White Manna "Come Down Safari"

Country: USA
Sub Genre: Psychedelic
Label: Valley King Records (vinyl), Captcha Records (CD, digital,vinyl )
Format: vinyl, CD, digital
Release date: May 6, 2014 (vinyl), August 7, 2014 (CD, digital)
Tracklist: 

1. Deathless Guru - 11:01
2. Hassan -07:31
3. The Sound of One Hand Clapping - 05:54
4. Welcome to Freedom Freeway - 06:15
5. Hexagram of Goo - 03:15
6. Come Down Safari - 07:24

Line-up: 
David Johnson - guitar, vocals
Johnny Webb - bass
Tavan Anderson - drums
Anthony Taibi - guitar
Michael Dieter - guitar

Description/Reviews: 

Come Down Safari is the latest White Manna album. While the first two albums cut right to the chase, maintaining driving tempos from beginning to end, Come Down Safari makes it possible for listeners to join the band in the more intimate experience of psychedelic comedown. The opening track “Deathless Guru” sets the mood, finding the band re-entering the stratosphere and gently floating back to earth. Not just a heady mix of blown-out psych, Come Down Safari showcases these musicians moving in a more experimental direction. Sonic textures are diffuse; atmospheres are saturated. Sounds are wreathed in mists and vapors. Drones and quiet syncopations suggest fall’s rains coming on. Don’t get me wrong: this record still gets loud and heavy. But Come Down Safari makes room for us to hear Dieter’s keyboard patterns as they unfold, weaving us a post-apocalyptic web in which to dwell. 

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Kikagaku Moyo "Mammatus Clouds"

Country: Japan
Sub Genre: Psychedelic, Space Rock
Label:  Sky Lantern Records (digital, cassette), Captcha Records (USA, vinyl), Cardinal Fuzz (UK/EU, vinyl & CD)
Format: CD, digital, vinyl, cassette
Release dates: April 4, 2014 (digital), April 30, 2014 (cassette), July 2014 (UK/EU, vinyl & CD), September 2, 2014 (USA, vinyl)
Tracklist: 

1. Pond (27:50)

2. Never Know (16:49)

3. There Is No Other Place (3:18)

Line-up: 
Tomo Katsurada - Vocal, Guitar
Daoud Popal - Guitar
Ryu Kurosawa - Sitar
Kotsu Guy - Bass
Go Kurosawa - Drums, Voice

Description/Reviews: 

Mammatus clouds are crazy-weird udder formations that appear during storms and 幾何学模様 (Kikagaku Moyo) translates as geometric patterns, something these “free music” aficionados claim to see flashing across their eyelids during mammoth jam sessions. The band’s recent Forest Of Lost Children is, naturally therefore, beyond intense, so it’s pleasant to hark back to more meditative times here. There are only three tracks during Mammatus Clouds’ patient running time and they’re all quite different.
The entire A-side is dedicated to “Pond”, a 27-minute sitar-fired super-jam that gently wends its way from ebbing cosmic shimmer to pulsing ritual and Eastern drone. Locking on with 10 minutes to go, the track launches into fuel-injected wormhole exploration only to exit in the tranquil third eye of some psychedelic storm. You’re ultimately jarred from this reverie by rapturous applause to close, serving to underline the one-take epicness of what went before.
On the flip, sitar player Ryu bends and bubbles his strings for 16 minutes on “Never Know”, an acidic hiss creeping into the mix that fills the ears with serpentine suggestion before descending into white noise and unintelligible muttering. Side B then closes with “There Is No Other Place” – much more than the 3-minute tag-on it may first appear. That mumbling vocal grows in stature, a gothic gloom developing amidst the Birds Of Maya-style static. Rampant pedal abuse follows to sandblast the ears and the strutting rocker it becomes a real face-melter.(sicmagazine.net)

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