OSC - Dead Man In Space

Lovingly piched from Ian Abrahams’ Spacerock Reviews: In the first category, since anything by them is always a treat to listen to, is a three-track limited edition vinyl of Oresund Space Collective’s Dead Man In Space release from late 2009 that OSC’s Scott Heller had very kindly sent me a CDR of for review.

In true OSC tradition, two tracks are long, improvisational and atmospheric numbers, very laid-back in a way and which the band suggests harkens back to their early material. “We enter the into the realm of jazz space rock with the track ‘Space Jazz Jam 2.2′ which features Anders on saxophone”,  they note, whilst the other, ‘High Pilots’ they describe as “taken from the last jam of the studio session and is a very dynamic and moody piece of music.” The final track is a brief spoken word piece, but the two main tracks are both a taster for a future full CD release of this jam session – always OSC’s favored and it has to be said, highly successful, methodology of working – but the limited edition vinyl run is also a tester for future vinyl releases.

Continue reading:  Spacerock Reviews: Oresund Space Collective – Dead Man In Space.

Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen...

Lovingly pinched from Pitchfork: “There’s a hole in my arm where all the money goes,” moans Jason Pierce at the start of “Cop Shoot Cop…”, the 17-minute closer of Spiritualized’s third album and lone masterpiece, Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space. His bedraggled voice drips through the words. He’s an addict, but it’s as if he realizes none of it mattered, anyway — there’s no salvation, no redemption, only cold life and sudden death. One cop lives to kill another cop. Or a junkie survives only long enough to shoot up again. The world keeps turning. Just like in his opening line, he quotes John Prine: “Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose.”

Since the 1997 release of Ladies and Gentlemen, Spiritualized have recorded three LPs, a handful of singles and EPs, and two double-disc sets called Complete Works. And the noise-gospel rock sprees that followed Ladies and Gentlemen cemented Spiritualized’s reputation as one of rock ‘n’ roll’s best live spectacles.

Continue reading: Pitchfork: Album Reviews: Spiritualized: Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space [Collector's Editon].

Highway Child - Sanctuary Come

Lovingly pinched from The Obelisk: With the early fuzz tone of the guitar and the insistent rhythm, it’s uncanny how much “In the End” from Highway Child’s second album through Elektrohasch Schallplatten, Sanctuary Come, sounds like “Hey Bulldog” from The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. With the McCartneyist piano bounce (transposed onto an organ, interestingly) of the memorable “When the Sun Burned the Ground” following immediately, the record very quickly becomes a mystery tour of the most magical variety, offering moments of Lennon, McCartney and Lennon/  McCartney as filtered through retro tones and psychedelic tropes that, while sounding vintage, are actually modern innovations to the genre.

“When the Sun Burned the Ground” might be the highlight of Sanctuary Come, but even if it is, it’s only because of the function it serves in the side one medley of songs. Opener “Red, White and Blue” (gone before you know it, so smoothly does it lead into the next song), “In the End,” “When the Sun Burned the Ground” and the title track take the Abbey Road approach and bleed into one another while at the same time introducing vastly different musical ideas. The title track takes the hopping piano notes already used and puts them atop a droning fuzz riff with swirling noises to accompany. Only the silence that follows “Sanctuary Come” lets you know you’re into another phase of the record.

Continue reading: The Obelisk » Blog Archive » All Highway Child Need is Love.
(Very special thanks to JJ Koczan for the kind permission)

Bardo Pond - Bufo Alvarius

Praise for Bardo Pond’s Bufo Alvarius from San Francisco’s Aquarius Records: One of our favorite records from this Philly drone / drug / psych ensemble, available again on lp, this time with a bonus track, and a cd version bundled with the lp…

Bufo Alvarius, originally released in 1995, was Bardo Pond’s first, and some (us for example) might argue, still their best, completely tripped out, hazy sonic sedatives administered in the form of blown out space psych bliss.
The guitars not so much riffing as expelling thick undulating sheets of warped fuzz, the drums, loose and propulsive, driving the songs, but not rigidily, the flute fluttering throughout, like melodic flecks floating in a swirling sonic sea of bongwater. The band do occasionally come together, and briefly sound like a super loose spaced out slowed down Stooges, but even then they stumble and meander, lurch and lumber, staggering druggily through clouds of spectrascopic sonic splutter, eventually exploding into full on effects drenched meltdown, managing to sound heavy and dense and trippy, but still totally dreamy and mesmerizing.

