TFNRSH - Book of Circles (2025)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Jan 2025
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

This album is so easy to just fall into that it's acutely hard to review it. The basics are that TFNRSH are an entirely instrumental German psychedelic rock band who hail from Tübingen. That name is a short version of "tiefenrausch", which means "deep noise", but they play highly accessible psych on this, their second album. Their first was self-titled and came out in 2023. Across both, they write long pieces of music, two of the four tracks here over eleven minutes and the shortest over seven and a half. I've listened to this maybe a dozen times now and it encompasses me every time until I realise I haven't written any notes and have to start over again, not that that's a hardship.

My favourite track is the opener, Zemestån, which features a simple but effective build. It finds its mood quickly with synths then adds a simple echoing riff. The drums join the fray a minute into the piece but the riff doesn't expand for another thirty seconds and it always catches me out with its patience because I'm waiting for it every time. It's a glorious build, going full crunch two minutes in and milking that groove. There is a drop back at the four minute mark but that's also when the drums start to roll and the guitar gets jaunty. The patience of TFNRSH is palpable because this is all about groove. The solo doesn't show up until seven minutes in and even then takes a while to truly shift.

WRZL is more experimental, with an opening that's hard stoner rock but with space noises in the background and leaping into the foreground too. Then it mellows out for a while with a delightful liquid guitar from Sasan Bahreini. He gets a fantastic solo in the second half. He's the only name I see credited on guitar, but the closer, Ammoglÿd, which is much more mellow throughout, plays in like the intertwining of two melodious guitars. They're initially backed by rain with an occasional contribution from Stefan Wettengl's bass. Drummer Julius Watzl gets a break for almost half the piece.

That leaves the third and longest track, Zorn, which is my least favourite of the four, in part because it's even more patient than everything else, taking a long while to get anywhere. Initially, it's a slow set of peaceful synth drones behind a long spoken word section. It's in German, so I have no idea what's being said for four or five minutes. At least Watzl is there to provide a quirky beat that's a single thread of interest. Maybe if I understood the narration it would be stronger, but it feels like the least substantial piece even without factoring that in.

Now, when it does kick in, almost at the five minute mark, it kicks in with emphasis. That's surely the most vicious guitar yet and it aches to cut through something. After a further ninety seconds, it drops into something more akin to Zemestån but with a more playful and less regimented vibe, so there's definitely plenty in the piece to enjoy but we have to wait for the narrator to finish his spiel before we can get to it. It's the only part of this album that I feel warrants a fast forwarding through, even though I haven't done that yet. The drums are enough to keep me, I guess.

By the way, while the band is based in Germany, song titles like Zemestån and Ammoglÿd appear to be Latgalian, which is a Latvian language. I don't know if any or all of the band members moved from Latvia to Germany or not, but those titles mean Earthquake and Environment respectively. It's ironic, I guess, that they be my favourite two tracks, given that there's no language anywhere in them except the titles. Maybe Zorn means something in Latgalian. Maybe it doesn't.

Any which way, this is a strong and immersive album. I don't know that it does anything unusual or particularly noteworthy. It's just thoroughly enjoyable and I could easily listen to it another dozen times. However, I need to move onto other albums, so I'll have to leave it for now but I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for a third album from TFNRSH in a couple of years time.

Terry Draper - Infinity (2025)

Country: Canada
Style: Psychedelic Pop
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Jan 2025
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Wikipedia

If you don't know the name, Terry Draper was the drummer in the Canadian psychedelic pop band Klaatu, who released five studio albums in the late seventies and early eighties but are probably best remembered today for Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, famously covered by, of all people, the Carpenters. Since they split up, he's put out a lot of solo albums, at least one per year since 2016 until now. I gather that they tend to come out right before Christmas but this one that was aimed for last Christmas is a little late because of illness.

I also gather that while it isn't entirely new material, it isn't a typical set of re-recordings of hits from yesteryear. Some of it is indeed brand new, written and recorded for this album, but some of it's Draper revisiting old demos that have sat around for a while and then updating some of them with a new spark of creativity. Mostly, I don't know which is which, which says something about the consistency of his material, but The Best Blues, my highlight from a first listen, was written in 1976 and the closer, The Sea, goes back to 1973. In other words, not all this is new to Draper but it's new to us.

