusts this idyllic environment with the task of inspiring and guiding their musical improvisations.
The Dome has been the ideal setting to facilitate their creativity. Without forcing a specific dynamic or theme, the band inhabits its womb-like confines to improvise, explore, dream. Their music draws on psychedelia, stoner metal, krautrock, and ambient atmospherics to convey, above all else, a mood.
A prickly guitar melody will float lazily, a wall of dissonant feedback will resolve into a hypnotic drone, or a colossal riff will exhume the soul of Jimi Hendrix. One hears Hawkwind or Spacemen 3 jamming with Pink Floyd at Pompeii.
Indeed, Carlton Melton have one foot in the ancient world and one tentacle in deep space. They are both the pack of proto-humans drumming with femurs in Kubrick’s 2001 and the film’s inscrutable monolith hinting at the universe’s mysteries. The “Stoned Ape” theory holds that early hominids ingested psychedelic mushrooms that provided an evolutionary boost to their brains, helping them blossom into Homo Sapiens. Imagine such cavemen trippin’ balls, their nightmarish visions sending them into feverish bouts of rage and then gentle moments of introspection. They very well could have heard the music of Carlton Melton rattling inside their skulls, first driving our ancestors mad then upward into a higher realm.
Andy Duvall (drums, guitar), Clint Golden (bass), and Rich Millman (guitar, synths) have yet to play Pompeii, but they have already wowed crowds at European festivals such as the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia, Roadburn, and Desertfest Antwerp. Live, they are jaw-dropping. On record, mind-altering.
In fact, with each album, Carlton Melton adds a subtle new element, synapses firing new neural connections. In 2020, they release new full-length Where This Leads, marking ten years of the band’s working relationship with their UK label Agitated Records and five years of recording with Phil Manley in his El Studio in San Francisco. With Where This Leads, the band rewires the listener’s mind. “Smoke Drip Revisited” is a ticklish acid flashback, “Porch Dreams” a dabbling in country psych, and “Closer” a driving, freak-out of guitar heroics.
One senses that the group is conveying a message that cannot be expressed verbally but only suggested through synth sighs, walloping rhythms, and soaring solos. Would Carlton Melton therefore be a group of stoned apes dizzily grasping for meaning or telepathic futurists communicating to us through crude man-made instrumentation?
Well, lower the stylus to find out. – Eric Bensel, Paris July 2020
Tracklist 1. The Stars Are Dying 2. Butchery 3. Waylay 4. Dezebelle 5. Smoke Drip Revisited 6. Crown Shyness 7. Three Zero Two 8. Porch Dreams 9. Closer
