Friday Full-Length: Monomyth, Further
Posted in Bootleg Theater on March 20th, 2020 by JJ KoczanDutch progressive heavy psychedelic rockers Monomyth‘s second full-length, Further, was released in 2014 through Suburban Records — maybe Suburban/Burning World? — as the follow-up to the Den Haag five-piece’s 2013 self-titled debut (review here). And it was and is true to its title. Comprised of four tracks running about 45 minutes long, the album’s expanse is matched only by its sense of control. While one might be misled by looking songs 10, 12 and 17 minutes long into thinking Monomyth were simply locking in space jams and improvising their way into the trance-inducing cosmic ether, that’s not really the case. “Ark-M,” which opens the proceedings with welcoming and warm tonality and an, underlying pulse that is just tense enough to keep things moving, runs 10:11 and is thoughtful and considered in its flow and progression.
Bassist/baritone guitarist Selwyn Slop, guitarists Tjerk Stoop and Thomas Van Den Reydt, keyboardist/guitarist Peter Van Der Meer and drummer Sander Evers (formerly of 35007, also Gomer Pyle) use keys to underscore rhythmic guitar in extended and melodic lines of organ that give the tension in the strings and drums a foundation on which to rest intermittently, and though the entirety of the album is instrumental, the motion Monomyth undertake, with its periodic bouts of louder distortion and moves into fluidity and quirky adventurism — again, this is just in the first 10 minutes of the record — is every bit emblematic of the goal they clearly laid out for themselves in calling Further what they did.
The intricacy of patterns well matched by the Maarten Donders cover art out front and captured with due grace in the recording by Jordi Langelaan (who also mixed with Van Der Meer, while Wim Bult mastered), Further moves easily into its lower-end-minded second cut “Spheres” with a sureness of purpose that can only be called Floydian. There’s a drama that unfolds between the bass and guitar — a conversation there — happening at about three minutes into the total 12:28, but the band soon return to the sense of drift that got them to where they are and use it as the beginning of a subtle and almost jazzy linear build that moves ahead not with tension headed toward an overblown crescendo — though there’s a payoff, to be sure — but with the message that it’s the journey that’s most important and the act of getting there that matters more than whatever level of wash one might find upon arrival. And that payoff, it’s worth noting, is still reasonably restrained, which is telling of the band’s ethic overall — 
even in their moment of “letting go,” they keep control of the groove enough not to let it get away from them.
It’s not just about restraint or control, of course, as Further‘s rampant melody, rhythm and exploration head them out into a space rock of their own making. The penultimate cut “Collision” is a departure in length at just 5:37 and finds the band coming to ground in a reasonably straightforward movement, the lead guitar line winding out over organ where vocals otherwise might be but not simply taking their place so much as doing things a human voice simply couldn’t do in weaving in and out of the accompanying rhythm lines. Percussion and keys and a corresponding proggy shuffle keep “Collision” tied to its surroundings enough that as the song moves into its second half and unfurls a surprising turn into ultra-winding leads and more technical stylizations, it’s still only as inconsistent as it intends to be. The finish is as raucous as Monomyth get on Further, which is fair enough, but it’s still a sustained melody of keys and guitar that ends the track on a long fade, bringing about the first synth rumblings of 17-minute closer “6equj5,” the title of which refers to the ‘Wow! signal’ captured by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope in 1977. The Big Ear project is to listen for extraterrestrial radio transmissions, and that detected wave remains the best candidate discovered.
So Monomyth, then, are working with a more cosmic palette on the finisher, and the increased scale is a fair enough representation of that, but the patience in the track too befits its space-centric title. A swirl of synth and guitar soloing has taken hold by about five and a half minutes in, though the band seem to have gotten there through only the most hypnotic of means, taken their time rather than rushed through a build. It’s a marked and willful contrast, of course, to “Collision” just before, but as “6equj5” divides into its component movements, it does so only on its own terms, bringing changes and surges of volume where it will as it moves into its second half before getting quieter and stretching out a line of organ across a more rushing current of guitar and steady drums. The grand finale? Sure, and one that consumes the better part of the last six minutes of the song. A ‘Wow! signal’ unto itself, “6equj5” culminates in as fervent a wash as Monomyth have created anywhere on Further and pushes through to an ending of residual noise suddenly cut off rather than faded out, which seems like one last directed choice intended to shock the listener into the realization that the journey has capped. And so it has.
