Album Review: Sula Bassana & Skyjoggers, Split LP
Posted in Reviews on November 27th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Sula Bassana and Skyjoggers both took part in this year’s Dazed and Spaced Festival at Bar 227 in Hamburg, the former headlining the second night on April 27 and the latter playing earlier that same evening, having traveled from their Earthly home in Tampere, Finland, to play. The tracks — recorded by someone named Funcky — are pretty lo-fi, with Skyjoggers starting off side A in ground-torching fashion on “Step One: Breathe/Step Two: Levitate,” building momentum quickly with the lead cut from their 2023 three-songer EP, 37 Steps ’til Sunlight, released on vinyl alongside 2022’s I Am a Stone in Gagaria, the band detailing aurally their adventures on the planet of the same name as they hurtle through the cosmos with an FTL engine apparently powered by reverb, raw distortion mixed by Johannes Latva and mastered by Janne Hakanen, and sheer will.
As this split is my first encounter with the three-piece of guitarist Alexi Belle, bassist Juan Rico and drummer Gabo Sabor, I’ll admit my ignorance of Gagaria, the Kosmonoita or the uncharted solar system where their 2019 LP, Seasons of Uiu, reportedly took place. Nonetheless, the Finnish unit make a joyful racket out amid the void and the dark energy, and “Lightrunner” is careening and swirling alike, vocal echoes cutting through clearly, but buried in echo in classic space rock fashion. But Skyjoggers aren’t necessarily a classic space rock band. Their sound, and their apparent conceptualist ethic, certainly has roots in the style, but “Lightrunner” takes off on a more modern, funkier jam after it hits the halfway mark and before it realigns around the forward-directed, gleefully noisy thrust. It’s a blend that will make it easy for listeners coming into the split expecting a weirdness of character to get on board, but frankly, the ship is loaded and is gonna launch whether you’re on it or not.
The destination, here, for Skyjoggers is the floating “…For Outer Space,” which at nine and a half minutes is nearly as long as the first two songs put together and likewise represents a shift in style. Taken from 2018’s Journeymen full-length, where it’s preceded by “Set Sail…,” “…For Outer Space” initially leaves behind the tumult of “Step One: Breathe/Step Two: Levitate” and “Lightrunner” in favor of mellower cosmic blessings. They bring it up to a wall of noise efficiently enough, but the sense of purposeful meander, the feeling that it all might come crashing apart, remain consistent. It doesn’t, of course, or the set probably wouldn’t see public release at all, but “…For Outer Space” rides that line as it moves deeper into its second half with a this-is-why-it-closes-shows, big-no-bigger nod that, even in this live version so much about the energy the band are bringing to it from the stage still feels immersive.
One could hardly ask a more fitting lead-in for Sula Bassana. The long-running Kassel, Germany, solo-project of Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt — who not only is releasing the split through his Sulatron Records label (Echodelick and Cardinal Fuzz also have copies) and mixed his band’s portion (Eroc mastered), but is known for outfits like Electric Moon, Zone Six, Liquid Visions, the way underrated Weltraumstaunen, Moonseeds who released an album earlier this year, and so on — took on a full lineup in 2023. This is the first release I know of to feature it, and as they reinterpret and flesh out “We Will Make It” from Sula Bassana‘s 2022 album, Nostalgia (review here), Schmidt himself fleshing it out on organ and synth/Mellotron while guitarist Adrian Grod adds vocals and bassist Kristina Schmitz and drummer Franz Fesel conjure molten groove, the context feels appropriate.
“We Will Make It” feels more volatile with its shouts past the seven-minute mark, repeating the title line with due insistence, but indeed, the band get where they’re going, which is a quick receding before the harder-hitting finish. As a complement to Skyjoggers‘ closer, “We Will Make It” has moments of heavier kosmiche push, maybe even a bit of grunge in the riffing of guitarist Adrian Grod — which are a novelty on a Sula Bassana release in themselves — alongside Sula‘s Mellotron and declarative vocals, the linear groove of Franz Fesel and the corresponding low-end flow of Kristina Schmitz‘s bass. A full lineup is a turn for Sula Bassana to make, and the amalgam of different players obviously is a shift in dynamic for an outfit that used to just be one person, but “We Will Make It” does, in fact, make it. It makes it clear that a live performance such as one captured here, that the notion of expanding on past ideas and adventuring into new ground yet to be discovered, is the point.
Can’t argue as “We Will Make It” leaves a scorch mark halfway through the solar system and the analog sci-fi, vaguely-Eastern synth sets a backdrop for Grod‘s somehow cultish echoing spoken word intro to “Come With Me.” The destination isn’t clear — that is, I’m not sure where we’re going — but they cover a pretty broad swath in the 13 minutes of the split’s closing track; languid, fluid, druid. It’s not all wash as they dive back to the keys and vibemaking from whence they set out, but when the volume comes back around by about nine minutes in, they sound like they’re rending the fabric of spacetime. Gravity jam. The sense of reaching into the unknown is palpable, and even the residual noise after the drums make their final crash feels immersive. It’s not just that Sula Bassana have become a band, then. They’ve become this band.
A live release is a fascinating way to unveil that, and perhaps not what Schmidt and company originally had in mind for Sula Bassana‘s ‘debut’ as they’ve gotten going over the last year, but “We Will Make It” and, especially “Come With Me,” which is a new song, herald journeys to come. It’s strange to think of Skyjoggers as the more experienced band considering Sula Bassana‘s recently-reissued first album, Dreamer, came out in 2002, but the new lineup is fresh and sounds like it, which if it needs to be said is not a complaint. Psych-heads, Sula-worshipers, or anyone looking for a bit of alt-universe aural escape, here you go.
