Album Review: Tranquonauts, 2
Posted in Reviews on September 10th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
A lot of what you need to know about the aptly-titled second Tranquonauts album, 2 — on Lay Bare Recordings and Blown Music, distro through Echodelick in the US — they tell you in listing the lineup on the front cover. It’s Seedy Jeezus, from Melbourne, Australia, partnered with Isaiah Mitchell, guitar hero of voidbound heavy psych plungers Earthless, who is based (I think) in San Francisco, and Mos Generator figurehead Tony Reed (who can now count being in Pentagram among the many impressive lines of his CV), tucked up in the top left corner of the US in Port Orchard, Washington, working as mixing/mastering engineer as well as a this-time contributor to the material on vocals, synth, programming and Mellotron.
The former two parties — that’s Mitchell and Seedy Jeezus, which is drummer Mark Sibson, bassist Paul Crick (also Mellotron) and guitarist Lex Waterreus (also credited with vocals, bass and theremin) — released the first, self-titled Tranquonauts album (review here) in 2016, and recorded the basic tracks on which 2 is based in 2022, with Waterreus editing the material together to get the extended pieces that respectively comprise sides A and B, “Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3” (20:29) and “Ground Control” (17:11), as well as the worth-seeking-out non-vinyl bonus tracks “Drown” (6:37) and “Drop” (4:54) while on a 2023 trip to New York, before sending the stems to Reed, to mix/master and, ultimately, add his vocals, synth, and so on.
For Reed, it’s somewhat akin to the role he plays in the band Big Scenic Nowhere, and his ability to find the spaces a verse might occupy in an otherwise amorphous pool of liquid audio comes into play. That he brings a heart-on-sleeve crux to the early going of “Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3” greatly deepens the impression of the album as a whole, coming after the fact of the initial recording, but for the listener hearing the finished version, giving the longform jam and solo that follows a sense of direction and expression beyond the creative exploration happening on the instruments. In the open-spaced introduction of the 20-minute track, he starts as a single voice over light guitar strum and (perhaps his own, I don’t know) swirling synth, but is soon in harmony with himself finding the right niche to bolster the mood and ambience surrounding.
As the organ strikes circa 3:30 into “Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3,” his voice in layers is contemplative and present in the moment. Soon enough, though, what I assume is the shift between the first and second parts of the song happens and the guitar takes over the lead position. The abiding sense of melancholy remains — there will only ever be one “Maggot Brain,” but Mitchell and Waterreus are both well able to convey emotionality through their instrument — and is informed by Reed‘s lines in a way that likely couldn’t have been anticipated when the original recordings were done. For the one on the hearing end of Tranquonauts 2, this span of time flattens in a way that is fascinating, and is likely the result of lyrics written for or applied to what feelings were evoked by “Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3” in its original, instrumental form. The opener/longest track (immediate points), like the subsequent “Ground Control,” is mostly instrumental, but even the momentary presence is enough to affect how one engages with what follows.
I won’t take away from the appeal of what Mitchell and Seedy Jeezus accomplished on the first Tranquonauts LP, but in most cases a band with words is going to sound like they have more to say, and the experience of “Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3” as a whole is that much richer for Reed‘s involvement, vocally as well as instrumentally. It wouldn’t be fair to call the jam grounded by the time guitars start turning backwards around seven minutes in, building gradually to a crescendo at the behest of Sibson‘s drums past the 10-minute mark before deconstructing and shifting presumably into ‘Pt. 3’ with a sonically obscured sample from either NASA ground control or an old sci-fi flick a short while later after some patient, we’ll-get-there-type meander, but its far-outbound sprawl is hypnotic even as the emotive undertone is maintained by Mellotron under the scorching, concluding guitar solo.
“Ground Control” is immediately bound on a different pursuit. The 17-minute cut is perhaps even more exploratory than the preceding, longer one, with a more direct line drawn to krautrock and get-spaced impulses. An abiding, deceptively funky wah on the guitar is built around with live drums and a programmed beat that’s speaking to early electronic music, and in combination with the cosmos-minded synth and effects on guitars, it almost sounds like an alternate-reality version of pre-2000 techno, like Hawkwind produced by Dust Brothers in 1996. Boldly, willfully uneven in concept, it nonetheless works as a droning vocal from Waterreus arrives amid the interstellar tumult to tie it together through the pervasively weird twists, ebbs and flows. What is shared with “”Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3,” aside from basics like personnel, etc., is a sense of the unknown being engaged. Tranquonauts are hardly the first to meld electronic and organic instrumentation even in a psychedelic context, but they do so with a vibrancy of persona that maintains the unflinching creative spirit of the song prior even while departing from it in sound and mood.
Will there be a third Tranquonauts? Was there always going to be a second? I don’t know. While there are plenty of bands out there who work remotely to overcome being geographically spread out, having at least the Mitchell/Seedy Jeezus core in the same room seems to be a priority — otherwise 2 might have already happened years ago and surely would’ve taken a different shape — and fair enough for the distinctive roots from which these songs spring in their now-completed forms. I would not hazard to predict when logistics will again align to put Mitchell in Melbourne when both the three members of Seedy Jeezus and a room at Studio One B with engineer David Warner (who has now helmed both Tranquonauts LPs) are available, but it’s happened at least twice to-date, so neither is it outside the apparent realm of possibility.
When and if such a thing happens, one can only hope for Reed‘s continued involvement as well, even if that’s after the fact, as his contributions broaden the scope of 2 in ways that are both meaningful and resonant. As it stands, 2 makes Tranquonauts sound like more of an actual-band than perhaps even the component players expected it to be. Mark that a win for those who either heard the first one eight years ago or will take them on now.
Tranquonauts, 2 (2024)
Lay Bare Recordings on Facebook
