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Quarterly Review: King Woman, Mythic Sunship, Morningstar Delirium, Lunar Funeral, Satánico Pandemonium, Van Groover, Sergio Ch., Achachak, Rise Up Dead Man, Atomic Vulture

Posted in Reviews on July 19th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

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Hey, how was your weekend? You won’t be surprised to learn mine was full of tunes, which I mark as a win. While we’re marking wins, let’s put one down for wrapping up the longest Quarterly Review to-date in a full 11 days today. 110 releases. I started on July 5 — a lifetime ago. It’s now July 19, and I’ve encountered a sick kid and wife, busted laptop, oral surgery, and more riffs than I could ever hope to count along the way. Ups, downs, all-arounds. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride.

This day was added kind of on an impulse, and the point I’m looking to emphasize is that you can spend two full weeks reviewing 10 albums a day and still there’s more to be had. I’ve learned over time you’re never going to hear everything — not even close — and that no matter how deep you dig, there’s more to find. I’m sure if I didn’t have other stuff scheduled I could fill out the entirety of this week and then some with 10 records a day. As it stands, let’s not have this Quarterly Review run into the next one at the end of September/beginning of October. Time to get my life back a little bit, such as it is.

Quarterly Review #101-110:

King Woman, Celestial Blues

king woman celestial blues

After the (earned) fanfare surrounding King Woman‘s 2017 debut, Created in the Image of Suffering, expectations for the sophomore outing, Celestial Blues, are significant. Songwriter/vocalist Kris Esfandiari meets these head-on in heavy and atmospheric fashion on tracks like the opening title-cut and “Morning Star,” the more cacophonous “Coil” and duly punishing “Psychic Wound.” Blues? Yes, in places. Celestial? In theme, in its confrontation with dogma, sure. Even more than these, though, Celestial Blues taps into an affecting weight of ambience, such that even the broad string sounds of “Golgotha” feel heavy, and whether a given stretch is loud or quiet, subdued like the first half of “Entwined” or raging like the second, right into the minimalist “Paradise Lost” that finishes, the sense of burden being purposefully conveyed is palpable in the listening experience. No doubt the plaudits will be or are already manifold and superlative, but the work stands up.

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Relapse Records website

 

Mythic Sunship, Wildfire

Mythic Sunship Wildfire

Mythic Sunship are a hopeful vision for the future of progressive psychedelic music. Their fifth album and first for Tee Pee Records, Wildfire offers five tracks/45 minutes that alternates between ripping holes in the fabric of spacetime via emitted subspace wavelengths of shredding guitar, sax-led freakouts, shimmer to the point of blindness, peaceful drift and who the hell knows what else is going on en route from one to the other. Because as much as the Copenhagen outfit might jump from one stretch to the next, their fluidity is huge all along the course of Wildfire, which is fortunate because that’s probably the only thing stopping the record from actually melting. Instrumental as ever, I’m not sure if there’s a narrative arc playing out — certainly one can read one between “Maelstrom,” “Olympia,” “Landfall,” “Redwood Grove” and “Going Up” — and if that’s the intention, it maybe pulls back from that “hopeful vision” idea somewhat, at least in theme, if not aesthetic. In any case, the gorgeousness, the electrified vitality in what Mythic Sunship do, continues to distinguish them from their peers, which is a list that is only growing shorter with each passing LP.

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Tee Pee Records website

 

Morningstar Delirium, Morningstar Delirium

Morningstar Delirium Morningstar Delirium

I said I was going to preorder this tape and I’m glad I did. Morningstar Delirium‘s half-hour/four-song debut offering is somewhere between an EP and an album — immersive enough to be the latter certainly in its soothing, brooding exploration of sonic textures, not at all tethered to a sonic weight in the dark industrial “Blood on the Fixture” and even less so in the initial minutes of “Silent Travelers,” but not entirely avoiding one either, as in the second half of that latter track some more sinister beats surface for a time. Comprised of multi-instrumentalists/vocalist Kelly Schilling (Dreadnought, BleakHeart) and Clayton Cushman (The Flight of Sleipnir), the isolation-era project feeds into that lockdown atmosphere in moments droning and surging, “Where Are You Going” giving an experimentalist edge with its early loops and later stretch of ethereal slide guitar (or what sounds like it), while closer “A Plea for the Stars” fulfills the promise of its vocalists with a doomed melody in its midsection that’s answered back late, topping an instrumental progression like the isolated weepy guitar of classic goth metal over patiently built layers of dark-tinted wash. Alternating between shorter and longer tracks, the promise in Morningstar Delirium resides in the hope they’ll continue to push farther and farther along these lines of emotional and aural resonance.

