Posted in Whathaveyou on December 4th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Wasn’t it just last week I was talking about Craig Williamson? Just to save you looking, yes, it was, and while that post may have been about his Lamp of the Universe solo-project, I did dare to go so far as drop a hint near the end in case anyone read that deep saying a Datura reissue was in the works. Well, full disclosure, the reason I knew that last week was because it was a couple months ago I suggested Datura to Ripple Music for the ‘Beneath the Desert Floor’ series of underheralded turn-of-the-century reissues. Frankly, there are few bands who come to mind more readily to fit the qualifications.
Datura‘s 1999 sophomore LP, Visions for the Celestial (discussed here), will be out through Ripple Music on Jan. 17. Can confirm it sounds great. You’ll find more background and such from the PR wire below, and of course the full thing is already streaming because it’s been out for 25 years. Go figure, I know.
Dig it:
New Zealand stoner rockers DATURA to reissue “Visions For the Celestial” album on January 17th via Ripple Music; preorders available now.
Early 90s groundbreaking stoner rockers from New Zealand DATURA are set to reissue their quintessential 1999 studio album “Visions For The Celestial” as part of Ripple Music’s “Beneath The Desert Floor” special vinyl series this January 17th.
Formed in August 1992 in Hamilton, New Zealand, DATURA started as a four-piece Sabbath-worshipping outfit. After a few member changes, the group settled on the lineup of Craig Williamson on bass and vocals, Brent Middlemiss on guitar, and Jon Burnside on drums. Three now long-lost cassette demos ensued they hit the studio to record and then release their February ’98 debut album “All Is One”. Quickly moving forward with intermittent touring and continuing to write new material, the band gathered in the studio again in early 1999, to tape what was to be the final album “Visions for the Celestial”.
Written by Williamson and jammed on with the band, “Visions For The Celestial” was his outwardly spacious, psychedelic, mindset at the time — his visions for the outer realms of space and time. With a myriad of inspirations ranging from Hawkwind, John Coltrane, Monster Magnet, Kyuss, Sleep, Man’s Ruin Records and acid folk, DATURA was set. Says the band: “2025 will be 25 years since their sophomore and last studio album was originally released, and Datura are beyond honoured to have Ripple Music re-release “Visions For The Celestial” once again, in glorious vinyl, for you all to experience!”
“Visions For The Celestial” is the 8th chapter of Californian label Ripple Music’s “Beneath The Desert Floor” vinyl series, which unearths treasures from the golden days of stoner and desert rock with releases from Fireball Ministry, The Awesome Machine, Glitter Wizard, Witch White Canyon, Rollerball, The Sabians and Dear Deceased. All reissues can be streamed and purchased at this location: https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/
DATURA “Visions For The Celestial” reissue Out January 17th on Ripple Music (LP/digital)
Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 29th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Because Lamp of the Universe has never stopped growing over the last 23 years since the project’s first release, it’s easy to listen to 2002’s second album, Echo in Light, as a more primitive version of what the solo-project of multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer Craig Williamson (now also Dead Shrine, ex-Arc of Ascent, ex-Datura) has become over time. But, hearing the second Lamp of the Universe full-length unfold over an otherworldly 54 minutes, Williamson was already building on what the one-man-band’s debut, 2001’s The Cosmic Union (reissue review here, discussed here), laid out in terms of scope with its Eastern inner-universe-exploration aesthetic and depth of arrangement, and it’s kind of astonishing in hindsight how much there is happening in songs like “Freedom to Godliness,” which opens with its nuance of sitar and nylon-string acoustic, tabla-style hand percussion, and Williamson‘s sweetly floating melodic vocals, and the sense of adventure brought to the aptly-named “Resonance,” which adds synthesizer drones to the procession; a tantric, cosmic vision of psychedelic folk for which I’ve now spent more than two decades trying to find an analog and failing outright.
To put it another way, there’s plenty of psych-folk out there. No shortage. I’ve never heard anyone else do psych-folk, coming from a background in heavy rock, with a specific bent toward Subcontinental influences but yeah definitely also space, while sounding (A:) not at all like a put-on and (B:) both exploratory and memorable. The repetition of “Resonance” as it moves into its last stretch, organ coming back over sitar and guitar after the vocals have dropped to silence, for example. That’s a march. And in an outwardly-heavier Williamson incarnation like Dead Shrine (also a solo-project), it might hit harder, but Lamp of the Universe‘s gentle, music-as-a-kindness approach doesn’t lose the feeling of worship or ritual or celebration. It is singularly gorgeous and, to my experience, a unique sound built from familiar elements. It occupies its own space in terms of aesthetic and again, I’ve had an ear out for something that might fit a decent “more like this” recommendation for over 20 years to no avail whatsoever. If you’ve got one, I’d love to hear it and be like, “yeah, okay, but not quite,” which is how it usually goes.
Included on Echo in Light are two longer-form mostly-instrumentals, “Our Celestial Flow” (10:38) and the album-closer “Dream Sequence” (16:59), the latter of which uses distant, echoing voice as part of its ambient affect. Both emphasize experimentalism. “Our Celestial Flow” lays out a backing thread of organ and low-mixed rock drums behind mellow strums of wah guitar, as if to remind via the subtlest of funk that the first album was in decent portion about screwing, and unfolds as a graceful self-jam. By the time Williamson is four minutes in, he sounds like a room full of players dug into feeling their way through the proceedings, prescient of mellow-psych as a style and as hypnotic in reality as it seems to be in intent. Lead guitar weaves through most of it, but after the eight-minute mark, there are vocals over the drum fills for a moment, wavering and disappearing again as though to make the long-since-entranced listener question whether or not the actually happened until they’re confirmed by the intertwining voices at the finish. “Our Celestial Flow” is not mistitled.
And neither is “Dream Sequence,” for that matter, with its drifting collage of sound, departing from the love-as-spiritual-act ethic through which much of Echo in Light operates in pieces like the penultimate “Pyramids of Sun,” “Freedom to Godliness” or the flute-laced “Love,” which follows “Our Celestial Flow” by redirecting the mantra rather than breaking it. Cohesive and expressive in its purposes, Lamp of the Universe is of course patient in the execution, but even as it approaches 17 minutes long, “Dream Sequence” doesn’t lose sight of its goal in manifesting a psychedelic impressionism while maintaining the ambience and mood of the album that precedes it, and it even answers some of the wah and soloing of “Our Celestial Flow” as the suitably hallucinatory course unwinds, though the context is more serene in the closer with synth sounding like manipulated birdsong (maybe also being it) and washes of cymbals and chimes filling out the reaches of the mix.
