While I’m saying congratulations today, way to go to Finnish space crushers Mr. Peter Hayden. The announcement came through this morning that the band — who released their second album, Born a Trip (review here), earlier this year — will be joining the lineup for Roadburn next year, and not a moment too soon. One imagines any further delay in those stars aligning and MPH would be off on some other time continuum somewhere, jamming until nebula clouds of smoke rise from their amplifiers.

Or something. Whatever, the band’s cool, and good for them they get to be cool at the 013 in ‘013. Dig it:

Mr. Peter Hayden To Bring Their Lysergic Post-Metal / Space Rock To Roadburn 2013.

We’re very pleased to announce that elusive Finnish psychedelic crushers Mr. Peter Hayden will bring their lysergically elliptical planetary travelogues to Roadburn Festival 2013 on Saturday, April 20th at the 013 venue in Tilburg, Holland.

Mr Peter Hayden‘s post-metal-infused space-rock is comprised of intertwining movements built from long progressive builds reaching cosmically thundering apexes heavily immersed in the vastness and darkness of deep space. This is melded with spacey ambience, which ventures off into impressive prog textures and vaguely-melodic synth wash punctuated by rhythmic chug and drum thud. Their excursions rise and fall tidally, offering minute wave-like undulations to coincide with the larger push and pull.

At the peak of their gargantuan cosmic improvisational powers — spectacularly demonstrated on both their debut full-length, Faster Than Speed, and this year’s sophomore album, Born A Trip — Mr. Peter Hayden‘s space opuses are devoid of the rushes of light and the sun drenched jams present in so many contemporary European psychedelic bands; instead they are all about cosmic travel deep in throes of brown acid!

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 »

It’s a hell of a sprawl, but there’s something about the complexity of the atmosphere created by Finnish heavy epic space purveyors Mr. Peter Hayden (named not for any member of the band) on their Winter Records/Post-RBMM full-length that not only holds interest, but envelops it. The album, dubbed Faster Than Speed and centered thematically on astrophysical notions on the nature of time, is comprised of two 33-minute songs – complete ideas in and of themselves – but where Mr. Peter Hayden really stand apart is in the construction and arrangement of their material. Grandiose heavy psych excursions are nothing new, even with the elements of metallic crunch that the Kankaanpää six-piece incorporate, but where many of their center-galaxy-bound peers fill their extended track lengths with heady jamming and an improv feel – nothing against it, it works wonderfully when done well – Mr. Peter Hayden don’t lose sight of song structure no matter how far out they go. That’s not to say that either “Smoke in Space” or “Delta t=0” feel overly composed or somehow contrived, just that there’s a charted course the players are following.

“Smoke in Space” begins its long journey literally from silence. The track is a long groundswell built on post-rock churn and brought to cohesiveness with the creative drumming of M. Marjamäki. S. Kuosmanen’s synth begins first, and gradually the rest of the unit joins in. This section of the song is essential in setting the atmosphere, and by that I mean that the song puts you in the world Mr. Peter Hayden are creating, so that you know what to expect in terms of pace and level of execution. It’s this quiet beginning and ultra-patient build – you could argue it lasts for 22 of the song’s total 33 minutes, though there are ebbs and flows within that time – that keep Faster Than Speed from losing the listener, since as you take on the album, you know right from the start that the ambience in which you’re embroiled is central to the music. You’re not waiting for the song to start, in other words. J.P. Koivisto and V. Vatanen, who join Kuosmanen on guitar, add some of the aforementioned metallic crunch, while bassist L. Kivelä thickens out the sound and keeps “Smoke in Space” from coming off as too tonally skeletal and the added percussion T. Santamaa, though featured more on “Delta t=0,” adds rhythmic flourish. The several shifts from loud to quiet feel natural and show admirable restraint on the part of Mr. Peter Hayden collectively, but like the entirety of Faster Than Speed, keep a natural, live feel that does best services the track’s presentation.

Read more »