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Morningstar Delirium on Bandcamp

 

Lunar Funeral, Road to Siberia

lunar funeral road to siberia

Somewhere between spacious goth and garage doom, Russia’s Lunar Funeral find their own stylistic ground to inhabit on their second album, Road to Siberia. The two-piece offer grim lysergics to start the affair on “Introduce” before plunging into “The Thrill,” which bookends with the also-11-minute closer “Don’t Send Me to Rehab” and gracefully avoids going full-freakout enough to bring back the verse progression near the end. Right on. Between the two extended pieces, the swinging progression of “25th Hour” trades brooding for strut — or at least brooding strut — with the snare doing its damnedest by the midsection to emulate handclaps could be there if they could find a way not to be fun. “25th Hour” hits into a wash late and “Black Bones” answers with dark boogie and a genuine nod later, finishing with noise en route to the spacious eight-minute “Silence,” which finds roll eventually, but holds to its engaging sense of depth in so doing, the abiding weirdness of the proceedings enhanced by the subtle masterplan behind it. Airy guitar work winding atop the bassline makes the penultimate “Your Fear is Giving Me Fear” a highlight, but the willful trudge of “Don’t Send Me to Rehab” is an all-too-suitable finish in style and atmosphere, not quite drawing it all together, but pushing it off a cliff instead.

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Helter Skelter Productions / Regain Records on Bandcamp

 

Satánico Pandemonium, Espectrofilia

satanico pandemonium espectrofilia

Sludge and narcosadistic doom infest the six-track Espectrofilia from Mexico City four-piece Satánico Pandemonium, who call it an EP despite its topping 40 minutes in length. I don’t know, guys. Electric Wizard are a touchstone to the rollout of “Parábola del Juez Perverso,” which lumbers out behind opener “El Que Reside Dentro” and seems to come apart about two minutes in, only to pick up and keep going. Fucking a. Horror, exploitation, nodding riffs, raw vibes — Satánico Pandemonium have it all and then some, and if there’s any doubt Espectrofilia is worthy of pressing to a 12″ platter, like 2020’s Culto Suicida before it, whether they call it a full-length or not, the downward plunge of the title-track into the grim boogie of “Panteonera” and the consuming, bass-led closer “La Muerte del Sol” should put them to rest with due prejudice. The spirit of execution here is even meaner than the sound, and that malevolence of intent comes through front-to-back.

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Satánico Pandemonium on Bandcamp

 

Van Groover, Honk if Parts Fall Off

Van Groover Honk if Parts Fall Off

Kudos to Van Groover on their know-thyself tagline: “We’re not reinventing the wheel, but we let it roll.” The German trio’s 10-track/51-minute debut, Honk if Parts Fall Off, hits its marks in the post-Truckfighters sphere of uptempo heavy fuzz/stoner rock, injecting a heaping dose of smoke-scented burl from the outset with “Not Guilty” and keeping the push going through “Bison Blues” and “Streetfood” and “Jetstream” before “Godeater” takes a darker point of view and “Roadrunner” takes a moment to catch its breath before reigniting the forward motion. Sandwiched between that and the seven-minute “Bad Monkey” is an interlude of quieter bluesy strum called “Big Sucker” that ends with a rickity-sounding vehicle — something tells me it’s a van — starts and “Bad Monkey” kicks into its verse immediately, rolling stoned all the while even in its quiet middle stretch before “HeXXXenhammer” and the lull-you-into-a-false-sense-of-security-then-the-riff-hits “Quietness” finish out. Given the stated ambitions, it’s hard not to take Honk if Parts Fall Off as it comes. Van Groover aren’t hurting anybody except apparently one or two people in the opener and maybe elsewhere in the lyrics. Stoner rock for stoner rockers.