In light of Williamson‘s collaboration earlier this year with Scott “Dr. Space” Heller for the hopefully-not-a-one-off Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space LP, Enters Your Somas (review here), “Dream Sequence” feels particularly prescient of Lamp of the Universe‘s experimentalism in a way that defines a lot of Echo in Light as compares to The Cosmic Union, but even as it expands the parameters, the sophomore outing reaffirms the stylistic lean of the first. In doing so, however, Echo in Light works vividly to set up and set forth a progression in songwriting that Williamson is still following today. Lamp of the Universe‘s last couple standalone albums — let’s say 2023’s Kaleidoscope Mind (review here) and 2022’s The Akashic Field (review here) — have leaned more into a rock-based sound, and that shift feels organic in light of Williamson‘s three ’10s-era albums with Arc of Ascent, which was a full band, and the fact that between those two Lamp records, Dead Shrine made its own full-length debut with The Eightfold Path (review here). It’s not always easy listening from one end to the other as releases vary in their degrees of drone, heft, groove and melody, but there’s an awful lot you can hear informed by the work being done across Echo in Light, and a revisit finds it not only a worthy successor to a first LP that I consider a landmark, whatever anyone else thinks of it, but a preface to continued sonic evolution.
It won’t be long before Williamson is heard from again. Dead Shrine already has a single up from an impending second record, and again, Lamp of the Universe does have a release out this year (the aforementioned Dr. Space collab), so it’s not like there isn’t current work to dig into. And I hear a Datura reissue might be in the works as well. If you want to believe rumors you read on the internet, that is.
As always, I hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading.
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Taking yesterday off for Thanksgiving was the right idea. I spent most of the day back and forth doing hosting stuff. We had 16 people, which is about the usual complement of family and close friends. It was The Patient Mrs.’ show. She baked for days, ran point on turkeys (we had two 18-pound birds; investment in future leftovers) and the timing of everything. It all went well. Nobody left mad, and everybody left full. The Pecan mostly played on the Switch all day, but at least she was around if not at the table with us. We’ll get there. She’s seven.
Today’s Black Friday, which is sad because no one has any money, everything costs a ton and the idea that people are actually saving on sales rings hollow to me. I worked retail. A month before Black Friday, the prices go up. Black Friday doorbusters! Get ’em before the tariffs kick in as if the cost of any such thing would ever be passed anywhere but the consumer. I guess capitalism just makes me sad now. Needless to say I’ve been letting a lot of the big-merch-sale Bandcamp updates that’ve come in this week go unread. Artists shouldn’t be scraping for bucks. Just imagine a better world. For two seconds. It won’t take you long to get there.
But yeah, I don’t think we’re hitting up the strip mall today. The Patient Mrs. mom has been around the last couple days, and helped out yesterday a lot, which was doubly impressive because she had her knee replaced like a week and a half ago. Gravy would be made, dammit. I’m not that tough. On Tuesday, I drove to Providence, Rhode Island — yes, I made a stop at Armageddon Shop; bought a Blind Guardian CD; they were playing Candlemass when I walked it and it felt welcoming — to pick up two turkeys from the farm we used to get our chicken from when we lived in Massachusetts, and picked up The Patient Mrs.’ mom on my way back south in Connecticut before proceeding to sit in some of the worst traffic of my life. I-95, man. Too many people, not enough road. It took four hours to get from CT to NJ. I’ve done it in less than two.
Living to tell the tale from that doesn’t feel like nothing. Tomorrow we’ll take her back north — she can make gravy, but handling a car would be a big ask — and I assume hang out for a bit in Connecticut, then Sunday we’re having a playdate/brunch for The Pecan because, well, I already vacuumed and when your kid plays with another kid now you hang out with the parents, apparently. When I was a kid that wasn’t the case, I don’t think. But whatever. It’ll be fine.
Whatever you’re up to, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. On the Thanksgiving theme, I am incredibly grateful for the continued support this site gets in its weird, quirky kind of mission to Share Music And Write About Stuff™, and if you’ve never heard Lamp of the Universe before and are listening to Echo in Light now for the first time, golly I hope you dig it.
Posted in Reviews on October 15th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I’ll be honest, I don’t even want to talk about how well this Quarterly Review is going because I worry about screwing it up. It’s always a lot of work to round up 10 records per day, even if there’s a single or and EP snuck in there, but it’s been a long time now that I’ve been doing things this way — sometimes as a means of keeping up, sometimes to herald things to come, usually just a way to write about things I want to write about regardless of timeliness — and it’s always worth it. I’ve had a couple genuinely easy days here. Easier than expected. Obviously that’s a win.
So while I wait for the other shoe to drop, let’s keep the momentum going.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
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Massive Hassle, Unreal Damage
Brotherly two-piece Massive Hassle, comprised of brothers Bill Fisher and Marty Fisher — who played together in Mammothwing and now both feature in Church of the Cosmic Skull — get down with another incredibly complex set of harmonized ’70s-style soul-groovers, nailing it as regards tone and tempo from the big riff that eats “Lost in the Changes” to the strums and croons early in the penultimate “Tenspot,” hitting a high note together in that song that gives over to stark and wistful standalone guitar meander that with barely a minute ago gorgeously becomes a bittersweet triumph of nostalgic fuzz reminiscent of Colour Haze‘s “Fire” and having the sheer unmitigated gall to tell the world around them it’s no big deal by naming the band Massive Hassle and stating that as the thing they most want to avoid. When they did Number One (review here) in 2023, it felt like they were proving the concept. With Unreal Damage, they’re quietly pushing limits.