A few tracks get all jangly, and the band sound like Pavement covering Spacemen 3, while extremely high, the female vocals are doused in reverb and echo and delay, and they drift ghostlike through woozy whirling fields of tangled psychedelic guitar freakout. The whole band seemingly on the verge of total collapse, this record a document of a group teetering gloriously on the edge. When the band rock, they rock hard, and sound a bit like Loop, albeit a whole lot more loose.
That same sort of psychedelic hypno-drug-rock, but in the hands of Bardo Pond, those moments never last. Instead, what could be a driving super heavy rocker, tends again, to crumble, and collapse, into a stumbling druggy psych dirge of swirling sweet crooned female vox, pounding off kilter drumming, a tangled knot of corruscated guitar buzz, everything wrapped in a thick cloak of grimy, gritty fuzzed out whirr.

It really doesn’t get heavier, or trippier or more psychedelic than this.

Take the nearly half hour track ‘Amen’, a single track, but essentially an entire bonus record, a fantastically OUT ambient sprawl of impressionistic psychguitar, bleary free noise, and druggy dreamlike ambience, the sort of blown out abstraction most current bands couldn’t pull off if their lives depended on it.

This recent reissue tacks on a bonus track, the groovy woozy jangly ‘Fixed’, that begins all strummy and soft focus, before the drums kick in hard, the vocals serene and sweet, backed up by a wall of churning psychedelia, softy strummed clean guitar, and of course haunting spectral flute. So good. Way recommended, easily one of our all time favorite modern psych records, and to all those folks into the new breed of psychedelic space rock: White Hills, the Heads, Gnod, Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged… You NEED this! 

Dead Meadow have just announced the details surrounding their upcoming record release party / film premiere for their upcoming new album and original film, The Three Kings, out on March 23rd. Taking place at the historic location of Hollywood Forever Cemetery on March 25th, the event will include the premiere of the Dead Meadow movie The Three Kings as well as a live performance by the band. The night will include an open bar, free admission and giveaways, special DJ appearances, and a yet to be determined opening band. There will also be an art showing of low-brow art scene artist Charles Wish. Charles has been a major contributor to Dead Meadow art including an animated sequence in The Three Kings and will be showing pieces from the movie.

In addition, Dead Meadow have also announced that any fan who orders an advance copy of The Three Kings will be guaranteed a spot on the list for the band’s film premiere in Los Angeles. Just email the band at contact@deadmeadow.com and write “get into the gig” as the subject.

JJ Koczan of The Obelisk recently conducted an interview with Dead Meadow’s Steve Kille about the release of The Three Kings.  A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

JJ Koczan: Can you explain the story of Three Kings?

Steve Kille: “There were so many ideas when we started with it, and then it’s come together where it’s basically these character roaming throughout the whole storyline, and you don’t know exactly what’s going on with them, and they’re just watching this whole thing unfold. Meanwhile, in the individual stories, both me, our guitar player and our drummer, we each have mini-adventures that lead us to the same place. In those mini-adventures, we’re tempted by this other side, the devil’s trying its hand to convince you to go one way or the other, and in the end we all meet at one place and basically it’s a moral challenge.”

JJ Koczan: How did it all develop? Does it capture the initial ideas you had going back?

Steve Kille: “Initially we always had, I guess even in the first few times we did music videos and we got into more visual media as a band, we’ve always been fans of ‘70s horror films. Really into the old Hammer films — especially me and the guitar player, since day one. Even the second album, the album cover — no one’s ever mentioned this — was kind of a throwback to 1970s cult films. And we always tried to incorporate that spookiness into the videos. It never really worked out as well, mainly because we never worked with people that could do things without a budget. It was always limited. When we finally were able to do this project, some of the ideas we had early on — everything from swamp monsters to spooky clowns and all this stuff that’s basically just ridiculous — is stuff we thought would be funny to interject visual representations of some of the aspects of our music.