Klaatu were a psychedelic pop band who crossed the boundary into progressive rock and it's clear from moment one that Draper has continued in the same vein. There's a psychedelic pop flavour to the opening title track, almost a Strawberry Alarm Clock vibe once it gets past its atmospheric prog intro, but with a side of Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles that was also so prevalent with Klaatu. The rest of the album, which fills a generous hour with fifteen tracks, never drifts too far away from it. It Must Be the Weather is right there.

The heaviest song is probably Leavin Day, which starts out with gritty guitar like it always wanted to be a rock song and that's the tone they use. Of course, it's entirely appropriate, because it's no bubblegum pop song about a happy faily move to a dream house; it's a breakup song and that's a gimme topic for rock music. There's rock guitar on Teacher Teacher, which is clearly rock over pop, even though it's light and even trawls in Beethoven's Ode to Joy. It's Your Love is old time rock 'n' roll with adornments. Draper tries a little for an Elvis approach but not too much.

Most of the rest of the album sits in between those two not particularly distant extremes. There are singer songwriter songs here, not least the ballad Brother of Mine, which leads in with piano and voice and is anchored so firmly in the seventies that this is surely another old demo revisited. There's plenty of that on I Close My Eyes too, but with added orchestration. It's halfway between Cat Stevens and the Alan Parsons Project. Talking of influences and the Beatles always being high on that list, Last Chance to Disagree is a story song that sounds like Ringo Starr, unusually because Draper tends to be closer to Paul McCartney's vibe.

Even within a relatively narrow framework, Draper brings in some diverse elements. (How Do You) Make Love Stay almost has an artificial hip hop beat to it, unusual for a drummer. The Best Blues is psychedelic blues pop but it has lovely touches all over it, saxophone here, organ there and plenty of fuzz on the guitar to trawl in some very light stoner rock. The most unusual song here, though, is Ubuntu, which has an interesting ethnic opening. I know this African word because I'm writing this on a computer running Ubuntu Maté rather than Windows. As you might imagine, there are ethnic African moments all over this one, not least in the African chorus, but some of it sounds Jamaican too, which is less expected.

The other song I'll happily call out as a highlight is one that's dug its way into my head, much to my surprise. I fell for the groove in The Best Blues immediately and then appreciated its extra depths, but Dance the Dance got me before I realised it. I liked it, but this is an easy album to like. I didn't initially like it in the way I'd expect for a highlight, but I found myself singing it while I was writing film reviews, which surprised me until I realised that the more I play it, the better it gets. It has an old time feel to it, its lyrics cleverly talking about not just one dance but many of them, the music hinting at them as it goes until it ends up with carnival music. It's a deceptively simple song with a lot of depth.

So that's my first Terry Draper album. I've heard his work before in Klaatu, but never solo before. He's not a one man band, as there are apparently seventeen guest musicians here, many of them fellow alumni of Klaatu, but I have no idea who does what. I figure Draper does the majority of it, writing the songs and bringing different people in where he feels like they'd fit. There are lots of textures here that are easy to gloss over on a first listen but which gradually emerge on repeats, making it a rich album to get to know over time. And hey, if this is your thing, Draper has a notably deep back catalogue to explore.

Sotomonte - Decadence & Renaissance (2025)

Country: Spain
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 21 Oct 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

When I found Sotomonte, I was actually looking for Spanish language music, because I've found a few gems in end of year lists. However, while Sotomonte are indeed Spanish, hailing from Bilbao, the largest city in Basque country, they sing in English and their overt influences seem English or American. This is their second album of psychedelic rock and a Spanish language website I should read more from (in translation) lists it as the Best National Record of 2024. That website is called La Habitación 235. This list tells me that Spain might produce as much psych as Portugal, but I've only reviewed one of the top twenty bands before, Moura and then not for this album.

I liked this on a first listen, though the opener didn't particularly grab me, feeling over-repetitive. Ironically, it's titled The Nothing. It grew on a second listen, as did the whole album, and I can see myself spending a lot of time with this one, not just here in the office but elsewhere too. This may well play incredibly well on headphones in a dark room, where I can truly lose myself in it. Much of it seems to swirl to me, as if it's written in circles like a musical rotoscope. Gambit, the second song and the one that absolutely captured me, does that often, especially during the heavy jam within its second half. Much of What a Game to Play feels precisely that way too.

One of the joys of Gambit and, to a lesser degree, The Nothing, is that I can't place the pieces that Sotomonte used to construct it. There are moments that feel familiar and the result is obviously a folky psychedelia with heaviness added at points in a way that American proto-metal bands did in the early seventies, but only when the song needs it. It was The Beauty of Tomorrow where I heard clearer influences, as it unfolds like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull singing for the Grateful Dead. That combination of English and American influences may be why it's so elusive.

