One can’t help but read some element of nostalgia specifically for the early days of the band in Samsara Blues Experiment‘s Peace of Action (Live 2012) release, issued just yesterday, Feb. 27, as a free download with tracks culled from 2013’s Live at Rockpalast (review here). True, the Berlin-based then-four-piece had been around for four years by that point and indeed had already by then embarked on the let’s-just-go-do-a-thing West Coast tour of the US in 2008 supporting just their demo (discussed here, review here).

In 2010, their first album, Long-Distance Trip (review here), had reaffirmed the heavy psychedelic warmth of ’08’s preceding rough cuts and expanded on it with a purposefully jammy take and a willingness to let the songs breathe that was new. In 2011, the second full-length, Revelation and Mystery (review here), introduced a more progressive edge to the band’s style, as lead guitarist/vocalist Christian Peters (now of Fuzz Sagrado), guitarist Hans Eiselt, bassist Richard Behrens (who now helms Big Snuff Studio, also Wedge, I think still FOH for Kadavar, and others) and drummer Thomas Vedder began to discover their identity in the tonal depth, spiritualistic lyrical framework and expansive reach of their jams.

So by 2012, when Peace of Action was recorded in Germany (Behrens mixed), Samsara Blues Experiment weren’t a brand new band, but they were beginning to come into their own, and the sound was fresh. They were enough of a “thing” in 2012 that they got to do a Rockpalast recording, for example. And even now, listening to them wah-blast their way through “Center of the Sun,” it’s exciting . I was lucky enough to see this band twice in this era, at Roadburn 2011 (review here) and at Desertfest London 2012 (review here), and being a fan of what they did during their time generally, I’ll grant that I come into Peace of Action with some amount of sentimental attachment. But I also know I’m not the only person who remembers when Samsara Blues Experiment sounded like this — “simpler times,” they were — and from “Singata Mystic Queen” onward, they’ve got eight songs and 74 minutes of preserved lightning in a bottle. Yeah, it’s been out there before, but it’s here today and it’s free, and there’s a freak-flag-flying element to that that feels very apropos of the band.

But even if you think of it as a reissue — there was an acoustic bonus track on the original Live at Rockpalast that was a redux of “Singata Mystic Queen” that showed up on Demos & Rarities (review here) in 2023, one of several posthumous releases the band has had since their final album, End of Forever (review here), put a cap on their tenure in 2020 — it’s a well timed revisit to this period in the life of Samsara Blues Experiment. While outright flattening in the riff of “Army of Ignorance,” they could still fuzz-shuffle in “Into the Black.” As “Hangin’ on the Wire” careens into its title-line like last piece of a machine sliding into place to make the whole thing run, there’s little question why Samsara Blues Experiment would highlight a time when they were so dug in. Not only that, but when they were part of a generational ascent that typified much of the 2010s and of course continues to flesh out, and it was all just beginning to see bands recognize their own power and what they brought to the pastiche of the whole. ‘Heavy psych’ had begun to separate itself from just-jammming and psychedelic rock and prog a few years earlier, and Samsara Blues Experiment would become one of the acts who best represented what the style had to offer.

It goes without saying that the performances are on point or it wouldn’t have been made in the first place. Peace of Action is bootleg-style organic — a show recording — but clear enough to let the bluesy underpinning in the early lead work of “Double Freedom” come through sounding improvised like it’s feeling its way through as it goes, and maybe it was, I don’t know. That extended mellow groover closes the set in nearly 18 minutes of far-outbound excursion, and is among the Samsara Blues Experiment one might most think of as a signature piece, along the likes of “Singata Mystic Queen” and “Hangin’ on the Wire,” etc., though it’s always a little different on any recording, at least so far as I’ve heard. Plus, “Double Freedom” didn’t feature on 2023’s Rock Hard in Concert (review here), so to have it documented here is a win not the least for how heavy it gets. Of all the emails I got yesterday, the one announcing the existence of Peace of Action (Live 2012) was an easy favorite.

