Since I started the Album of the Summer of the Week feature five weeks ago now, we’ve talked a lot about the heat, about the sunshine, about the Jersey humidity that rests itself between the ground and the sky and seems like it’s never going to leave. I’ve written more about the weather in the last month than I could’ve ever imagined I would when I started this site.

But one thing I haven’t covered yet in the AotSotW (which is the acronym by which I refer to it on my to-do list) is what to do for a summer night. Sure, there’s always Sabbath, and I highly recommend that as well, but one album that’s come to my mind several times over the last few weeks is last year’s Moments in Vacuum (review here), by Brooklyn heavy psych upstarts Eggnogg. It’s perfect for these hot-as-hell summer nights.

Let’s say, for example, you’re sitting in the yard, maybe drunk, maybe sober, and you’ve got the bug zapper going in the background. Purely hypothetical situation — not at all something that happened to me this weekend. You’ve got a couple good friends there. The temperature’s finally broke after a bout of rain, and here comes Eggnogg to round out the night perfectly with eight tracks of unrepentant lo-fi riffing, ’90s style moaning vocals and periodic bursts of all out doom. Whether it’s the odd compression in the cymbals of the 12-minute “Wheel of the Year” or the slowed-down, somehow-’80s boogie of “Raking in the Dough,” Eggnogg‘s Moments in Vacuum has so much space in the recording that it’s great for rounding out an evening on a low key but still rocking kind  of vibe. You could do a hell of a lot worse than the dual-layered solos at the end of “Cydonia” before crashing out.

Something else working in Moments in Vacuum‘s favor is that it’s long. At 74 minutes, you can put it on and know that you don’t have to worry about chasing down another disc — because, yes, while you’re sitting in the yard with the bug zapper and a nightcap and a few good friends, you play CDs in this totally hypothetical alternate universe — and even as the title-track comes to an end and you think it’s over, you’ve still got the 15:15 of “Rhythmic Past” to go. It’s got enough variety of mood that whether you’re partying or winding down, it fits, and most of all, it kicks ass. You know that’s always a plus.

Check out “Wheel of the Year” below and wait for the sun to go down:

Good news for enthusiasts of The Nogg in that they’ve got a new EP out now called Louis. More info at the Palaver Records site.

In 74 minutes, you can get on a plane in New York and end up 220 miles north in Boston. The distance Brooklyn haze rockers Eggnogg cover in that time is no less expansive. Their second full-length, Moments in Vacuum (Palaver Records) compiles eight mostly-extended tracks drawn together by consistency in the production that seem to nudge their way into a variety of riffy subgenre classifications. Only “Raking in the Dough” (4:32) and the thickened three-minute noisefest “One Monster’s Confession” are under eight minutes, but Moments in Vacuum is immersive enough to live up to its title and justifies its length by unfolding in two distinct halves. It’s almost like Eggnogg – who made their debut with 2010’s The Three and followed with their Nogg EP – compiled two smaller releases each with an individual mindset and set about making them flow as a whole. It’s not quite a split with themselves, but the album does take a turn in its middle following “Nebuchadnezzar” that is striking on repeat listens. The first couple times through, one might not notice or simply wake up from the trance at the end of 15-minute closer “Rhythmic Past” and only then realize how much of a journey one has made. Eggnogg have a natural sound brought out by the recording job of guitarists Justin Karol and Bill O’Sullivan – the latter who also handles the surprisingly diverse vocals – and as Moments in Vacuum gradually gets darker atmospherically leading to the end, that feel is ultimately what keeps the band on track.

Foremost, they’re heavy. In their more intense moments, as on opener “Magog,” O’Sullivan lets loose gruff shouts from the bottom of a canyon that still seems to be higher than the subterranean tone of his and Karol’s guitars and bass. Drummer Ryan Quinn’s task is made somewhat easier by the repetitive nature of some of Eggnogg’s riffs, but when “Magog” slams into a slowdown after five minutes in and the first of Moments in Vacuum’s several samples is introduced, he’s able to hold the time and pacing together and keep his cohorts from spiraling out of control. Nonetheless, the fuzz is overbearing. Hairy, even. Eggnogg play through an aural fog of unabashed burnoutism that’s a stirring reminder of how long ago we all should’ve dropped out of life. The line “sock it to me” sampled from the tv show Laugh-In ends “Magog” and turns out to be a theme running through the first couple tracks. Eggnogg underscore the groove with “Raking in the Dough,” which is essentially a funk song built around a single progression and strummed-out chorus, but righteously catchy all the same. As the opening verse unfolds with the lines, “I understand/Financial man/Knows what he wants and gets it he flaunts it/Sees it all go to plan” before the repeated chorus of “It’s alright I’m raking in dough,” it’s probably Moments in Vacuum’s most directly blues-based stretch. O’Sullivan carries it with a throaty but laid back vocal, and simultaneous left/right channel guitar soloing leads into stoner grooving that would make Brant Bjork proud. Once again, “sock it to me” closes.

As both “Wheel of the Year” and “Nebuchadnezzar” reach close to 12 minutes, they mark the point at which Moments in Vacuum really becomes hypnotic. It’s a hard album to sit through and analyze on a per-song basis, because the overall experience of zoning out to it is so much a part of what makes listening enjoyable. “Wheel of the Year” starts out with a soft guitar interlude/intro and gradually moves into a riff that could be called slow until Eggnogg really hits the brakes tempo-wise on the album’s second half. Still, the song seems to lurch its way into its last third, which picks up thanks to a fast riff and some Sabbathian beat-keeping from Quinn behind the guitar lead. The swagger Eggnogg pull off at the end of “Wheel of the Year” sets the table well for the sleepy warmth of “Nebuchadnezzar,” which isn’t as fuzzed-out as a song like “Magog” or the latter part of the closer still to come, but no less engaging for its laid back sway. Once again, O’Sullivan suits his vocals to the cause, and though the increase in tempo that comes on later in the song would lead to some structural comparisons between “Nebudchadnezzar” and “Wheel of the Year” – maybe rightly so – Eggnogg take the song to a different place stylistically and Moments in Vacuum doesn’t repeat itself in any way that isn’t intended on the part of the band. Certainly, as “One Monster’s Confession” shifts the feel of the record into something darker and wholly more doom-based, redundancy isn’t a concern. The abrasiveness Eggnogg show there is echoed later in the huge riffing and screams that top the finale, but “One Monster’s Confession” is still probably their darkest moment. Something about the bass tone reminds of the inhuman extremity of Godflesh, but of course the context surrounding is entirely less lucid.

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