Ah, to be young, creative, and constantly on the road throughout the European Union. Such seems to be the plight of Baltimorean heavy psych-blues specialists, The Flying Eyes. Seems they’ve just about bypassed every bit of their locality in favor of a more worldly approach to supporting their two albums, The Flying Eyes and earlier this year’s Done So Wrong. An interesting way to go about it, but it seems to be working for them.

Their new video, for the song “Overboard” from the latest album, can be viewed below with the background info following, and then be sure to check out the flyer for their newest string of European dates, which is set to kick off Nov. 17. Dig:

The music video was shot on Super 8 film in Baltimore, September 2011 by Veruschka Bohn from Germany (http://veruschka.tumblr.com). Developed by hand, this video pays tribute to the analogue days of video production and was successfully presented as a pre-diploma project at HfG Offenbach, where Veruschka studies Photo & Film. The song “Overboard“ is taken from the album Done So Wrong (Trip in Time/World in Sound, 2011).

The second album from Samsara Blues Experiment in as many years, Revelation and Mystery (World in Sound) takes a surprising turn in approach from their Long-Distance Trip debut, distilling the jams of the first record into more structured, song-based material. The tracks of Revelation and Mystery almost exclusively follow verse-chorus-verse patterns, and while part of the joy of listening to a song like “Singata Mystic Queen” from the prior collection was meandering along with it, Samsara Blues Experiment don’t completely lose sight of the journey in favor of the straightforward. Right from its start, Revelation and Mystery sees the four-piece layering guitar effects and infusing their parts with swirls and a spaced-out feel. It’s not that they’ve completely changed their methodology so much as they’ve shifted the balance within their sound. These structural elements were certainly present on Long-Distance Trip, but a cut like the semi-acoustic “Thirsty Moon” shows that Samasara Blues Experiment are able to work within these parameters to grow their songwriting. One gets the sense in listening to opener “Flipside Apocalypse” (which follows a 17-second nameless intro track) that this process is just beginning and that the band are still finding out what they want their sound to be, but that only makes Revelation and Mystery a more immediate, direct experience; the linearity of the album unfolding gradually as the songs move from the straightforward into the more sublimely jammed.

Fast-paced rumbling from the bass of Richard Behrens in the surprisingly punkish beginning of “Flipside Apocalypse” is an immediate clue to the changes the last year have brought about in Samsara Blues Experiment. The mood is more active, less calming and chilled out than last time around, and the guitars of Hans Eiselt and Christian Peters – who also handles vocals – seem to be more concerned with riffing out than stacking layers upon layers, though there’s some of that too, even as later in the song a riff straight out of the biker rock milieu shows up and carries the song through to its end. I don’t know if it’s the result in some change in the band’s songwriting process or just how things happened to come out this time, but the change continues through “Hangin’ on the Wire,” which is genuinely hooky and thoroughly in the realm of heavy rock. A crisp production during the solo section brings to mind some of Queens of the Stone Age’s finer moments, and drummer Thomas Vedder locks in with Behrens’ own excellent fills with a few of his own. Peters, though, emerges at the head of the song. His vocals confident and effected in equal measure, he works quickly to establish the verse and chorus patterns, both worthy of sing-alongs, so that by the end, “Hangin’ on the Wire” feels like its earned its handclaps, and though “Into the Black” starts out more ethereal, with extended solo sections and a long instrumental introduction, the shuffle soon takes hold and it proves to be more boogie than nod.

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German rockers Samsara Blues Experiment impressed with last year’s Long-Distance Trip (review here), and with their demo before that, and live this year as the last band I saw at Roadburn, so it’s not really shocking that their new album, Revelation and Mystery is met with some measure of anticipation. A proven track record that’s held up live goes a long way, and with some of the turns they make sonically on the new full-length, I’m glad to have been looking forward to it.

In a way, I expected the Berlin four-piece to go farther into the improvised-sounding heavy jamming that showed up on some of Long-Distance Trip, but they didn’t, really. If anything, Revelation and Mystery is more straightforward on the whole. Cuts like “Flipside Apocalypse” and the near-burly “Into the Black” have a pointed riffy thrust to them and clear adherence to structure all the way through. The band still jams and offers journeying psychedelia on the closing title-track and the preceding interlude “Zwei Schatten im Schatten,” but even “Outside Insight Blues” is more directed than its eight-minute runtime would lead you to believe.

This makes the album an even more exciting listen. The lineup from Long-Distance Trip has returned — guitarist/vocalist Christian Peters, guitarist Hans Eiselt, bassist Richard Behrens and drummer Thomas Vedder — and their time touring with the likes of Sons of Otis and on stage at festivals like the aforementioned Roadburn and Burg Herzberg has begun to pay off in the confidence with which they approach the surprisingly sunny “Thirsty Moon” and the ultra-memorable “Hangin’ on the Wire,” which is the track I’m lucky enough to be able to premiere on the player below.

I think you’ll find it’s a fitting example of Samsara Blues Experiment‘s heavy rocking side that mixes well with their psych edge. Dig it:

[mp3player width=460 height=120 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=samsara-blues-experiment.xml]

Samsara Blues Experiment‘s Revelation and Mystery is due out Oct. 31 on World in Sound. More info on the release is available at the band’s website and the label’s website. Thanks to Christian Peters for letting me host the track.

German retro rockers Coogan’s Bluff released their second full-length, Magic Bubbles, through World in Sound in January. The single from the album is the track “The Information,” and they made a friendly, down-home kind of video for it that basically involves the band playing in a house while also making lunch.