The fourth song may be called Blind Faith, but it doesn't feel like them. I heard some Bob Dylan in the vocals and chaotic west coast psych behind them. I love how chaotic these songs seem to get, because they aren't. The musicians, all six of them, are doing very deliberate things to interact in very deliberate ways. It's not chaos, but it can feel that way because it's so busy and what they're doing is unusual. It's harder to subconsciously deconstruct these songs and much easier to just let them wash over us.

If Blind Faith feels American, Montecristo/The Riddle feels English. It's almost John Lennon doing a guest slot on a Tyrannosaurus Rex song. Marc Bolan is all over this album, but ironically the song that most fits his early psychedelic style doesn't sound remotely like him singing. There are four musicians credited for vocals, all of which also play at least one other instrument, so I don't know who sings lead, but the names are all Spanish so I have no idea where at least one of them picked up a tinge of Liverpudlian accent. Maybe they listen to a lot of the Beatles.

I had no intention of running through these songs in order, but it's worked out like that. My Cross to Bear showcases some glorious seventies organ and the heavier aspect that manifests here and there coalesces into a Mountain vibe. Little Vilma gets all jiggy with it, literally, incorporating an obvious folk dance section that doesn't sound like it's played on a regular acoustic guitar, more of a mandolin. I can't resist the musical circles of What a Game to Play, almost mathematical in the Philip Glass fashion but drenched in folky psychedelia and with Wishbone Ash transitions. An outro, The Everything, as a bookend to The Nothing that kicked the album off, is over too quickly.

I liked this on a first listen but I liked it more on a second and loved it by the third. I have a feeling it's only going to get better and better with each further listen. That makes it accessible but deep and I'm still trying to figure out some of what they're doing after five or six listens. It's already an old friend and I'm pretty sure it's going to remain one for a long time. I only gave out a handful of 9/10s in 2024, albeit partly because I lost a good chunk of the year, but this deserves another one. It's going to be hard to move onto another album but, if I ever manage it, there's one preceding it, which is From Prayer to the Battlefield, released in 2021.

Der Neue Planet - Schwerkraft für Anfänger (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Prog Archives | YouTube

This third album from Cologne's Der Neue Planet came to me as stoner rock, which is certainly one element of its sound, but it reaches a long way beyond it. The titles mostly suggest space rock, an obvious element from the opening synth drone. However, there's also plenty of post-rock in play, along with prog, psych, krautrock and other genres. At points, there are hints of surf music and a few soft backdrops that remind of lounge, for harder sounds in the foreground to contrast with.

I should explain those titles, because they're all in German, this being entirely instrumental music with no lyrics. The album title translates to Gravity for Beginners, which suggests that we're in the presence of those who might live without it but are coming to visit. That's not a bad way to look at the music within it.

The unwieldy Unendlicher Unwahrscheinlichkeitsdrive translates to Infinite Improbability Drive, a device in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which suggests that this track can and absolutely should go absolutely everywhere. It doesn't, perhaps inevitably, but it does go to a lot of different places. Instabile Weiße Zwerge meaning Unstable White Dwarfs, which is ironic as this piece has a section that's as close to traditional classic rock as anything else here. Galaktisch. Praktisch. Gut. or Galactic. Practical. Good. is less obvious in its intent, but it's a positive piece.

Phobos and Deimos, of course, are the moons of Mars, but they're brief interludes here that serve no other purpose because they're almost empty. If you listen to them in isolation you'll wonder as to where they were. Alpha Ursae Minoris is the star usually known as Polaris, the Pole Star or the North Star, a particularly useful star in navigation, at least in the northern hemisphere. That may suggest that it's the guide to this album, a notion backed up by the fact that it's at the very heart of it, being track four of seven, and the fact that it's the longest piece here at almost ten minutes. Does everything here appear in this one in microcosm? No, I don't think so, but it does seem to try.

That just leaves Lirum Larum Lapidarium, which isn't entirely Latin. A lapidarium is a repository of stones, usually with historical meaning, but I have no idea what the rest of the title means. Maybe that's why it's the most experimental piece here, starting out with soft, resonant acoustic guitar but ending as pure krautrock. All in all, these tracks make for quite the journey, but it isn't merely one journey, as so many psychedelic rock albums are, with each track continuing in the same vein as the rest; these are each individual pieces of music with individual goals, tones and moods.

