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Queen Elephantine’s Kala Available to Preorder

Posted in Whathaveyou on September 7th, 2016 by JJ Koczan

Last I heard, Queen Elephantine were still located in Providence, Rhode Island. The info below about preorders for their new album, Kala (review here), being available lists them as having relocated to New York. Entirely possible. Guitarist/founder Indrayudh Shome has been as restless geographically as he has creatively over the years. Hong Kong, New York, Rhode Island. He could basically turn up anywhere and find a host of cohorts with which to express Queen Elephantine‘s always complex and ritualized drone-doom.

Kala has an Oct. 21 release date and some considerable backing from Argonauta Records, Cimmerian Share Recordings, Tartarus Records and Atypeek Music — each imprint releasing it on a different format. If you’ve ever heard the band’s as-yet underrated experimentalism, it’s little wonder so many parties would want to be involved.

From the PR wire:

queen elephantine kala

QUEEN ELEPHANTINE announce new album ‘Kala’ on multiple labels

Release Date – October 21st, 2016
Record Label – Cimmerian Shade Recordings (LP) / Argonauta Records (CD) / Tartarus Records (Cassette) / Atypeek Music (Digital)

Queen Elephantine, the exotic-flavoured doom/ambient band once operating out of Hong Kong (who have since moved to New York), are back with a brand new full length called Kala. They’ve always kept innovating and the new album is even more entrancing, atmospheric and mind-bending. They’ve honed their skills to offer music that’s near unparalleled – the delicate cacophony of the numerous instruments (spaced out, never overcrowding), the suspenseful atmosphere, the ever-lingering sense of intrigue, it’s all there, and better than ever before. Kala taps into your subconscious, creates swirling colourful patterns, a hypnotic effect that doesn’t wear off easily like a rare non-harmful drug. Succumb to the creeping, psychedelic madness that’s Queen Elephantine.

Mastered by Billy Anderson (Neurosis, Swans, Sleep, Eyehategod, High on Fire)

Artwork has been made by Adrian Dexter

Line up:
Indrayudh Shome – Guitar
Ian Sims – Drumset
Mat Becker – Bass
Srinivas Reddy – Guitar
Derek Fukumori – Percussion
Samer Ghadry – Guitar, Synth
Nathanael Totushek – Drumset + Percussion on 2,4,6
Nick DiSalvo – Mellotron on 1, 2, 3
Michael Scott Isley – Percussion on 2,4
Danny Quinn – Surgeon Pepper

Track list:
1. Quartered
2. Quartz
3. Ox
4. Onyx
5. Deep Blue
6. Throne of the Void in the Hundred Petal Lotus

https://www.facebook.com/queenelephantine/
https://queenelephantine.bandcamp.com/album/kala
http://cimmerianshaderecs.storenvy.com/products/17801057-queen-elephantine-kala
http://www.argonautarecords.com/shop/music-/143-queen-elephantine-kala-cd.html
http://tartarusrecords.com/
http://atypeekmusic.com/Atypeek_Music.html

Queen Elephantine, Kala (2016)

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Queen Elephantine Sign to Argonauta Records; Kala Due in October

Posted in Whathaveyou on May 18th, 2016 by JJ Koczan

A little while ago, Indrayudh Shome dropped me a line and asked if I might know of any good labels to get behind the latest Queen Elephantine album, Kala (review here). It should say something about the kind of enthusiasm the band’s creative breadth inspires that Shome‘s search resulted in not one but four separate regional and format homes for Kala, which is their fifth outing. They are: a domestic US LP release from Cimmerian Shade, a CD through Italy’s Argonauta Records, a tape through Tartarus and download through Atypeek Music. Kudos to Queen Elephantine for getting the album out there and then really getting the album out there.

If you’re in the Providence area, they share the stage June 4 with Doomriders and Churchburn at AS220. Not trying to tell you your business, just letting you know.

Announcement comes courtesy of Argonauta:

queen elephantine kala

ARGONAUTA RECORDS new signing: QUEEN ELEPHANTINE

Providence based cosmonauts QUEEN ELEPHANTINE inked a deal with ARGONAUTA Records for a worldwide CD release of their fifth opus “kala” next fall.

With a fluid lineup and various experiments in approach over the course of their four albums, Queen Elephantine is a nebulous worship of heavy mood and time. The group formed in 2006 in Hong Kong but has always been a shapeshifter. At the end of 2007 it moved base to New York and is currently based in Providence.

The fifth album “kala” will be released October 21st, 2016 and will see a partnership between different labels for each format:

CD – Argonauta Records (Italy)
LP – Cimmerian Shade Records (US)
Cassette – Tartarus Records (Netherlands)
Digital – Atypeek Music (France)

Recorded by I. Sims, Mixed by Indrayudh Shome. Mastered by Billy Anderson. Art by Adrian Dexter.