Iress are the Los Angeles-based four-piece of Michelle Malley (vocals), Michael Maldonado (bass), Glenn Chu (drums) and Graham Walker (guitar). Sleep Now, In Reverse is their fourth full-length in nearly 15 years of existence. As a record, it accomplishes a lot of things, but what you need to understand is that where it most succeeds and stands itself out is in bringing together a heavy post-rock sound — heavygaze, as the kids don’t say because they don’t know what it is — with emotive expression on vocals, a blending of ethereal and the most human and affecting, and when Malley lets loose in the payoff of “Mercy,” it’s an early highlight with plenty more to follow. It’s not that Iress are reinventing genre — evolving, maybe? — but what they’re doing with it is an ideal unto itself, taking those aspects from across an aesthetic range and incorporating them into a whole, at times defiantly cohesive sound, lush but clearheaded front to back.
When the band put the shimmying “Apocalypse Babes” up as a standalone single last year, it was some five years after their debut full-length, 2018’s Mindtripper (review here) — though there was a split between — so not an insignificant amount of time for Norway’s Magmakammer to expand on their methods and dig into the songs. To be sure, “Doom Jive” and “Zimbardo” still have that big-hook, Uncle Acid-style dirty garage buzz that lends itself so well to cultish themes but thankfully here is about more than murder. And indeed, the band seems to have branched out a bit, and the eight-song/43-minute Before I Burn is well served by divergences like the closing “I Will Guide Your Hand” or the way “Cult of Misanthropy” sounds like a studio outtake on a bootleg from 1969 until they kick it open around a build of marching guitar, even as it stays loyal to Magmakammer‘s core stylistic purposes. A welcome return.
The kind of sludge rock Ohio’s Evel play, informed by Mondo Generator‘s druggy, volatile heavy punk and C.O.C.‘s Southern metal nod, maybe a bit of High on Fire in “Alaska,” with a particularly Midwestern disappointment-in-everything that would’ve gone over well at Emissions From the Monolith circa 2003, isn’t what’s trendy. It’s not the cool thing. It doesn’t care about that, or about this review, or about providing social media content to maximize its algorithmic exposure. I’m not knocking any of that — especially the review, which is going swimmingly; I promise a point is coming — but if Evel‘s six-songer debut EP, Omen, is a foretell of things to come, the intention behind it is more about the catharsis of the writing/performance than trying to play to ‘scene’-type expectations. It is a pissed-off fuckall around which the band — which features guitarist/vocalist Alex Perekrest, also of Red Giant — will continue to build as “Dust Angel” and the swinging “Dawn Patrol” already find them doing. The going will likely be noisy, and that’s just fine.
Some six years and one reunion after their fourth album, 2018’s The Lucky Ones (review here), Virginia-born classic heavy barnburners Satan’s Satyrs are back with a fifth collection beating around riffs from Sabbath and the primordial ooze of heavy that birthed them, duly brash and infectious in their energy. Founding bassist/vocalist Clayton Burgess and guitarist Jarrett Nettnin are joined in the new incarnation of the band by guitarist Morgan McDaniel (also Mirror Queen) and drummer Russ Yusuf — though Sean Saley has been with them for recent live shows — and as they strut and swing through “Saltair Burns” like Pentagram if they’d known how to play jazz but were still doom, or the buzzy demo-style experimentation of “Genuine Turquoise,” which I’m just going to guess came together differently than was first expected. So much the better. They’ve never been hugely innovative, but Satan’s Satyrs have consistently delivered at this point across a span of more than a decade and they have their own spin on the style. They may always be a live band, but at least in my mind, there’s not much more one would ask that After Dark doesn’t deliver.
Delivered through Kozmik Artifactz, Weight in Gold is the second long-player from Melbourne, Australia’s Whoopie Cat, and it meets the listener at the intersection of classic, ’70s-style heavy blues rock and prog. Making dynamic use of a dual-vocal approach in “Pretty Baby” after establishing tone, presence and craft as assets with the seven-minute opening title-track, the band are unflinchingly modern in production even as they lean toward vintage-style song construction, and that meld of intention results in an organic sound that’s not restricted by the recording. Plus it’s louder, which doesn’t hurt most of the time. In any case, as Whoopie Cat follow-up their 2018 debut, Illusion of Choice, they do so with distinction and the ability to convey a firm grasp on their songwriting and convey a depth of intention from the what-if-Queen-but-blues “Icarus” or the consuming Hammondery of closer “Oh My Love.” Listening, I can’t help but wonder how far into prog they might ultimately go, but they’ve found a sweetspot in these songs that’s between styles, and they fit right in it.
Cheeky, heavy garage punk surely will not be enough to save the immortal souls of Earth Tongue from all their devil worship and intricate vocal patterning. And honestly the New Zealand two-piece — I could’ve sworn I saw something about them moving to Germany, but maybe they just had a really good Berlin show? — sound fine with that. Guitarist Gussie Larkin and drummer Ezra Simons benefit from the straightforward outward nature of their songs. That is, “Out of This Hell,” “The Mirror,” “Bodies Dissolve Tonight!” and any of the other nine inclusions on the record that either were or could’ve been singles, are catchy and tightly written. They’re not overplayed or underplayed, and they have enough tonal force in Larkin‘s guitar that the harder churn of closer “The Reluctant Host” can leave its own impression and still feel fluid alongside some of Great Haunting‘s sweeter psych-punk. Wherever they live, the two-piece make toys out of pop and praise music so that even “Miraculous Death” sounds like, and is, fun.
The collection House of Pain (Demos) takes its title from the place where guitarist/vocalist Tomas Iramain recorded them alongside bassist Matias Maltratador and drummer Jorge Iramain, though whether it’s a studio, rehearsal space, or an actual house, I won’t profess to know. Tomas is the lone remaining member carried over from the band’s 2020 self-titled LP, and the other part of what you need to know about House of Pain (Demos) can also be found in the title: it’s demos. Do not expect a studio sound full of flourish and nuance. Reportedly most of the songs were tracked with two Shure SM57s (the standard vocal mic), save for “Nomad” and “The Way I Am,” I guess because one broke? The point is, as raw as they are — and they are raw — these demos want nothing for appeal. The bounce in the bonus-track-type “Mountain (Take 1)” feels like a Dead Meadowy saunter, and for all of its one-mic-ness, “Nomad” gives a twist on ’50s and early ’60s guitar instrumentals that’s only bolstered by the recording. I’m not saying Las Historias should press up 10,000 LPs immediately or anything, but if this was the record, or maybe an EP and positioned as more substantial than the demos, aside from a couple repeated tracks, you could do far worse. “Hell Bird” howls, man. Twice over.