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Van Groover on Bandcamp

 

Sergio Ch., Koi

Sergio Ch Koi

There is not much to which Buenos Aires-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sergio Chotsourian, aka Sergio Ch., is a stranger at this point. In a career that has spanned more than a quarter-century, he’s dipped hands in experimentalist folk and drone, rock, metal, punk, goth and more in varying prolific combinations of them. Koi, his latest full-length, still finds new ground to explore, however, in bringing not only the use of programmed drum beats behind some of the material, but collaborations with his own children, Isabel Ch., who contributes vocals on the closing Nine Inch Nails cover, “Hurt,” which was also previously released as a single, and Rafael “Raffa” Ch., who provides a brief but standout moment just before with a swirling, effects-laced rap tucked away at the end of the 11-minute “El Gran Chaparral.” If these are sentimental inclusions on Chotsourian‘s part, they’re a minor indulgence to make, and along with the English-language “NY City Blues,” the partial-translation of “Hurt” into Spanish is a welcome twist among others like “Tic Tac,” which blend electronic beats and spacious guitar in a way that feels like a foreshadow of burgeoning interests and things to come.

Sergio Ch. on Facebook

South American Sludge Records on Bandcamp

 

Achachak, High Mountain

Achachak High Mountain

Less than a year removed from their debut full-length, At the Bottom of the Sea, Croatian five-piece Achachak return with the geological-opposite follow-up, High Mountain. With cuts like “Bong Goddess,” “Maui Waui,” they leave little to doubt as to where they’re coming from, but the stoner-for-stoners’-sake attitude doesn’t necessarily account either for the drifty psych of “Biggest Wave” or the earlier nod-out in “Lonewolf,” the screams in the opening title-track or the follow-that-riff iron-manliness of “”Mr. SM,” let alone the social bent to the lyrics in the QOTSA-style “Lesson” once it takes off — interesting to find them delving into the political given the somewhat regrettable inner-sleeve art — but the overarching vibe is still of a band not taking itself too seriously, and the songwriting is structured enough to support the shifts in style and mood. The fuzz is strong with them, and closer “Cozy Night” builds on the languid turn in “Biggest Wave” with an apparently self-aware moody turn. For having reportedly been at it since 1999, two full-lengths and a few others EPs isn’t a ton as regards discography, but maybe now they’re looking to make up for lost time.

Achachak on Facebook

Achachak on Bandcamp

 

Rise Up, Dead Man, Rise Up, Dead Man

Rise Up Dead Man Rise Up Dead Man

It’s almost counterintuitive to think so, but what you see is what you get with mostly-instrumentalist South African western/psych folk duo Rise Up, Dead Man‘s self-titled debut. To wit, the “Bells of Awakening” at the outset, indeed, are bells. “The Summoning,” which follows, hypnotizes with guitar and various other elements, and then, yes, the eponymous “Rise Up, Dead Man,” is a call to raise the departed. I don’t know if “Stolen Song” is stolen, but it sure is familiar. Things get more ethereal as multi-instrumentalists Duncan Park (guitar, vocals, pennywhistle, obraphone, bells, singing bowl) and William Randles (guitar, vocals, melodica, harmonium, violin, bells, singing bowl) through the serenity of “The Wind in the Well” and the summertime trip to Hobbiton that the pennywhistle in “Everything that Rises Must Converge” offers, which is complemented in suitably wistful fashion on closer “Sickly Meadow.” There’s some sorting out of aesthetic to be done here, but as the follow-up just to an improv demo released earlier this year, the drive and attention to detail in the arrangements makes their potential feel all the more significant, even before you get to the expressive nature of the songs or the nuanced style in which they so organically reside.