We never had the budget to until now, and so we were able to pull some of these ideas that have been sitting around for a while. Finally, we can have the crazy monster from the ocean, and we do (laughs). You’ll see it in the film. It’s so funny, but in a sense, I feel it’s funny to talk about this stuff since it’s so different. When you’re making music as a band, you take it all so seriously. Sometimes I think bands take it too seriously. But I think when you’re doing the visual, what better way in being a band, to throw all the stuff you’d want to do if you were an actor but you can’t because you’re too embarrassed to? But with the music video, sure, you can have the spaceship come down and blow away Godzilla while you’re playing guitar. There’s a little bit of leeway with that, and I think it’s good to blur that. Hopefully, at least people that are fans of the band, will get that it’s tongue-in-cheek, but you’re supposed to enjoy it and have fun. There’s no other way as a band you can pull off that level of comedy without making a Weird Al record.”

Continue reading: Dead Meadow Interview with Steve Kille: Long Live the Three Kings

‘Babbling Flower’ was recorded live during the Three Kings performances. Dead Meadow will be giving away a total of 4 exclusive tracks, one each week for the next 4 weeks leading up to the release of Three Kings (out March 23 on Xemu Records).

White Hills - White Hills

Lovingly pinched from The Quietus: Twenty-first Century space rock juggernauts White Hills‘ first blip on the radar, outside of their native New York, probably came in 2005 when Julian Cope, in his guise of tastemaker to the tuned in and turned on, started bigging them up on his rather marvellous Head Heritage website, and then issued their debut mini-album, They’ve Got Blood Like We’ve Got Blood, as a limited edition of one hundred CD-R’s on his own label, the charmingly named Fuck Off and Di (yes, the people’s princess does appear on the logo).

White Hills played their first UK show the following year, opening for the Arch-Drude at London’s Koko, and their glam-tinged fusion of Stooges, Hawkwind and Can has seen them joining the likes of Comets on Fire and Sunburned Hand of the Man in moving, thanks to Cope’s initial patronage, from beyond the pale weird beard obscurity to, if not quite household name status, then certainly the standing of Heavy Cult Figures of some repute. And if Comets and Sunburned now enjoy notoriety far beyond Cope’s circle of heads, black sheep and assorted fellow travellers, then White Hills’ new album sees them ready to make that same advance themselves, possibly even catapulting them directly to the forefront of the contemporary psych-rock scene.

White Hills may well be the band’s fourth album, though it’s hard to say, their discography naturally being a labyrinth of rumoured and rare releases on tiny labels, collaborations and split singles, cryptic re-packagings, CDs that come encased in hand-carved wooden boxes and limited editions that barely stretch into double figures. What is certain is that the band regards it as a new beginning, a step up to the next level and a creative rebirth, with some justification. Their first full recording for Thrill Jockey, it should be their most widely available release yet, and sees founder members Dave W (vocals, guitar) and the divine Ms Ego Sensation (bass) joined by Oneida drummer Kid Millions, who left everyone who caught that band’s awesome UK dates last year open-mouthed at his stamina and precision behind the kit.

Continue reading: The Quietus | Reviews | White Hills.

Loop - Fade Out

For years, Loop have been a favorite of in-the-know music nerds, whose Spacemen 3 collection is most likely rivaled by their Loop collection, and basically, to love one, is indeed to love the other. You like thick looped guitars, blown out distorted buzz, krautrocky rhythms, song structures that are simple, cyclical, repetitive, hypnotic, guitars dripping with effects, vocals drawled lazily and buried in the mix, everything hazy and washed out and bleary eyed and druggy. Wait, were we talking about Loop or Spacemen 3? Exactly. The main difference to our ears, was that Loop always seemed to rock way harder. The Spacemen would often flutter off in tripped out ambient flights of fancy, dropping the drums completely, letting the guitar pulse and throb, the vocals drifting ethereally over the top. And sure, Loop were capable of that too, but seemed to hew closer to a more driving sound, the drums much more integral to their overall vibe.

The sound of Loop was equal parts krautrock and space rock, and their name was definitely referenced their sound. Loop mainman Hampson would even go on to form Main, a more tranquil guitar loop based outfit, whose obsession with texture and loops absolutely informed all of the Loop recordings. The guitars were thick, wreathed in distortion, delay, reverb, doused in effects, that not only altered their timbre, and their tone, but also often made the guitars sound backwards, creating woozy of kilter jams that seemed to slowly and subtly shift and change shapes before our very ears. The vocals weary and washed out, the drums skeletal and simple, but all fused into totally tripped out, drugged out, kraut-infused space rock bliss.