While Unendlicher Unwahrscheinlichkeitsdrive ought to be the most varied, it may need to battle Alpha Ursae Minoris for that crown and everything else except the interludes might want a word too. It has the benefit of coming first to nail its claim into our skulls, though, and it's the one that delves into surf pop and soft psychedelia before finding some heavier stoner rock. Even though it plays light at points, it's Instabile Weiße Zwerge that feels like light is a motif. Sure, it builds too, as all of these songs do to various degrees, moving from soft to heavy or at least heavier, but it's positive in nature, as if these white dwarfs are still delivering light, however inconsistently.

Alpha Ursae Minoris takes that and runs with it. This is the one with the lounge-like backdrop for the pulsing bass and jagged riffs to dance all over. It's a delightful contrast, as if liquid is meeting rock, perhaps for the first time. Of course, the rock abides, however playful it gets and it gets very playful over nine minutes and change. Galaktisch. Praktisch. Gut. may well be my favourite piece of all, once again lighter early and heavier late, but even more so, reminding of west African highlife early and finding a sassy seventies hard rock groove in the second half.

There are many grooves on Lirum Larum Lapidarium, from the soft opening through arguably the most overt stoner rock, albeit with funky breaks, to the krautrock towards the end. It's maybe the least consistent in how it shifts between grooves, some of them layering tastily but others feeling more jagged and less effective. Sure, this stoner rock groove benefits from that keyboard groove being played over it, but that groove shifts to another without warning and we're taken aback.

I haven't heard Der Neue Planet before, but they have two prior albums out, Magrathea Erwacht, another Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy nod, and Area Fifty-Fun, from 2018 and 2022 respectively. It's abidingly clear that I should seek those out sharpish.

Delving - All Paths Diverge (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 23 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Delving is only a band when playing live. In the studio, it's one man, Nicholas DiSalvo, who's best known for being the guitarist and vocalist in the psychedelic/stoner rockers Elder, who hail from Fairhaven, Massachusetts but are currently based in Berlin, the one in Germany not the many in the States. This is a side project of his to find a home for the many song fragments and ideas that he generates over time, being "an almost obsessive songwriter, working on music every day". The first Delving album was a product of the pandemic, collating material created before it, but this follow-up is work that originated since then.

He wrote everything and performed almost everything, the only other musical contributions that get a credit being Fabien de Meno on some keyboards (Rhodes and upright piano) and his Elder colleague Michael Risberg providing "additional guitar ambience" on one track, Zodiak. If all that suggests that this might be a very Elder-sounding release, that's only true if we consider how that band has changed over the past couple of decades. They used to be a stoner metal band, but they softened up considerably when they recorded The Gold & Silver Sessions in 2019 to sound more like a prog/psych band who veer often into krautrock and they've mostly stayed there since, on Omens and Innate Passage.

Certainly, for all the guitar vehemence in the second half of Chain of Mind or early in Zodiak, this is primarily driven by the keyboards and that's often all there is. Just check out the funky start to New Meridian to see that. This track is almost world music filtered through krautrock, the core of it reminding of Jamaican steel drums, of all things, but with an electronic beat layered over the top and building keyboard layers. It evolves, of course, but the keyboards continue to lead the way, even when bass and drums arrive to take major parts. It's one of my favourite pieces of music here and very possibly the top of the list.

It's also entirely instrumental because DiSalvo never uses his voice and I'm not upset about that. I don't dislike his vocals for Elder, but I get so immersed in their long instrumental sections that I'm never particularly happy when he opens his mouth to remind me that I'm listening to a song rather than floating peacefully in the spaces between the stars enjoying the distant scenery. With vocals completely absent here, I remain blissfully immersed throughout, only brought out of it after an hour and two minutes when silence takes over if I haven't got the album on loop.

And immersion is the chief success here. It's very easy to get lost in this album, to lose track of the rest of the world as the music takes us somewhere else. If that's what DiSalvo is going for, then he nails it here. The catch to that is that it means that the album works best as an album rather than as individual tracks. Either you'll like it or you won't. Picking a favourite track or favourite section of a track is going to be much harder.

For me, New Meridian is the only one that does something different to the rest of the album. It's the lightest piece and the most keyboard-centric, until the bass kicks in halfway. However, it's also the most active. Everything else is about presenting an atmosphere and leaving us be to float on through it. This one feels more like some amorphous alien creature that's playing with us and has every intention of making us join in with its games. That's especially true for the first half but it's there in the second half too.