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Rise Up, Dead Man on Bandcamp

 

Atomic Vulture , Moving Through Silence

Atomic Vulture Moving Through Silence

Yeah, that whole “silence” thing doesn’t last too long on Moving Through Silence. The 51-minute debut long-player from Brugge, Belgium, instrumentalists Atomic Vulture isn’t through opener “Eclipse” before owing a significant sonic debt to Kyuss‘ “Thumb,” but given the way the record proceeds into “Mashika Deathride” and “Coaxium,” one suspects Karma to Burn are even more of an influence for guitarist Pascal David, bassist Kris Hoornaert and drummer Jens Van Hollebeke, and though they move through some slower, more atmospheric stretch on “Cosmic Dance” and later more extended pieces like “Spinning the Titans” (9:02) and closer “Astral Dream,” touching on prog particularly in the second half of the latter, they’re never completely removed from that abiding feel of get-down-to-business, as demonstrated on the roll of “Intergalactic Takeoff” and the willful landing on earth that the penultimate “Space Rat” brings in between “Spinning the Titans” and “Astral Dream,” emphasizing the sense of their being a mission underway, even if the mission is Atomic Vulture‘s discovery of place within genre.

Atomic Vulture on Facebook

Polderrecords on Bandcamp

 

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The Obelisk Questionnaire: Mythic Sunship (Plus Track Premiere)

Posted in audiObelisk, Questionnaire on March 2nd, 2021 by JJ Koczan

MYTHIC SUNSHIP

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Frederik Denning & Rasmus Cleve Christensen of Mythic Sunship

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

Frederik Denning: One word comes to mind: Exploration. The foundation of Mythic Sunship is our love for music of all kinds. Be it early heavy rock, japanese noise or 60’ies free jazz. We don’t really have any limits to how we play and what we play, and I honestly feel extremely privileged to play with that kind of freedom and still have people enjoying what we’re doing. I think it’s fundamentally because our love for all kinds of music shines through in what we’re doing. We don’t really discriminate, so we find inspiration in Coltrane, Black Sabbath, Lana Del Ray, Run The Jewels and Robert Hood equally. Yeah, sometimes we try something out and figure: ‘You know, this isn’t really what Mythic Sunship is about”, but we never shy away from trying out new stuff, and we’re always actively trying to evolve. The first three records are sorta grouped together, then Another Shape of Psychedelic Music and Changing Shapes, and now: It’s time for something else.

Rasmus Cleve Christensen: As Frederik hints to, Mythic Sunship is very much about exploring musical creation through collective improvisation. Those are some expensive words, but it’s quite basic really. It’s just playing music without setting up a lot of boundaries for ourselves. And whatever musical ideas or ideals we share then shape what comes out of it. We don’t have one favorite sound or genre or artist we can all agree on, but there are many overlaps in our tastes within the band. And that tension, I guess, is what drives the music forward.

Describe your first musical memory.

Frederik Denning: When I played the 3-tone keyboard part of a song for the school’s spring concert at age 8, I knew at that specific point that music would be an integral part of my life until the day I die.

Rasmus Cleve Christensen: Dancing around to Michael Jackson or The Beach Boys in my parents’ living room (both were early favorites, can’t remember which came first). Playing actual music myself wasn’t a thing until much later in my life.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Frederik Denning: That is a pretty tough question to answer, because there have been more mindblowing experiences than I can count. In a Mythic Sunship context, playing Roadburn was an incredible experience.

Rasmus Cleve Christensen: So many great memories from recording and touring with these guys! Playing and just being at Roadburn was definitely a highlight. Also mindblowing concert experiences with Boredoms, Sun Ra, Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet and Grouper spring to mind.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Rasmus Cleve Christensen: I firmly believed that our music appealed to very few people, but have been proven wrong by people who I know don’t normally listen to instrumental longform music who have loved going to our shows.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Rasmus Cleve Christensen: Not sure I quite get this question. Whenever I feel like we evolve as a band it leads to many new experiences and realisations about what music can be. When you put yourself out there, you get so much back.

How do you define success?

Frederik Denning: By the quality of the music we make. Another Shape of Psychedelic Music saw a fair amount of commercial success, considering the content of the album, but the real success is the material on that record. Regardless of how Wildfire will be received, I also consider that album to be a success.

Rasmus Cleve Christensen: Doing something you believe in and then have it acknowledged by your surroundings.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

Frederik Denning: Plenty of things in the past four years, but I prefer not to mix art and politics.

