Mind! are a new spacerock quartet from Algeciras, Spain. Riding in on a wave of rolling chords and motorik beats, Mind! epitomize the traditional spacerock sound, drawing on influences such as Hawkwind and Pink Floyd.
A rush of cosmic noise ushers in the first song, Sundrun Hreyfingarlaus, an instrumental based around a simple but effective chord progression, with various effects and layers of sound building one upon the next till the lead guitar finally takes over, bringing a bit of somewhat belated melody to the sonic textures. Battery Licker is the most overtly Hawkwind styled song on the album, built again on a simple chord progression, but with some cool lead guitar interspersed between the Dave Brock like vocals. Things catch fire on Cucumbers From Mars, to me the real centerpiece of the album: a menacing baseline reminiscent of early Floyd is paired with trippy 1960’s style organ swirling through creepy passages of sound, all building, after almost 9-minutes to a deliciously chaotic conclusion. Magallanes is a dark and spooky desert piece that reminded me a bit of the kind of sound the band Earth have been exploring. It’s unfortunately brief, clocking in at just over 2-minutes. I thought it would have made a nice intro to a longer piece, but it ends all too soon with a quick fade out. The band redeem themselves, however, with the trippy Cosmic Tide, a slow and drifting wave of spacious vibes, dreamy guitar and blissed out vocals. Time to Fly is the longest track on the album at just over 10-minutes. The first half is a pulsing, march-like odyssey, that brought to mind the weird, rocky alien landscapes from the covers of those old sci-fi novels of the 60’s and 70’s. It gives way to a very Floydian turn, reminding me of something perhaps from the Wish You Were Here period, with lush strumming acoustic guitars, lysergic singing and a soaring, Gilmouresque lead guitar. The album concludes with the brief Senallagam. As its title would suggest, it’s basically Magallanes played backwards.
The band has a good vibe going, but at times seems a bit derivative to me. The other thing I felt was that the songs got a bit repetitive at times. Not that the songs sound the same as each other; each one definitely has its own feel, but within the songs, riffs get repeated often, as well as vocal lines. The band write some affective melodies, but I kept waiting for it to change, for perhaps a chorus to come, but it was all verses. These are little nitpicky points, meant not to put down but to encourage. There’s certainly talent here, and I`m sure the band will find its own sound as they develop. Stunde Null is definitely worth a listen, though. Perhaps not a spacerock classic in its own right, but a definite step in the right direction with some cool sonic ideas happening.
For more info, visit http://mindspacerock.bandcamp.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mindspacerock
Reviewed by Jeff Fitzgerald
Late last year Nasoni Records released Earthling Society’s ZodiaK on vinyl, consisting of 2 side long 20+ minute epics, plus a brief 2 minute space jam. The new CD reissue by 4 Zero Records doesn’t include the 2 minute space jam, BUT it does include 4 tracks not included on the vinyl, and the 25+ minute title track has 4 additional minutes to make the “full version”. ZodiaK is the band’s seventh album and features the core trio of Fred Laird on guitars, synths and vocals, Jon Blacow on drums, and Kim Allen on bass.
Ambisonic, the innovative Canadian space prog duo returns with their third release, Manitou, to once again blow your mind. Ambisonic consists of Erik Culp on keyboards, pedals, and guitars and Paul Barry on drums and piano. The music on Manitou represents two musicians operating at the peak of their powers. Complex, riveting rhythms propel lush synthesizers and vintage Moog electronics around in tightly controlled sonic environments where not a single note is wasted. Drawing on not only progressive and space rock as influences, but also on jazz, electronica, and film soundtracks, the duo weave these influences together into seamless, tightly knit compositions. And although the music may have been very challenging for the players to perform, they imbue it with enough top notch songwriting, catchy little pop hooks and intriguing sounds to make it quite accessible to any listener. Although Ambisonic always had a kind of keyboard oriented vibe to it, this outing supposedly has less guitar on it. Maybe I’d have to go back and listen to ARP and their self-titled debut again, but it still sounds like business as usual to me. Not that they’re treading over previous ground. It’s clear that these two musicians really enjoy challenging each other and pushing their sound forward with each release. But there is still a definite and very distinctive quality to their music that makes it uniquely Ambisonic. My favourite tracks on the album are the opener Manitou, with its cool staccato keyboard vamp and High Ideals, with its sumptuously melodic electronics, manic electronica like drum-vibe (played on real drums though!) and psychedelic wah-wah guitars. Other standouts are the funky electro-rock of Buzwah and the spiralling beauty of Slow Wave. But every track on Manitou has something to offer and will surely please any fan of progressive rock, space rock, or electronic music.
Permanent Clear Light are a Finnish trio who I’ve become acquainted with through their numerous contributions to Fruits de Mer Records compilations and their 7″ single on Fruits de Mer released last year. Beyond These Things is their full length debut, employing guitars, bass, Theremin, Mellotron, percussion, violin, cornet, synths, electronics and more, to create an outstanding marriage of Pop-Psych, Prog Rock, and… well… ALL things psychedelic.