Certainly “Come With Me” and others on Aquanaut‘s self-titled debut have their desert rocking aspects, but there’s at least as much The Sword as Kyuss in what the Trondheim, Norway, newcomers unfurl on their self-titled, self-released debut, and when you can careen like in “Gamma Rays,” maybe sometimes you don’t need anything else. The seven-track/35-minute outing gets off to a bluesy, boozy start with “Lenéa,” and from there, Aquanaut are able to hone an approach that has its sludgier side in some of the Eyehategod bark of “Morality” but that comes to push increasingly far out as it plays through, so that “Living Memories” soars as the finale after the mid-tempo fuzzmaking of “Ivory,” and so Aquanaut seem to have a nascent breadth working for them in addition to the vigor of a young band shaping a collective persona. The generational turnover in Norway is prevalent right now with a number of promising debuts and breakouts in the last couple years. Aquanaut have a traditionalism at their core but feel like they want to break it as much as celebrate it, and if you’re the type to look for ‘bands to watch,’ that’s a reason to watch. Or even listen, if you’re feeling especially risk-friendly.
While I would be glad to be writing about Ghost Frog‘s quirky heavy-Weezerism and psychedelic chicanery even if their third album, Galactic Mini Golf didn’t have a song called “Deep Space Nine Iron” on it, I can’t lie and say that doesn’t make the prospect a little sweeter. It’s an interlude and I don’t even care — they made it and it’s real. The Portland, Oregon, four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Quinn Schwartz, guitarist/synthesist Karl Beheim, bassist Archie Heald and drummer Vincent LiRocchi (the latter making his first appearance) keep somewhat to a golfy theme, find another layer’s worth of heavy on “Shadow Club,” declare themselves weird before you even press play and reinforce the claim in both righteous post-grunge roll of “Burden of Proof” and the new wave rock of “Bubble Guns” before the big ol’ stompy riff in “Black Hole in One’ leads to a purposeful whole-album finish. Some things don’t have to make the regular kind of sense, because they make their own kind. Absurd as the revelry gets, Ghost Frog make their own kind of sense. Maybe you’ll find it’s also your kind of sense and that’s how we learn things about ourselves from art. Have a great rest of your day.
This is it. This one’s for all the marbles. Well, actually there are no marbles involved, but if you remember way back like two weeks ago when this started out, I told you the tale of a hubristic 40-something dickweed blogger who thought he could review 100 albums in 10 days, and assuming I make it through the below without having an aneurysm — because, hey, you never know — today I get to live that particular fairy tale.
Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space, Enters Your Somas
Who’s ready to get blasted out the airlock? New Zealand solo-outfit Lamp of the Universe, aka multi-instrumentalist Craig Williamson (also Dead Shrine, ex-Datura, etc.), and Portugal-residing synth master Dr. Space, aka Scott Heller of Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle, and so on, come together to remind us all we’re nothing more than semi-sentient cosmic dust. Enters Your Somas is comprised of two extended pieces, “Enters Your Somas” (18:39) and “Infiltrates Your Mind” (19:07), and both resonate space/soul frequencies while each finds its own path. The title-track is more languid on average, where “Infiltrates Your Mind” reroutes auxiliary power to the percussive thrusters in its first half before drifting into drone communion and hearing a voice — vague, but definitely human speech — before surging back to its course via Williamson‘s drums, which play a large role in giving the material its shape. But with synthy sweeps from Heller, Mellotron and guitar coming and going, and a steady groove across both inclusions, Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space offer galactic adventure limited only by where your imagination puts you while you listen.
Richmond, Virginia’s Inter Arma had no small task before them in following 2019’s Sulphur English (review here), but from the tech-death boops and bops and twists of New Heaven‘s leadoff title-track through the gothic textures of “Gardens in the Dark,” self-aware without satire, slow-flowing and dramatic, this fifth full-length finds them continuing to expand their creative reach, and at this point, whatever genre you might want to cast them in, they stand out. To wit, the blackdeath onslaught of “Violet Seizures” that’s also space rock, backed in that by the subsequent “Desolation’s Harp” with its classically grandiose solo, or the post-doom lumber of “Concrete Cliffs” that calls out its expanse after the seven-minute drum-playthrough-fodder extremity of “The Children the Bombs Overlooked,” or the mournful march of “Endless Grey” and the acoustic-led Nick Cavey epilogue “Forest Service Road Blues.” Few bands embrace a full spectrum of metallic sounds without coming across as either disjointed or like they’re just mashing styles together for the hell of it. Inter Arma bleed purpose in every turn, and as they inch closer to their 20th year as a band, they are masters unto themselves of this form they’ve created.
The opening “Chimera” puts Chasing Shadows quickly into a ritualized mindset, all the more as Warsaw meditative doomers Sunnata lace it and a decent portion of their 11-track/62-minute fifth album with an arrangement of vocals from guitarists Szymon Ewertowski and Adrian Gadomski and bassist/synthesist Michal Dobrzanski as drummer/percussionist Robert Ruszczyk punctuates on snare as they head toward a culmination. Individual pieces have their own purposes, whether it’s the momentary float of “Torn” or the post-Alice in Chains harmonies offset by Twin Peaks-y creep in “Saviours Raft,” or the way “Hunger” gradually moves from light to dark with rolling immersion, or the dancier feel with which “Like Cogs in a Wheel” gives an instrumental finish. It’s not a minor undertaking and it’s not meant to be one, but mood and atmosphere do a lot of work in uniting the songs, and the low-in-the-mouth vocal melodies become a part of that as the record unfolds. Their range has never felt broader, but there’s a plot being followed as well, an idea behind each turn in “Wishbone” and the sprawl is justified by the dug-in worldmaking taking place across the whole-LP progression, darkly psychedelic and engrossing as it is.