Fade Out was record number two for Loop, and found the band making a definite move forward in terms of production and sound, and an obvious shift away fro a sound they shared with countrymen Spacemen 3. The sound on Fade Out is much heavier, and way louder, the guitars sharper and more jagged, the bass more present, the vocals way more prominent, the sound immediately less druggy and washed out and more rocking. ‘Black Sun’ is a propulsive slab of spaced out garage-y krautrock, the guitars ringing out, the second guitar a buzzing over the top, the drums busy and powerful, the whole thing still wreathed in effects, but now the murk had been replaced with something much more effulgent, a strange burnished glow, suffusing the sound, less like laying in darkness and watching colors swirl and shimmer, and more like staring directly into the sun. ‘This Is Where You End’ continues on in the same vein, with gruff almost growled vocals, over that distinctive looped guitar figure, with multiple guitars offering up extra melody and texture.

‘Fever Knife’ stands out as it slows things way down, and the guitars are muted, not quite as sharp, with plenty of squiggly fun house mirror guitar melodies intertwined with that main riff, the tempo, a head nodding soporific groove, definitely reaching back a bit to the sound of Heaven’s End. But then comes ‘Torched’ with a incendiary guitar sound so loud and in the red, it threatens to blow your speakers, dwarfing the drums and bass in the background, churning and soaring, white hot and blown out big time.
The title track is another slowed down druggy dirge, the main riff lumbering woozily along side a steady simple beat, haunting processed vocals, and chunks of extra guitar buzz, the whole thing downright doomy. The last three tracks are gorgeous squalls of druggy throb and crumbling guitar buzz, the record finishing up with a short stretch of shimmering ambient drift. SO GREAT!!

The deluxe reissue of Fade Out not only comes in a super spiffy full color mini lp style gatefold sleeve, with printed inner sleeves, it also comes with a whole bonus disc, featuring a whole mess of extra stuff, alternate mixes of three tracks on the record, an awesome demo version of “This Is Where You End”, the Peel Sessions from the Fade Out era, and most exciting of all a series of Fade Out Guitar Loops, from shimmering high end buzz, to whirring smears of low end rumble, definitely hinting at Hampson’s post-Loop outfit Main.

SO TOTALLY AND UTTERLY RECOMMENDED. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL! And for recent converts to the world of druggy space rock, anyone who has been digging local droney drug rockers Wooden Shjips (and we know there are LOTS of you out there), will definitely fall in love with Loop!!

Samsara Blues Experiment - Long Distance Trip

Lovingly pinched from The Obelisk: I can’t figure out why none of the myriad stoner indies out there has jumped on Berlin’s heavy psych rockers Samsara Blues Experiment. The German four-piece have recorded their first full-length, Long-Distance Trip, and sent it over for some preview-type listening, and especially coming off the heels of their two-song demo — which itself was nothing to scoff at — it’s got the kind of trance inducing stoner feel that one would think labels would be all over. Tee Pee? MeteorCity? Hell, even Elektrohasch (although that one might even be too obvious)? These guys toured the West Coast of the US on their own dime! Far worse has been signed for far less. Won’t someone give a quality band a home?

The two tracks from the demo, “Singata Mystic Queen” and “Double Freedom” show up here, the latter closing the album with a stunning 22-minute sprawl and the former serving as the opening movement. Samsara Blues Experiment, like Los Sounds de Krauts-era Colour Haze before them, are just beginning to explore where they can go with their jams, utilizing both heavy riffing and mellow noodling to establish a flow both within each track and one to the next.

Continue reading:  Pack Your Bags and Journey with Samsara Blues Experiment’s Long-Distance Trip | The Obelisk.
(Very special thanks to JJ Koczan for his kind permission)

Earthless - Live at Roadburn

Lovingly pinched from StonerRock.com: The trick of free-flowing instrumental jams is keeping it interesting for long stretches of time. If there’s a group currently out there that knows this better than Earthless, I’d like to know who it is. From my vantage point, Earthless is the cream of the psychedelic rock crop, and while that opinion was solidified well before I heard Live at Roadburn, the San Diego-based band’s latest reinforced that feeling tenfold.

This two CD/LP release, recorded live and without any overdubs at this year’s (2009 -ed) prestigious Roadburn Festival (You don’t know about this? What are you, dense?), may take awhile to get going, but once it does, the band’s impossible to stop.

Continue reading:  StonerRock.com – Earthless – Live at Roadburn.
Please click HERE for the audio stream of Earthless – Live at Roadburn.