Recorded as a series of improvisational structures in the Spring of 2012, this is the first recording that Matt Borghi and Michael Teager have done after a half-decade of working together. With a background in classical and jazz saxophone, Teager brings a wide palette of influences to the music. Listeners will hear aspects of Jan Garbarek, John Coltrane and Dave Liebman that’s juxtaposed over Borghi’s pastoral guitar sounds that have more of their timbral origins in the work of Claude Debussy or Ralph Vaughan-Williams than they do other contemporary ambient guitarists… so the press sheet says and now onto the review.
In 2008, Steve Palmer threw Mooch fans for a loop with the release of 1967 1/2, the first of three albums (followed by 1966 and 1968a) of songs inspired by 1960s psychedelia. In a recent five-favorite-Mooch-albums post I submitted to Steve’s blog, I commented that these three would go together well as a triple album set. The latest Mooch album – Stations Of The Sun – returns to the song format, though this time the inspiration is, as the promo sheet says, 70s Folk/Rock/Progressive territory in the style of bands such as Renaissance. The theme of the album is summer solstice 2013, with the 11 songs covering the pagan wheel of the year: eight festivals (two solstices, two equinoxes and four Celtic cross-festivals), plus two songs for the Oak King and Holly King who symbolically battle every solstice, and a final song covering the whole year.
Computerchemist is headed up by multi-instrumentalist Dave Pearson, an English musician currently residing in Hungary. In 2011 Pearson met Budapest based drummer Zsolt Galántai through Facebook and the two decided to meet and see if any musical magic was possible. Pearson was so impressed with Galántai’s ability to play his music that he came up with the idea of creating Berlin School music with the addition of real drums and guitar, and, as Pearson describes, “strange time signatures to boot”. The time signatures used, very few in 4/4, are the inspiration for the title of these two albums. Pearson set various click tracks, encouraged Galántai to solo, and recorded it all. They ended up with a variety of “sequence-locked” drum sessions, and Pearson feels that Galántai in a way composed each of the tracks on Signatures because the music was built around his drumming. Signatures I and II are fully 70 minutes of music each and separated by what Pearson considers the lighter and darker tracks. So there you have a little insight into how the albums came together.
So those are the “lighter” tracks. Signatures II opens with Strangeness In 13, which has a piano melody that gives it a Gothic flavor, backed by orchestral Melloton-ish keys, beautiful emotive guitar licks and steady drumming. Goodbye, Moszkva Tér is a cool grooving space rocker with fiery guitar soloing throughout. The drums, keys and sequenced patterns jam along steadily while the guitar trips along, and all having to dodge meteor shower space electronics. Floor Zero features a cool and strange combination of symphonic, spaced out Prog and electro-robotic rock, along with ripping cosmic jazz-fusion guitar fills. We’re deep into Prog territory on Commution, with heavy guitar driven rock that sounds like Steve Hackett’s early solo albums, plus a dash of Adrian Belew tossed into the licks. The music is continually shifting gears, transitioning to ominously quiet Gothic piano interludes, tickling-the-ivories jazzy swing segments, and Keith Emerson styled keys, always returning to the main high powered theme. LOTS happening on this track! High intensity Space-Prog is the order of the day on Forgotten Memory, with buzzing and whirring electronic waves, multiple layers of keyboards, and spaced out guitar licks. Smeem starts off as a cool combination of darkly intense bass/drum rhythms and ambient guitar exploration. Then the guitar does a 180 and veers into smoldering Bluesy rocking, soon adding distinctly Rick Wright flavored keys, and now we’re in a Pink Floyd realm with freaky electronics and rhythms like you’ve never heard on a Pink Floyd album. The Needs Of The Many is an eerie but rocking Space-Prog piece that sounds like it could be the soundtrack theme to a sci-fi flick. And, finally, Bongo In 4 is another track with a cosmic Pink Floyd flavor, featuring Space-Blues guitar jamming over a steadily rocking rhythm section and jazzy grooving keys. Later the music veers away from the Floyd style and a violin sound takes over from the guitar for a tug-at-the heartstring melodic passage, backed by robotic keyboard rhythms and rockin’ drumming.
Glowpeople do indeed create music that glows. I have a minor neurological anomaly called synaesthesia. What happens is that stimulating one sensory or cognitive pathway will lead to an involuntary experience in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. In my case, I ‘see’ music in colours. No chemical enhancements required. And let me tell you, when I listen to the music on Glowpeople’s debut album, Things, I see some very beautiful colours. They are like the lights I would imagine illuminating some psychedelic jazz club in the heart of a European city, from long ago. Bright, dazzling colours infused with moody shadows and grey wisps of smoke. It’s both stimulating and calming at the same time.
California based Djam Karet are back with their first all new studio albums since 2005’s Recollection Harvest. AND next year will be the band’s 30th anniversary. These guys have produced a stellar body of work in the past three decades.
A couple years ago I reviewed two CDs by Squeegeed Clean, an Australian Avant-Jazz inspired Psychedelia-in-Space combo led by the duo of Funkmeister G and D.J. Urinal Cake, a couple of rascals whose exploits I’ve been following since I started receiving submissions in the early Aural Innovations days by their band Vocabularinist. Their latest is a 7″ split single with Distant Trains, a solo project, and apparently only the latest of many, from Des Moines, IA based Chuck Hoffman. The single is available on clear vinyl in an edition of only 50.