Among the most vital classic elements of The Sonic Dawn‘s style is their ability to take spacious ideas and encapsulate them with a pop efficiency that doesn’t feel dumbed down. That is to say, they’re not capitulating to fickle attention spans with short songs so much as they’re able to get in, say what they want to say with a given track, and get out. Phantom is their fifth album, and while the title may allude to a certain ghostliness coinciding with the melancholy vibe overarching through the bulk of its component material, the Copenhagen-based trio are mature enough at this stage to know what they’re about. And while Phantom has its urgent stretches in the early going of “Iron Bird” or the rousing “Think it Over,” the handclap-laced “Pan AM,” and the solo-topped apex of “Micro Cosmos in a Drop,” most of what they’re about here harnesses a mellower atmosphere. It doesn’t need to hurry, baby. Isn’t there enough rush in life with all these “21st Century Blues?” With no lack of movement throughout, some of The Sonic Dawn‘s finest stretches here are in low-key interpretations of funk (“Dreams of Change,” “Think it Over,” “Transatlantique,” etc.) or prog-boogie (“Scorpio,” “Nothing Can Live Here” before the noisier crescendo) drawn together by organ, subdued, thoughtful vocal melodies and craft to suit the organic production. This isn’t the first The Sonic Dawn LP to benefit from the band knowing who they are as a group, but golly it sure is stronger for that.
It’s not until the hook of second cut “Ohm Ripper” hits that Rifflord let go of the tension built up through the opening semi-title-track “Serpent Power,” which in its thickened thrashy charge feels like a specific callout to High on Fire but as I understand it is just about doing hard drugs. Fair enough. The South Dakota-based five-piece of bassist/vocalist Wyatt Bronc Bartlett, guitarists Samuel Hayes and Dustin Vano, keyboardist Tory Jean Stoddard and drummer Douglas Jennings Barrett will echo that intensity later in “Church Keys” and “Tumbleweed,” but that’s still only one place the 38-minute eight-track LP goes, and whether it’s the vocals calling out through the largesse and breadth of “Blessed Life” or the ensuing crush that follows in “LM308,” the addled Alice in Chains swagger in the lumber of “Grim Creeper” or the righteously catchy bombast of “Hoof,” they reach further than they ever have in terms of sound and remain coherent despite the inherently chaotic nature of their purported theme, the sheer heft of the tonality wielded and the fact that 39 Serpent Power has apparently been waiting some number of years to see release. Worth the wait? Shit, I’m surprised the album didn’t put itself out, it sounds so ready to go.
At the core of Mothman and the Thunderbirds is multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Alex Parkinson, and on the band’s second album, Portal Hopper, he’s not completely on his own — Egor Lappo programmed the drums, mixed, and plays a guitar solo on “Fractals,” Joe Sobieski guests on vocals for a couple tracks, Sam Parkinson donates a pair of solos to the cause — but it’s still very much his telling of the charmingly meandering sci-fi/fantasy plot taking place across the 12 included progressive metal mini-epics, which he presents with an energy and clarity of purpose that for sure graduated from Devin Townsend‘s school of making a song with 40 layers sound immediate but pulls as well from psychedelia and pop-punk vocals for an all the more emphatic scope. This backdrop lets “Fractals” get funky or “Escape From Flatwoods” hold its metallic chicanery with its soaring melody while “Squonk Kingdom” is duly over-the-top in its second-half chase soon enough fleshed out by “So Long (Portal Hopper)” ahead of the lightly-plucked finale “Attic.” The specificity of influence throughout Portal Hopper can be striking as clean/harsh vocals blend, etc., but given the narrative and the relative brevity of the songs complementing the whims explored within them, there’s no lack of character in the album’s oft-careening 38-minute course.
Given its pro-shop nature in production and performance, the ability of The Lunar Effect to grasp a heavy blues sound as part of what they do while avoiding either the trap of hyper-dudely navelgazing or cultural appropriation — no minor feat — and the fluidity of one piece into the next across the 40-minute LP’s two sides, I’m a little surprised not to have been sick of the band’s second album, Sounds of Green and Blue before I put it on. Maybe since it’s on Svart everyone just assumed it’s Finnish experimentalist drone? Maybe everybody’s burnt out on a seemingly endless stream of bands from London’s underground? I don’t know, but by the time The Lunar Effect make their way to the piano-laden centerpiece “Middle of the End” — expanding on the unhurried mood of “In Grey,” preceding the heavy blues return of “Pulling Daisies” at the start of side B that mirrors album opener “Ocean Queen” and explodes into a roll that feels like it was made to be the best thing you play at your DJ night — that confusion is a defining aspect of the listening experience. “Fear Before the Fall” picks on Beethoven, for crying out loud. High class and low groove. Believe me, I know there’s a lot of good stuff out already in 2024, but what the hell more could you want? Where is everybody?
Even if I were generally inclined to do so — read: I’m not — it would be hard to begrudge Portland heavy rock institution Danava wanting to do a live record after their 2023’s Nothing But Nothing (review here) found them in such raucous form. But the aptly-titled Live is more than just a post-studio-LP check-in to remind you they kick ass on stage, as side A’s space, classic, boogie, heavy rocking “Introduction/Spinning Temple” and “Maudie Shook” were recorded in 2008, while the four cuts on side B — “Shoot Straight with a Crooked Gun,” “Nothing but Nothing,” “Longdance,” “Let the Good Times Kill” and “Last Goodbye” — came from the European tour undertaken in Fall 2023 to support Nothing But Nothing. Is the underlying message that Danava are still rad 15 years later? Maybe. That certainly comes through by the time the solo in “Shoot Straight with a Crooked Gun” hits, but that also feels like reading too much into it. Maybe it’s just about representing different sides of who Danava are, and if so, fine. Then or now, psych or proto-thrashing, they lay waste.
A free three-songer from Varese, Italy’s Moonlit, Be Not Afraid welcomes the listener to “Death to the World” with (presumably sampled) chanting before unfurling a loose, somewhat morose-feeling nighttime-desert psych sway before “Fort Rachiffe” howls tonally across its own four minutes in more heavy post-rock style, still languid in tempo but encompassing in its wash and the amp-hum-and-percussion blend on the shorter “Le Conseguenze Della Libertà” (1:57) gives yet another look, albeit briefly. In about 11 minutes, Moonlit — whose last studio offering was 2021’s So Bless Us Now (review here) — never quite occupy the same space twice, and despite the compact presentation, the range from mid-period-QOTSA-gone-shoegaze (plus chanting! don’t forget the chanting!) to the hypnotic Isis-doing-space-push that follows with the closer as a but-wait-there’s-more/not-just-an-afterthought epilogue is palpable. I don’t know when or how Be Not Afraid was recorded, whether it’s portentous of anything other than itself or what, but there’s a lot happening under its surface, and while you can’t beat the price, don’t be surprised if you end up throwing a couple bucks Moonlit‘s way anyhow.