1. Quartered
2. Quartz
3. Ox
4. Onyx
5. Deep Blue
6. Throne of the Void in the Hundred Petal Lotus

indrayudh shome: guitar
ian sims: drumset
mat becker: bass
srinivas reddy: guitar
derek fukumori: percussion
samer ghadry: guitar, synth
nathanael totushek: drumset + percussion on 2,4,6
nick disalvo: mellotron on 1,2, 3
michael scott isley: percussion on 2,4

http://queenelephantine.clfrecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/queenelephantine/
http://www.argonautarecords.com/

Queen Elephantine, “Quartz”

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Queen Elephantine, Kala: The Ritual Burn (Plus Track Premiere)

Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on March 23rd, 2016 by JJ Koczan

queen elephantine kala

Kala is the fifth full-length from Providence, Rhode Island-based experimentalists Queen Elephantine, who continue to dwell far outside of genre confines and on a plane of their own making in psychedelic ritual, drone, doom, jazz and seemingly whatever else might occur to them at any given moment. The follow-up to 2013’s Scarab (review here) brings six new tracks for a 48-minute, single-LP voyage, and finds much of the personnel from the last time out returned. At the center as always is Indrayudh Shome, whose guitar explorations form the basis from which much of the proceedings is fleshed out, and returning from Scarab are drummer/percussionists Ian Sims and Nathanael Totushek, bassist Matt Becker, and guitarist Srinivas Reddy (who played tanpura on the prior record).

In addition to these, Derek Fukumori and Michael Scott Isley contribute percussion, Samer Ghadry plays guitar and synth, Danny Quinn is credited for/as “surgeon pepper” (presumably as opposed to doctor or sergeant), and Elder‘s Nick DiSalvo handles Mellotron on the first three tracks. Someone new to the band might expect based on the amount of people involved that Queen Elephantine specialize in lush textures and construct layer upon layer of wash, but that’s never been their way. Songs like second cut “Quartz” and “Onyx” build to a head, but many of Kala‘s strongest impressions come in its minimalist moments, a few voices chanting quietly as the tension mounts in “Quartz” or filling the open spaces of 10-minute drone-doom finale “Throne of the Void in the Hundred Petal Lotus,” or the subtle movement underscoring the instrumental “Ox,” which offers a lurching apex only after an extended peripatetic wandering that ultimately proves no less integral to the affect of both.

That’s not to say the tradeoffs in volume that play out patiently across the album’s span are ineffective, just that it’s more about the conversation going on between the members of the band — whoever happens to be on a given track at any point — than about the particular moment when it “gets heavy.” Recorded by Sims over the course of two days last April, produced and mixed by Shome with mastering by Billy Anderson, even the most active moments on Kala retain a raw, live feel, and even down to the progression of song titles, from “Quartered” to “Quartz,” from “Ox” to “Onyx” with “Deep Blue” and “Throne in the Void of the Hundred Petal Lotus,” there is a mindfulness of approach that resonates strongly throughout, and that bleeds into the depth of the initial roll in “Quartered” as much as the feedback-soaked dissonance of its later reaches, the songs drawn together by their contemplative spirit as much as the tones and rhythms through which that spirit is conveyed.

queen elephantine

Most of those rhythms, incidentally, are crawlingly slow. Queen Elephantine have never been in much of a rush, and Kala builds on the meditative aspects of its predecessor, so that even a more upbeat stretch like the opening of “Quartz” retains them. “Quartz” might be the most straightforward inclusion here, with something of a hook in its repeated lines, “I say I’m old, I’m losing reality, I didn’t want anymore/Lust in bloom, Doomed is the pharisee, Submit matter and mind,” over a nodding bass progression and its structure that starts at a (relative) rush, drops to a quiet stretch and then builds back up, but “Ox,” which follows, makes a strong case in its midsection bombast and transitions so deftly executed as to be almost hidden despite drastic changes in volume and intensity. At its loudest, “Ox” lumbers and plods, but the current of mellotron in its final crescendo, as well as a healthy dose of guitar noise, keep it from being so easily tagged as doom.

Bass proves to be the element holding “Onyx” together as well, though it’s the drums and a consistent drone line bled over from the end of “Ox” that begin the track. Before the hissing vocals arise, an angular back and forth between the guitar and bass seems to be jabbing one instrument against the other, but as the guitar moves (temporarily) elsewhere, the low end holds steady under verses and a psychedelic lead. Even the drums start to freak out eventually, but that bassline holds until the song itself seems to come apart leaving just another drone to lead into the penultimate “Deep Blue,” the first half of which pushes toward a peak with drawling drone-singing forward in the mix but nonetheless obscure and a blown-out distortion in focus that seems to drown out the crash cymbal. At about three minutes in, the emergent cacophony ends abruptly and “Deep Blue” roots itself in its central figure to play eerie whispers and eerier falsetto off each other before a drone once again provides the shift into “Throne of the Void in the Hundred Petal Lotus,” which in its linear course, patient execution and holding onto that drone provides a fitting summary of Kala‘s accomplishments to that point.

Less harsh than some of the other cuts, its slower beginning turns toward a grander ending after about five and a half minutes and continues to thrust outward from there until finally the pieces seem to rumble apart, bells chime, amps feed back, and that underlying drone that has been present for much (not all) of the album caps it on a long fade. Wherever they’ve gone soncially over the course of their now-decade-long tenure — and they go a few places here that don’t have a name yet — Queen Elephantine‘s work has always been distinguished by its raw-form creativity, by the sheer will for experimentation that drives it. Kala pushes Queen Elephantine deeper into volume as a spiritual or cerebral expression, and proves just as immersive a journey for the listener as one imagines it was for the artist, but even more than that, it reinforces just how woefully underappreciated they continue to be.

Queen Elephantine on Thee Facebooks

Listen to “Quartz”

Queen Elephantine on Bandcamp

Concrete Lo-Fi Records

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