Standout moments include vocalist Thilo Streubel stealing a bike and bassist Clemens Marasus showing off his package. You’ve been warned:

German heavy psych-outs Samsara Blues Experiment sent over notice that they’re set to begin work on their second album following this year’s hypnotic Long Distance Trip. In addition, they’ll also be at this year’s Roadburn Afterburner and they’ll be touring in March with Sons of Otis. One can only assume massive smoke-laden jams will ensue.

Here’s the news right from the band themselves:

Samsara Blues Experiment will start to record their second album in January 2011. Again there are six tracks to put on tape (okay it’s still a Mac ;-)…). Quite obviously there will be some epic stuff again. People who have met us on our last summer tour through Europe and on this year’s festivals might have an early idea of how the new songs will sound. The blues (in our name) might be given some deeper meaning this one also…

We will tour again in March 2011, this time we will support Sons of Otis on some “well-assorted” shows in Germany and Switzerland. Other gigs are being planned at this very moment and are being updated almost weekly.

Here’s a first bunch of coming shows:

14/01 GER Rostock – Café Momo
04/03 GER Dresden – Groovestation
05/03 GER Halle – Rockstation Hafenstraße *
06/03 GER Berlin – Wild at Heart *
07/03 GER Hamburg – Hafenklang *
08/03 GER Bielefeld – AJZ *
09/03 GER Stuttgart – 1210 *
10/03 SUI Geneva – L´Usine *
11/03 SUI Martigny – Les Caves du Manoir *
12/03 SUI Winterthur – Gaswerk *
09/04 GER Berlin – Burning Earth Festival w/Lonely Kamel, Stonehead and others
17/04 NED Tilburg – Roadburn Festival Afterburner
* w/ Sons of Otis

German psych rockers Samsara Blues Experiment are going to be touring Central Europe with Yawning Man, including a slot at the Stoned from the Underground fest. More info on that at the band’s MySpace, where you can also hear all of their debut full-length, Long-Distance Trip, streaming free of charge (the player is in the “Sounds Like” section — also on Lastfm.com). The above video for “For the Lost Souls” was shot on their US West Coast tour, and it looks like everyone was having a good time.

So that’s nice.

Well, it was a rough week here in the valley. Been sick for pretty much all of it, hits have been down, and I’m generally feeling bitter and out of sorts. A nice conversation with Gozu‘s Marc Gaffney was a well-needed pick-me-up this afternoon, and that interview will be up in a week or two. Beyond that, however, I’m about ready to cover my head with a pillow and move as little as possible for at least the next 24 hours.

That said, I’ll be at Eyehategod tomorrow night in Brooklyn. If you want to catch me, I’ll be the fat guy in sandals dragging around an I.V. loaded with DayQuil. Or maybe just the fat guy in sandals. Hard to tell how these things will pan out. Say hi either way and I promise I’ll do my very best not to be a prick.

If you’re reading, thanks for reading. If not, I hope whatever you’re doing instead is fun too. Enjoy the weekend.

Burning Sea of Green, the sophomore outing from intercontinental troupe Obskuria released through World in Sound, is a two-fold mood piece, and by that I mean that not only does the record evoke a particular atmosphere throughout, but it also requires a certain mindset on the part of the listener to be at its highest potency. The band features members of Peru’s La Ira de Dios and a seemingly shifting cast of German and American contributors, making for a widely varied listen throughout Burning Sea of Green, the vocals of Murielle Stadelmann giving multiple album highlight performances on “Memories of Mysteria,” “Somewhere,” the extended closing title track and a surprise cover of Slayer’s “Black Magic,” presented here as a soulful chuck of garage psychedelia.

Stadelmann is not the only vocalist appearing on Burning Sea of Green, however. Matthias Schäuble appears on “Why?!” “Under the Gallows” (another highlight, if somewhat darker lyrically), “Slow Stone” and “Screaming Like a Whirlwind.” Guitarists Tom Brehm and Chino Burga, bassist Carlos Vidal, organist Sandra Disterhöft and drummer Enrique de Vinatea make up the instrumental core of the band, and together, they bring to the fold a heavily krautrock-inspired sound that isn’t shy about its cosmic elements. The spacey “Why?!” is one of several cuts on Burning Sea of Green that seems to be traveling in a rocket powered by sustained organ notes, and even “Black Magic,” which first appeared on 1983’s Hell Awaits, is reborn as a trippy, Jefferson Airplane-style freakout.

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Above the title on the back side of French mayhem rockers Gunslingers’ second album, Manifesto Zero (World in Sound) is the question, “When a Disc and a Head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the Disc?” Each time I’ve sat and listened through this record, which follows in their catalog the critically successful No More Invention, I’ve puzzled over that question. Not because I think a head can’t be hollow – at least in the sense they mean: “Isn’t it possible you’re a fucking moron?” – but a disc is inherently flat. There’s no room for it to be hollow because there isn’t any space in a disc. Especially “disc,” ending with a  ‘c,’ which in this context implies a compact disc. If a disc had space between its two sides it would be a cylinder.

This is my fucking life. These are the things I obsess over.

At least, while I ruminate on these big questions of life I have the recorded-live freakout of Manifesto Zero to accompany, which in a cold post-modern way is very little comfort and yet somehow gets the job done anyway. The six tracks of the album (at about 31 minutes, we’ll call it a full-length because the marketing doesn’t say otherwise) offer a jangly and jagged garage retroism, bouncing murderously through the first several songs until slamming into the 8:15 of “An Eye for a Knife,” which is mean-man noise for a good couple minutes following some deceptive rock simplicity. The fronting work of guitarist/vocalist Gregory Raimo leads this stylish anti-fashion charge, leaving bassist Matthieu Canaguier and drummer Antoine Hadjioannou to keep up, which they do avec enthousiasme.

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