Much of Northern Lights is instrumental, but whether or not Leo Scheben is barking out the endtimes storyline of “Darkhammer” — stylized all-caps in the tracklisting — or “Night Terrors,” or just digging into a 24-second progression of lo-fi riffing of “Paranoid Isolation” and the Casio-type beats that back his guitar there and across the project’s 16-track latest offering, the reminder Doom Lab give is that the need to create takes many forms. From the winding scales of “Locrian’s Run” to “Twisted Logic” with its plotted solo lines, pieces are often just that — pieces of what might otherwise be a fleshed-out song — and Doom Lab‘s experimentalism feels paramount in terms of aural priorities. Impulse in excelsis. It might be for the best that the back-to-back pair “Nice ‘n’ Curvy” and “Let ’em Bounce” are both instrumental, but as madcap as Scheben is, he’s able to bring Northern Lights to a close with resonant homage in its title-track, and cuts like “Too Much Sauce on New Year’s Eve” and “Dark Matter” are emblematic of his open-minded approach overall, working in different styles sometimes united most by their rawness and uncompromising persona. This is number 100 of 100 records covered in this Quarterly Review, and nothing included up to now sounds like Doom Lab. A total win for radical individualism.
New Zealand’s Borer are set to make their full-length debut May 10 with Bag Seeker, on Landmine Records. With it, they bring the sludge of one thousand deaths, and no, that doesn’t mean they’re giving you a bunch tiny cuts until eventually you bleed out. It means they sound like they’ve died inside a thousand times and perhaps, somewhere around 920 or so with that last 80 still ahead of them, they got bitter about it. The resulting five-tracker waves its disaffection like a banner; a resolved call to everybody who, perhaps only for today, has landed at “fuck it” as the endgame of their existence. If you can’t relate as the leadoff title-track “Bag Seeker” moves from its opening sample of Ozzy talking about drugs — immediately writing off 99 percent of the planet’s population who won’t get how brilliantly on/up the nose that is — into the dense low-end lurch wrought through Boden Powell and Tim Hunt‘s guitars and Greg Newton-Topp‘s bass, with Josh Reid‘s drumming making it roll and vocalist Tom Brand‘s mood-defining, actively-doing-damage raspy gurgle telling a story few will be able to decipher but getting the point across anyhow in its omnidirectional fuckyouism, well, you’re probably lucky.
The video premiering below for “Bag Seeker” brings this ultra-stoned, ultra-heavy despondency to the visual realm as Brand stands in a not-warm-looking flow of river water and mimes the lyrics deadpan for the bulk of the song’s nine minutes as the rest of the band hangs around behind. Save for passing a joint, vaping and drinking some beer, they barely move until it’s time to de-tableau and split as a bookending sample of some guy from a viral TikTok talking about how having too much gear is better than running out of gear brings the track to its end — Terence McKenna starts the subsequent “Ket Witch,” pontificating on the effects of ketamine — and the vibe is set.
There’s more on offer in Bag Seeker‘s 55-minute stretch than raw, searing punishment, but the more subdued moments happen around the core extremity, like the baked-creeper nod in the five-minute buildup of “Ket Witch” before it reverts to the primitive assault methodology of the opener or the shorter backdrop at the outset of 21-minute finale “Lord of the Hanged,” which puts dialogue from the 2010 Cohen Bros. remake of True Grit of three men about to be executed saying their last words before the riff kicks in and Borer dive into a by-then-characteristically scathing verse section with stops beneath the screams offset by crash and death-stench sensory overload. These stretches, a longer break in “Lord of the Hanged” after that verse, and the two-and-a-half-minute centerpiece “6.32” — mostly harsh noise and a likely-inebriated voicemail telling you that you missed the party; “I hope you had a good sleep” sounds like an accusation — add to the atmosphere and provide some opportunity to breathe before, say, the markedly-soaked-in-feedback “Wretch” or the next round of tonally-consuming gnash in “Lord of the Hanged” takes hold, but the five-piece leave no question as to where their priorities lie in the filthier end of caustic, slow subjugation.
I had to go to the urgent-care place down the road yesterday. They built it in the middle of a strip-mall parking lot last summer, which should tell you the state of the American healthcare system just by virtue of being somehow normal, last summer. It is cube-shaped. I’ve had an infection in my left middle finger, probably a hangnail I tore out; can’t really remember. The doctor — who was not an actual doctor, but I don’t even ask anymore because I trust nurses more anyway in that kind of situation — took some cold-spray and numbed up the swollen, hard and very-clearly-full-of-pus side of my finger before digging in with a scalpel to drain it and as I watched this fluid ooze out of my person, saw the faces of the two women in the room trying to maintain their professional aspect in the face of something universally ‘ugh,’ it was echoes of Borer‘s Bag Seeker ringing in my head. I felt the cut despite the cold, felt the gunk being pushed out, got a band-aid and a prescription and was sent on my unmerry way, alone. You check in with a QR code now. They already have your information because of course they do. $15. Supposed to be a bargain.
This experience may end up defining my engagement with Borer‘s first album, because as much as I’ve been unable to get that picture of metal cutting into my skin and some tiny manifestation of the sheer wretchedness of my being leaking forth, the physical catharsis, the Kingdom Animalia satisfaction of resolving a thing, resonates as the extended soloing in the back half of “Lord of the Hanged” gives over to the last screams, crashes and feedback that end Bag Seeker as they invariably would. Release of pressure bought with pain. Expurgation. Put on the record again and churn into foul-smelling-goo oblivion what used to be vaguely human. Fucking a.
“Bag Seeker” video follows below. Jewel case CD of the album is limited to 100 copies. If you get one, give it plenty of room.
