Freak Mammal finds Psychic Lemon further developing their unique sound, inspired by many sources including classic space rock, music from 1970s Western Africa and the best of modern psych. As ever, the band aimed to create as full a sound as three people can make, without resorting to endless overdubs. The result is a sound that is wide and expansive, but that can still be reproduced live. While the term “psych” is much overused in 2019, there is no question that this is music made to expand your mind and get lost in. The guitar ranges from tranquil melody to urgent noise, in circular layers of delay, loops and fuzz that seem ready to collapse in on themselves. The bass is nimble but heavy, encompassing melodic phrases, distorted riffs and one-off fills. The drums take inspiration from a variety of sources from Tony Allen to Hawkwind, and are in constant conversation with the guitar and bass.
PH succeed once again in defying categorization into any conventional genre. More than ever, their sound has expanded into an unbounded creative space that drifts capriciously between styles without ever committing itself to one school of artistic thought. The records transitions from ominous yet stoic industrial rhythms to a more straightforwardly heavy space, but truly reaches unimaginable heights during its final one-two punch of “M47eria Prima” and “Tachophonia,” which would not sound out of place in a live performance by a more psychedelic, experimental electronic artist.Read the full review by Thomas Hinds at invisibleoranges.com
While the band’s output over the past ten years has varied from epic psychedelic guitar meltdowns à la Earthless to sweeping, reverb-drenched soundscapes, a core of dense rhythm and melody always holds it all together. On VI, Papir show a mastery of all their faces, combining the guitar heroics of their first few records with the more lush sound of last year’s V. In a mere 4 songs, Papir once again refresh tired ears with their unmistakable approach to rock music, leaving the listener blissed rather than bludgeoned.Media/Samples
First, this an eclectic and diverse collection that encompasses and expands upon all genres of instrumental music that the Gateless Gate has created since 2012: progressive rock, psychedelic pop, post-rock, ambient, new age, and Krautrock/kosmische.Media/Samples
Second, as the album cover indicates, the music suggests we take a wide-screen view of the beauty of our home and consider how lucky we are to live here...to live at all on this wonderful, (currently) habitable planet.
"Stealth Chicken", the new album by Kanoi & KRPL and follow up to "Das blutige Samenkorn", again consists of 3 completely improvised tracks (this time even including brass instrumentation on one of them) and delivers about 40 minutes of new, spacey and slightly weird music.Media/Samples
The record consists of four lengthy tracks, each displaying a different aspect of the Kungens Män sound. Opening track ‘Fyrkantig Böjelse’ is very much rooted in krautrock with a classic motorik beat and insistent bassline underpinning eleven minutes of guitar explorations that build from wispy flurries of eastern influenced notes and harmonics into a meatier space rock workout with dense guitar interplay consisting of clouds of high flying notes and squalls of intense pedal powered riffing.Read the full review by Francis Comyn at terrascope.co.uk
“Out of the Ether” kicks off with the metronomic throb of “Dirt In My Mind’s Eye”, setting the stage for the album’s 5 tracks of minimal, droning ambience, overtaken at times by Nickles’ wailing, saxophone skronk; a mixture of the soulful runs of The Stooges’ Steve McKay & the no-wave stabs of James Chance. “Steely Eyed Missile Man” picks up the pace, with a four-on-the-floor drive underneath Provenzano’s guttural basslines. “Bloodborne Hate and Black Book Mass” and side one closer “I Turned To The Mirror” add the industrial menace of Cabaret Voltaire to a locked-in groove and lysergicly introspective lyrics. Album closer “A Whole New Jupiter” takes up all of the LP version’s side two, slingshotting the listener over the event horizon and thru the center of a sonically sculpted black hole, it’s relentless motorik dirge evolving over the course of the track’s 19-minute runtime into an abstract pulse before lurching back into the groove, riding it into the sun.Media/Samples
The opener, ‘The Dura Plane’, gets the album of to a strong start with its slightly off-kilter repeato-rhythms. As you would expect the drums are high in the mix and getting a proper pounding before Skøtt leads us off into a dreamlike mid-section which feels detached and disorientated before hitting the beat again to take it home.Read the full review by Simon at psychinsightmusic.com
Once again the Uppsala multi-instrumentalists combine elements of trogged-out psychedelic rock with a deadly serious Arctic minimalism and weeping modal improvisations that owe more to the outer limits of jazz and burnt-out free music from Japan. It’s connoisseur’s space music, grown-up and grievously honed; outwardly inclined towards the epic but studded with details that reward attention and introspection.
There’s always been a strong undercurrent of sadness animating Bremen’s work, and that existential burden is present and correct on Enter Silence, culminating in the all-out cosmic anguish of ‘Palladium’. Even ‘The Middle Section’, whose ragged chords are nothing if not the sound of optimism and defiance, sounds like it’s navigating some kind of unsayable trauma. But this band has always allowed plenty of room for bonehead slash-and-burn as well: see here especially the Stoogeian/39 Clocks-ish rock’n’roll of ‘Aimless Cruising’ and the pulpy quasi-cinematic tension of ‘Sinister’, or the brilliant ‘Too Cold For Your Eyes’, a blast of voidal motorik that sounds like a cranked-up Clean.