Relocating concurrently from Germany to Brazil, Peters has spent the last five years or so developing the solo-project Fuzz Sagrado, and has kept busy with reissues for Samsara Blues Experiment in addition to new work with the new band, first in more of a synthy-proggy-heavy variety, more recently tinged with more rock. The impression release to release has been of an artist rediscovering their love of rock and roll, making their way along an ethereal path toward heavier ground. No, I don’t think a Samsara Blues Experiment reunion is coming. At least not one even with the three-piece lineup that this four-piece later became, though it’s always possible Peters may get another lineup of the band together and continue forward, whatever challenges would be involved there between the ex-members and running a German band with a European target audience from South America, I don’t know.

Still, weirder things have happened, but I’m not holding my breath for it. Maybe someday but not yet? I don’t know, and the point is a release like Peace of Action (Live 2012) is a reminder to all good bands to record as much as possible because you never know when you’re gonna want it later, and also to Samsara Blues Experiment‘s fans — again, a number in which I count myself — of the force they were onstage even in their relatively early days. A free download is its own excuse for grabbing anyway, and this one is about as close to no-brainer as you can get. I don’t know how long it’s gonna be there or how long it’s gonna be free, so here’s the link: https://samsarabluesexperiment.bandcamp.com/album/peace-of-action-live-2012

Thanks for reading. As always, I hope you enjoy.

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There was one day this week that had two posts? Wednesday I think it might’ve been? Two or three, anyhow. Just not a ton going on that day and I didn’t feel like pretending otherwise or chasing something down for filler. It’s that time of year. Announcements will continue to pick up for albums and tours in the next month, then you’re into Spring and Summer and Fall and year-end time, so whatever. Anyway, I’m doing as much as I can do. This past weekend I couldn’t get a jump on stuff either really since I was coming back from Massachusetts and seeing that Worshipper gig.

Man, that was a good time, and if Widowmaker had been open and a circuit stop when I lived there, I’d have been a regular. Didn’t even have to drive into the city — it was in friggin’ Braintree. Anyway, was a great show and I got to hang out with John Arzgarth and his family for a bit and see some old friends and that was cool. I might think about going up for Hopsmoker Fest next year, if the timing works.

Speaking of Stateside festivals, I’m way bummed about Desertfest New York. In a perfect world, I’d be like, “Oh hello there, Ripplefest Texas,” and simply shift my plans from one weekend to the other, but flying and staying in Austin is much bigger money than maybe sharing an AirBNB with Tim Bugbee in Queens, and Ripplefest needs my coverage like it needs a hole in the head — not that Desertfest ever did, mind you — so I’m not expecting any we’ll-cover-it offers to come anytime soon. Ideally, money just wouldn’t exist and it would all work out.

The world’s falling apart. Or the country, anyway. Anyone want to talk about the impending constitutional crisis of an executive branch ignoring the orders of the judiciary? Fuck, me neither. And of course no legitimate election could ever happen with the court witch-hunting a president, so no election will happen in 2028. The white devils are set loose. And then you find out what country you really live in.

I have no hope for any of it at this point, see no reason to think there’s any stopping the train from where it’s headed, and think my country got too good at taking too much for granted in having a more-or-less functioning democratic government for like three generations, let money into its politics in 2010 and the nation tanked almost immediately thereafter. Sucks that it’s our kids who’ll live in the aftermath — plus climate disaster — but if anyone gave a shit, none of it would’ve happened in the first place. Thanks capitalism, corruption, power, the usual suspects.

Honestly, it hasn’t been that much of a downer week, but when I stop and think about shit, it gets me. Ergo, keep head down, keep working. I hope you have a great and safe weekend, whatever you need to do to blind yourself to the horrors of our day — music helps! — and encourage you to please not forget to hydrate, watch your head, all that stuff. I’ll be back on Monday with I think a Yawning Balch review and then on from there.

New shirts in March? Still the plan so far as I know.

FRM.

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