Enjoy:
Borer, “Bag Seeker” video premiere
Clocking just under a ten-minute runtime, the resin-coated title track to Bag Seeker is delivered through a video directed by Tim Hunt and edited by Nick Smith, that rolls in like the tidal waters depicted within. The band reveals, “‘Bag Seeker’ captures a year-long descent into the shadows, where a man pursues fleeting happiness through the enigmatic allure of a bag, a quest for joy in the embrace of ephemeral highs.”
Bag Seeker was recorded and mixed in Christchurch by Joseph Veale (Blindfolded And Led To The Woods), mastered by Luke Finlay at Primal Mastering, and completed with artwork and layout by Jake Clark (Mr Wolf), and is a detrimental listen for fans of Iron Monkey, Bongzilla, Weedeater, Fistula, Indian, Dystopia, and Electric Wizard.
Tracklisting: 1. Bag Seeker (9:33) 2. Ket Witch (11:36) 3. 6.32 (2:30) 4. Wretch (10:21) 5. Lord of the Hanged (21:44)
BORER has also booked two release shows for the album, taking place in Dunedin on Bag Seeker’s release date and in their hometown of Christchurch the following day. Watch for additional shows to be announced over the months ahead.
BORER Bag Seeker album release shows: 5/10/2024 The Crown Hotel – Dunedin, NZ w/ Brackish, Festering Death 5/11/2024 Churchill’s Tavern – Christchurch, NZ w/ Witchcult, From Moose Mountain
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 27th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Fresh off supporting Queens of the Stone Age in their native New Zealand, stopping by SXSW on a string of US shows to play a few unofficial showcases after ditching their official one for the age-old reason — the malignant corporate influence of weapons manufacturers — and looking forward to a Spring that will see them in Europe to feature at Desertfest in Oslo, Berlin and London, Poland’s Red Smoke Festival and others following the summer run they did last year, Earth Tongue have announced their second full-length, Great Haunting, will be released on In the Red Records this June 14. Got all that? Sweet.
They have a video up now for “Bodies Dissolve Tonight!” that leans more heavy than psych but still has plenty of both to offer along with krautrock-informed pop and hard-landing riffery in its under-three-and-a-half-minute span, and if you’d like to get acquainted, it’s at the bottom of this post. It’s got a flying truck, if that helps you get on board.
And maybe it will, but it’s the song itself that’s going to make the difference. Find it and the album announcement below, courtesy of the PR wire:
Announcing second full-length from fuzz-soaked psychedelic rock duo EARTH TONGUE
Drawing inspiration from eerie depths of ’70s and ’80s horror cinema, delivering a sonic concoction of dark and primitive songs with thick layers of fuzz and punchy, compressed drums.
Share new single/video ‘Bodies Dissolve Tonight!’
Earth Tongue, the brainchild of guitarist Gussie Larkin and drummer Ezra Simons, present their second full-length album Great Haunting. The duo, known for their heavy flavor of fuzz-soaked psychedelic rock, are also pleased to unveil their signing to In The Red Records.
Earth Tongue’s partnership with In The Red stems from a run of shows supporting the legendary Ty Segall throughout New Zealand. Larkin explains: “Ty’s band Fuzz was a significant influence for our sound early on. Ezra and I saw them play live in London about nine years ago, long before Earth Tongue existed. We absorbed a lot of music at that time, and in fact many of the bands we saw released records via In The Red.”
Great Haunting sees the duo draw inspiration from the eerie depths of ’70s and ’80s horror cinema, delivering a sonic concoction of dark and primitive songs with thick layers of fuzz and punchy, compressed drums. The album was engineered by Jonathan Pearce from The Beths at his studio on Karangahape road in Auckland.
The ascent of Earth Tongue is testament to their dedication and hard work. They’ve toured relentlessly across Europe and scored support slots for acts like IDLES and Queens Of The Stone Age. They’re consistently selling out headline shows and have featured on festival lineups throughout Aotearoa and Australia. Having just spent last week shredding SXSW, they tour America and then, in May, hit Europe/UK, playing DESERT FEST in London on 18th May!! Amongst a huge EU tour.
EARTH TONGUE GREAT HAUNTING In The Red Records Release date: 14th June 2024
Tracklist: 1. Out Of This Hell 2. Bodies Dissolve Tonight! 3. Nightmare 4. The Mirror 5. Grave Pressure 6. Miraculous Death 7. Sit Next To Satan 8. Reaper Returns 9.The Reluctant Host
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 22nd, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Amid the various distractions of another day like the other days, the teaser for Borer‘s Bag Seeker caught my eye in coming down the PR wire. I don’t remember what I was supposed to be doing when I was rerouted, but that’s hardly the first time that’s happened. It’s why I keep notes, and Borer quickly went into those as well. The New Zealand extreme-sludge five-piece will release their debut album — the title as noted above is Bag Seeker — on May 10 through Landmine Records. Fair enough.
I’m not generally one for teasers. Usually you don’t get much more than 30 seconds or a minute or so of music and if you’re already excited for a thing, a snippet is really just there to piss you off that you can’t hear more. Ultimately, it was Borer‘s teaser, where you see the band in the studio sort of standing around, looking like they’re getting ready to record something or other, as part of a track plays. There’s a moment in there as the 57-second video plays out where the tone kicks in, and not then, but maybe like the next measure, the way they take that surge and lock it into the stankfaced nod they’ve already established hit me just right. All of a sudden, well, I was pissed off I couldn’t hear more.
The cover, album info, order link, etc., are below, as well of course as that teaser. By way of a plug, I’ll have the video mentioned in the press release premiering here April 2. That’s a Tuesday, if you were curious. Sometime between now and then I’m going to try to find out exactly what kind of bag is being sought.
For now:
BORER: Christchurch, New Zealand Caustic Sludge Metal Quintet To Release Debut LP, Bag Seeker, On Landmine Records May 10th; Album Details, Teaser, And Preorders Posted
Landmine Records, formed and operated by members of Blindfolded And Led To The Woods, welcomes fellow New Zealand crew BORER to the label, for the May release of their caustic debut LP, Bag Seeker.
BORER was expelled into the void in 2021 during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Christchurch, Aotearoa, by vocalist Tom Brand and guitarist Boden Powell, shortly thereafter fleshed-out by guitarist Tim Hunt, bassist Greg Newton-Topp, and drummer Josh Reid. Worshipping the tones of Electric Wizard, Iron Monkey, and the like, they released their two track EP, Priest Thrower, in October 2021 which created a buzz in the sludge/doom scene and led to support slots with Beastwars, Stalker, and more, as well as playing some of the most renowned rock and metal festivals in Aotearoa.