The band have released two more full-lengths since Further in the form of 2016’s Exo and 2019’s Orbis Quadrantis, and they’ve become fixtures at continental European festivals like Desertfest Berlin and Belgium, Roadburn and so on. They’re booked for Freak Valley in June and the Burg Herzberg Festival in August — both in Germany — though of course those plans like everything else have no doubt been rendered “shrug? here’s hoping?” by the COVID-19 pandemic. Whatever happens there, it seemed important to emphasize the sense of purpose and control that Monomyth brought to the writing and construction of Further, from the making of the material itself to the fact that the tracks got longer as they went — “Collision” notwithstanding, but even that was intentional. In chaotic times, sometimes it’s just a relief to know that it’s possible to have a handle on anything, ever, and that’s what I’m taking from Further these six years after its release.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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I got The Pecan about 20 minutes after he woke up. He usually takes a few minutes to wake up and I’ve found it’s best if you let him handle that process on his own rather than burst in and bug him right away. By the time I got upstairs, there was poop on the wall. Not that he’d actively spread it there or anything, but it was up his back out of his diaper and he’d rubbed his back on the wall. The outfit he was wearing I just threw out. He went in the tub and I gave him a bath while The Patient Mrs. took care of the bedroom. I got bit twice in the process of washing him off. He got me later too on the back of my arm when I wasn’t looking and again on my shoulder as I was putting him in the car after that, I guess just to remind me I’m a fucking asshole.
Fair enough.
We went in the car early because we had to leave the house because he was too miserable to eat and there’s nothing else to do. We drove to Newark and looked at cherry blossoms in a park at The Patient Mrs.’ suggestion. They weren’t all out and the ground was wet because apparently it rained overnight, but whatever. It was a thing to do. Two hours, a granola bar, a cheese stick and other assorted snackies later, it was at least a partial reset, and the day very, very, very much needed one.
I haven’t been sleeping all week and I’m fucking miserable. Chicken and egg, right?
We’re still going out to grocery stores and all that. Social distancing, washing hands, all that coronavirus shit is what it is. I don’t think New Jersey will have to shelter in place like San Francisco, and even if we did, I don’t think we’d be arrested for taking a walk through the neighborhood, so we’ll see. It’s hard. It fucking sucks. It could be worse I guess. Everybody is anxious. Everybody is miserable. Everybody is covered in shit. No one is sick at the moment.
Except my nephew, who has the flu. Kid’s always got the flu.
Anyway. Next week is the Quarterly Review. I have no idea how, but that’s the plan.
Today’s a new episode of the Gimme show. 5PM Eastern. Listen at http://gimmeradio.com.
Other that and my anxiety-driven desire to consume garlic en masse, that’s all I’ve got. If you wanted to bludgeon me with a shovel, as long as I didn’t know when it was coming, I don’t think I’d fight you.
Great and safe weekend. Enjoy the memes about washing your hands.
FRM.
etailing, these songs pushed well beyond anything Hermano had done before, and that extended even to the in-the-studio atmosphere given to the tracks by the inclusion of short intros, even just toss-off gag lines and things like that. I don’t think one would get away with including the inflected lisp at the beginning of “Our Desert Home” these days without being called out for it — at least I hope not — but whether it was the quick bit of guitar noise at the start of “Hard Working Wall,” the far-away dream vocals that begin “Dark Horse II” or the revving motor that set the album in motion in “Kentucky” and the reference to “Dueling Banjos” that ended that opener, these little moments added to the inherent diversity of the material and helped set a wide-open creative sphere in which the record took place. They gave it more personality, and in the case of “At the Bar,” the recorded child’s voice of Calliope Brown — presumably the progeny of Dandy Brown — set up the closer “Letters from Madrid” two tracks later, which featured Angstrom‘s daughter and son, Audrey Angstrom and Evan Angstrom, strumming an acoustic guitar and repeating the line, “Everyone still believes in you but you” before ending with both kids saying “I love you, daddy.” Tearjerker.