Rasmus Cleve Christensen: There was this roadside restroom in Slovenia… that I prefer not to talk about.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

Frederik Denning: At some point we will do a sick Mythic Sunship Astral Family record. We’ve experimented with it live, playing with a ton of amazing artists, and at this point I can’t even point to one performance I prefer over the other. If you’re interested you can find some of the performances on YouTube. I know there are recordings from Le Guess Who, Festival of Endless Gratitude and our residency at ALICE CPH. At some point we’ll do this in the studio, and it will be absolutely killer.

Rasmus Cleve Christensen: I sometimes dream of a Mythic Sunship record with really slick production, and I don’t know why, ’cause it’s really not in the cards with our kind of music, but I just imagine it to my inner ear sometimes.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Frederik Denning: Art should push the mind to be able to reflect without the barriers of language. In turn philosophy (or the language) should then reflect over the art, moving the barriers further. And that’s kind of the endless dynamic between art and philosophy.

Rasmus Cleve Christensen: Definitely that experience which can’t be confined by language, as Frederik points to. That experience can be utter catharsis, a questioning of your whole existence or a feeling of inner peace or unity.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Frederik Denning: COVID-19 being history.

Rasmus Cleve Christensen: The end of world hunger, inequality, climate issues, racism etc., but yeah springtime and a shot of covid vaccine are also high on the list.

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Mythic Sunship, “Going Up” track premiere

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Mythic Sunship Announce Wildfire out April 2; Stream “Maelstrom”

Posted in Whathaveyou on February 8th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

This news came in just before the weekend, and I’d been expecting it, as word of new Mythic Sunship was making the rounds on social media. The Copenhagen unit’s jump from El Paraiso Records to Tee Pee is notable, but more than that, I put on the track, “Maelstrom,” which opens the new record Wildfire that’s coming out April 2 with preorders up now, and holy god damn, man, the thing just blazes. The PR wire below talks about scorched-earth, and yeah, I don’t even know. It’s like scorched-genre. Free jazz meets extreme, frenetic space rock. It’s the musical equivalent of trying to imagine a million of something. Picture a million people in your mind. You can’t do it. That’s how I feel trying to figure out what’s happening in “Maelstrom.”

I’ve got the record, I won’t lie to you, but it might honestly be until April that I feel like I have any kind of grip on what Mythic Sunship are doing on it. Bright light right in your ears. Or wild fire. Fair enough.

Here’s art, info, audio:

Mythic Sunship Wildfire

Psychedelic Rockers MYTHIC SUNSHIP To Release ‘Wildfire’ on April 2nd via Tee Pee Records

Copenhagen-based quintet MYTHIC SUNSHIP have established themselves among Europe’s finest purveyors of psychedelic music; bridging the gap between heavy riff worship and expansive, free-jazz experimentation.

With their sixth studio album ‘Wildfire’ due for release this April – their first on New York’s legendary underground label, Tee Pee Records – Denmark’s most experimental sons simultaneously open a new chapter on their journey, while razing the foundations on which their previous albums were built. Recorded over the course of four intense days in Stockholm’s vintage RMV Studio, the album documents the erratic, visceral, untameable musical singularity that Mythic Sunship becomes once unleashed in improvisatory interplay.

Working with legendary Danish punk Per Buhl Acs behind the mixing desk, the group has reinvented itself to produce an album which showcases that essence, in its most primal form, is rare. Fusing together raw, kinetic outbursts, Wildfire takes the listener from groovy fuzz rock and cosmic jams into newer territories centered around crunched melodies, uncanny harmonies, turbulent rhythms, and ecstatic walls of guitar insanity. As best exemplified on the new single “Maelstrom” and its frenzied wails of electric dissonance, as their self-proclaimed “anaconda rock” collides with furious freak-outs and lysergic saxophony.

As exhilarating and electrifying as psychedelic records come, ‘Wildfire’ showcases Mythic Sunship’s scorched-earth approach in the search for new ideas, and will be released on April 2nd, 2021 via Tee Pee Records.

Pre-order HERE: https://orcd.co/mythicsunship

‘Wildfire’ Tracklisting:
1. Maelstrom
2. Olympia
3. Landfall
4. Redwood Grove
5. Going Up

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Mythic Sunship, “Maelstrom”

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