2023 saw the BORER crew work away on their debut full-length, the now completed Bag Seeker. The resin-coated grooves of the hulking album deliver five tracks, most of which pass the ten-minute-mark, dragging the listener on a harrowing, bongwater and lukewarm beer bender which culminates in the twenty-one-minute epic “Lord Of The Hanged.”
Bag Seeker was recorded and mixed in Christchurch by Joseph Veale (Blindfolded And Led To The Woods), mastered by Luke Finlay at Primal Mastering, and completed with artwork and layout by Jake Clark (Mr Wolf), and is a detrimental listen for fans of Iron Monkey, Bongzilla, Weedeater, Fistula, Indian, Dystopia, and Electric Wizard.
Posted in Reviews on December 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Lamp of the Universe‘s Kaleidoscope Mind is the second full-length of 2023 from Hamilton, New Zealand’s Craig Williamson. Delivered through Sound Effect Records, it bookends the year with The Eightfold Path (review here), the debut from Williamson‘s Dead Shrine project, which is the rock-psych to Lamp of the Universe‘s psych-rock as lines that used to be more stark blur with time. Williamson late in 2022 also oversaw a reissue through Sound Effect of Lamp of the Universe‘s 2001 debut, The Cosmic Union (review here; discussed here), that followed the early-2022 LP, The Akashic Field (review here). These, together with the seven-song/40-minute Kaleidoscope Mind, are the latest manifestations of a creative progression that’s been under way for over 20 years, before Williamson even began the one-man psych-folk outfit that’s grown so cosmically expansive in the years since, weaving through bands like Arc of Ascent and Dead Shrine with an inescapable love of heavy riffing while keeping the e’er molten Lamp of the Universe separate, distinct, in its own special place.
And keeping it his own. Williamson — who sounds like he’s having fun drumming on “Ritual of Innerlight” and in the funky “Codex Moon” — plays all the instruments, as always, for Lamp of the Universe. Synth to sitar, flutes and chimes, guitar, bass, the aforementioned drums that a couple records ago were unheard of from this band, vocals, probably this or that vintage keyboard, all written, arranged, performed and recorded DIY — it is the very definition of ‘dug in.’ At nine-plus minutes, “Ritual of Innerlight” is both opener and longest track (immediate points) on Kaleidoscope Mind, and it welcomes returning and new listeners alike with a hypnotic backing drone and swirling, ethereal verses. Grounded by the drums in a way that the additional hand percussion bolsters rather than detracts from, the songs that follow the extended leadoff are by and large shorter, with the let’s-make-feedback-sexy “Codex Moon” and the righteously organ-happy, blown-out-the-drums finisher “Transfiguration,” the central riff remains extrapolated from Sleep, however far that extrapolation has taken it.
But, much like the 60-ish-year history of psychedelic rock music, Williamson has no trouble bringing these ideas into his own aural context. At the same time, it has to be pointed out that after two decades, Lamp of the Universe‘s continuing evolution is something unto itself in underground acid psych, prog, space rock, cosmic folk or whatever other genre you want either to name or make up. Kaleidoscope Mind might be the 14th full-length under the Lamp of the Universe moniker — that doesn’t include splits, etc. — and it is both in line with the trajectory of everything that’s come before it and a realization unlike anything else in the band’s catalog for the places it goes in terms of songwriting. As second cut “Golden Dawn” backs up “Ritual of Innerlight,” there’s a discernible pivot toward more straightforward structures. The song moves smoothly and fluidly over its drumbeat with a pulsing kick, and the vocals are still mellow and softly delivered, but harmonized layers are used to emphasize the chorus, and when the electric guitar sweeps in for a solo before the three-minute mark, it becomes clear that Lamp of the Universe might just be writing rock tunes this time out.
This is not a thing about which one might complain. At all. With the penultimate “Immortal Rites” notwithstanding, as that 4:42 piece is laden with sitar and acoustic guitar, very much to the roots of Lamp of the Universe on records like the aforementioned The Cosmic Union. But even that is catchier and more forward structurally. And before it, the centerpiece “Procession” anchors itself to its Mellotron line and complements it with organ and delay in low guitar notes so that even as it fades out, the presence and atmosphere remain, and the subsequent “Live of the Severing” is perhaps the most blatant hook I’ve ever heard from Lamp of the Universe, and it works. A wah solo follows the chorus and bridges to the verse, but the next chorus isn’t far off, and Williamson has organ, guitar, massive drums and a general impression of breadth in four and a half minutes. This is a project that in the past has had songs longer than 20 minutes, and whose work has in the past been expansive meditations on spirit and the universe. Four of the seven cuts here don’t hit five minutes.
Clearly some shift in methodology has taken place, but the truth is that, as noted above, Lamp of the Universe has never really been about doing the same thing over and over. Williamson‘s style is highly identifiable and characteristic — you know it when you hear him sing, and that’s true here or in Dead Shrine — and often in Lamp of the Universe is used to enhance the fluidity or the melody of the arrangements surrounding. That’s happening on KaleidoscopeMind, but to hear Williamson bringing together ideas from the more rock-aligned side of his craft into Lamp of the Universe is satisfying, and frankly, there’s more of it. Tracks on The Akashic Field were shorter than on some other Lamp records too, and Kaleidoscope Mind is a another progressive step in that direction. But what has to be emphasized is that it’s another progressive step — on the 14th album! It’s the 14th progressive step (unless I have my numbers wrong). Williamson has been exploring just what the hell a Lamp of the Universe might be for the last 22-plus years and he’s still finding out.
That journey, and this record’s place in it, is singular. It is Williamson‘s own, and if one is a longtime fan — as I’ll profess to being, not so much as a brag as an admission of dorkdom — then Kaleidoscope Mind, with its wide open third eye and expanded definitions of heavy, is a pun-totally-intended no-brainer. That the album has “Ritual of Innerlight,” “Codex Moon,” and “Transfiguration” only makes it multifaceted and all the more a demonstration of the various places Lamp of the Universe can and does go, in this dimension and otherwise.