Elusive Finnish psychedelic crushers Mr. Peter Hayden return with the 68-minute single-track offering, Born a Trip. The album – because, make no mistake, it is a full album – follows their 2010 debut, Faster than Speed (review here) and sees release on CD through Kauriala Society and 2LP through Mikrofoni. As a unit, the instrumental Kankaanpää five-or-six-piece continue to impress as they did last time around, though the scope of Born a Trip remains the same despite the jump in scale. Basically, Mr. Peter Hayden took what they did on the first album and doubled it, going from two tracks on either side of half an hour long each to one track on the far side of an hour. Whether or not that’s a great step in creativity, I’m not certain, but it’s an impressive jump in structuring the material and one a lot of bands fall flat making where Mr. Peter Hayden do not fall flat, instead excelling at crafting a singular work that rises and falls tidally, offering minute wave-like undulations to coincide with the larger push and pull. The band remains markedly individual in their approach to space rock, focusing more on the darkness and vastness than the rush of light or the jammed out feel present in so much latter day European psychedelia, and while the result of that is perhaps that Born a Trip has more in common with Faster than Speed than it might seem to if it also had a lot in common with other bands, there’s clear development of melodicism to complement the time increase; the record’s many ups and downs arriving heralded by a wash of melody in the double-guitars of V. Vatanen and J.P. Koivisto and the synths of Simo Kuosmanen, also of the richly creative Hexvessel and Dark Buddha Rising. Synths wind up playing a large role in filling out Mr. Peter Hayden’s sound – also enriched by a increase in production value since the last time – allowing Vatanen and Koivisto room to space out or start-stop in intricate rhythmic patterns while drummer T. Santamaa and bassist Lauri Kivelä hold the album’s single titular work together.

They cover a lot of ground in the 68 minutes of “Born a Trip” – I don’t want the previous paragraph to somehow convey that the growth here is mostly temporal – it’s not. Mr. Peter Hayden were hardly lacking for patience before, but here, it doesn’t even seem to be a question. Born a Trip breaks down into a series of intertwining movements, long progressive builds and apexes that crest one into the next as parts set each other up, play out, and then subside. Like a lot of heavy psych, one might argue enjoyment is proportional to volume, but Born a Trip is consuming no matter what level it’s played at, the initial build getting under way on a foundation of feedback, vaguely-melodic synth wash, rhythmic chug and drum thud. That initial tone-setting contorts the brain stem for a little more than the first 10 minutes, gradually solidifying the way one thinks of lava cooling off, and the next eight are given to an oddly-timed progression reminiscent of some of the quirky start-stops they worked into “Delta t=0” from Faster than Speed, inadvertently displaying some allegiance to heavy metal technicality without blatantly paying homage to Meshuggah’s inimitable internal clock — not that others haven’t tried to imitate it, they just suck at it almost entirely across the board. By keeping their own edge, Mr. Peter Hayden avoid the trap and put the djentery to work for them as part of their larger plan, building it up until just before 19 minutes in, they drop to quiet drones, echoed drums and subdued atmospherics, rife with volume-swelling guitar and ringing synth expanse. It’s another five minutes or so before they kick back in, and easy to get lost in the meantime, but when the guitars and the bombast start anew, Mr. Peter Hayden are quick to lock down one of the record’s most lasting grooves and top it with high-pitched guitar squeals that sound like some kind of far-off siren.

Read more »

Their sound is rife with space rock mystique and full of encompassing low-end, but what really stands Finland’s Temples out among their peers in the increasingly crowded spectrum of European heavy psychedelia is the fact that their songs never stop being songs, no matter how jammed-out they get. That may not have been the case on 2009’s Taajuuksia or the demos that preceded it, but with their latest outing, the full-length Periplaneta Nova (Mikrofoni Records), the Helsinki four-piece keep a grounded sense of structure even as they purposefully veer away from it into the charted course of clicked-wah antigravity. I won’t say the four extended tracks on Periplaneta Nova – “Perimetri” (9:10), “The Atheist” (12:20), “In Search of the Sun” (6:27) and “Attar” (11:35) – don’t have any openness to them at all, that’s far from the case and as gradually as “Perimetri” unfolds at the album’s beginning, a laid back feel is clearly paramount in their sound, but it’s easy to divine a purpose behind their meanderings. Accordingly, Temples are as adept at conveying a mood as they are the casual, live vibe of the recording, and though the material is obviously split up time-wise to allow for the two sides of a vinyl release, the flow crafted is total and runs throughout all four tracks.

Their keeping info sparse as regards personnel also speaks to an underlying philosophy at work – the CD’s liner and all internet info credits Ville, Miina, Mikko and Tommi, but says no more about who does what than that – and adds an element of mystery that doesn’t necessarily affect the listening process one way or another, but nonetheless colors the band’s overall image. It’s worth noting as well that the long intro of “Perimetri,” the first two-and-a-half minutes, accounts for almost all of the difference time-wise between that song and its side B mirror, “In Search of the Sun.” On that song, it’s 42 seconds before the quiet, echoing vocals kick in, and – the intro of “Perimetri” notwithstanding – that’s as long as Temples seem willing to go. Indeed, their quickness to introduce the verses on “The Atheist” and “Attar,” the two longer cuts, is a big part of what allows Periplaneta Nova to feel grounded structurally even in the face of such lengthy divergence. With its long, fuzz-soaked instrumental passages, “The Atheist” benefits greatly from its relatively straightforward beginning, offering a sense of development within itself as well as an expansion on what the listener expects after “Perimetri.” Some sense of early Om-style ritual can be heard in the bass’ inflection, and, to a lesser extent, the vocal cadence, but however rich the low-end gets, the guitars are never too far out of control. “The Atheist” weaves into verses and grand sections of riff-led jamming with apparent ease, culminating in a long solo that seems to languish over the slowdown until, finally, the song collapses.

Read more »