Other than that, I'd maybe call out The Ascetic, because I like how jagged it feels, even though it's ended in surprisingly abrupt fashion. Others might plump for Zodiak, which is a little heavier with that extra guitar ambience, making it the closest to a latter day Elder song, but it's also easily the longest piece here at thirteen and a half minutes. With that said, it changes around the eight and a half minute mark, letting the guitars fade away into the distance and switching back to keyboard atmospheres.

All in all, this is a solid 7/10 all the way but I'm starting to wonder about whether it deserves more than that because I've been listening to it for about four days solid. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. Let's see how I think about it while listening to something else.

Elemento 26 - Labirintos de Zan (2024)

Country: Brazil
Style: Psychedelic Pop/Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Apr 2024
Sites: Instagram | YouTube

Here's another unusual album from Brazil, which seems to be bursting at the seams with unusual albums lately. Elemento 26 play a brand of psychedelic rock that's rooted in classic pop music. The guitars on the opener, Fotossíntese, are occasionally powerful, in a seventies rock sense, but the overall feel is lighter and the backing vocal is very light indeed, taking us back to the late sixties. It's also patient, reminding of Pink Floyd on the boundary between their psychedelic pop era with Syd Barrett and their seventies prog rock era with deeper and more expansive musical journeys.

Nothing here gets particularly expansive in that sense, only two tracks exceeding four and a half minutes and the longest of them wrapping up well before eight. However, Clorofila, the shorter of those two at under six, firmly moves into jam band territory. That's hardly surprising for psych but it's far more applicable to rock than pop, its gentle verses and folky backing vocals giving way in a loose second half to instrumentation exploration, two guitars and the bass all soloing together.

The other angle that's unmistakable is the ethnic angle, because Elemento 26 are Brazilian and a folky edge means something very different to the folk music that fed psychedelic bands in the UK or US. There's some of this from the very outset here, but it becomes obvious on Paranoia, which has a Latin sway to the verses that could well be samba to my uneducated ears. It starts slow and gradually speeds up, but it's clearly Brazilian. There's also a lot going on in the background, but I can't swear to what. Are those backing vocals, jungle ambience or a distant calliope. It's almost a carnival song. Casulo dips deeply into this ethnic history too, even if a prominent guitar presides over all of it.

Just in case that all solidifies an idea of what Elemento 26 sound like, there's more here that will deepen that considerably. There's a garage band simplicity to Planador. There's rich orchestration in Farol. There's a funky bass to kick off Borboleta and then jangly guitars which are just the start to a highly versatile song that goes all over the musical map. There's space rock to kick off Verde-do-Mar. It's almost like Elemento 26 don't want to be tied down to any particular genre, beyond a general one of psychedelia. It's hard to even situate them on one side of the dividing line between pop and rock, because they happily work on both, even if they stay on the rock side far longer.

I like this but I'm not sure, even after half a dozen listens, that I've truly figured out who Elemento 26 are. This may well be their debut album and it makes sense to be agreeably versatile, but I'd be struggling if I suggested what their follow-up might sound like. There are so many directions that this band could take with equal validity that I'd be very wary about suggesting one. And that does bring me back to Pink Floyd again, because who, after listening to The Piper at the Gates of Dawn could have predicted Ummagumma, let alone The Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall?

If you twisted my arm, I might suggest that they're at their best when evolving from quirky poppy melodies into longer instrumental sections. I don't know who's in the band, so I can't call anyone out for specific praise, but it's the guitars that do the most for me here. They're relatively simple during verses, for the most part, but they're highly varied in instrumental sections. There are an array of guitar solos that stand out to me, enough that it's hard to pick which work the best, but I might have to call out parts of Casulo as the best, starting with its very beginning and continuing in the second half, but also parts of Casulo as the worst, namely the plodding during verses.

And I have a similar problem trying to figure out my favourite tracks. I feel like the highlight ought to be Borboleta, because it certainly does the most in its seven and a half minutes, but I'm unsold on all its changes. It doesn't feel like it's quite figured out what it wants to be yet, rather like the band who recorded it. Every time through, I find that I prefer Verde-do-Mar, wrapping things up in its wake, because it nails its grooves, but it's a far less substantial piece and it has to end in a spot that links right back to Fotossíntese to loop the album.

The problem is, if the highlight isn't Borboleta, what is it? I might have to plump for Clorofila, the other slightly long song, because it's far more coherent, even as a jam song. Certainly it features the most guitarwork and thus plenty of the best guitarwork. However, Paranoia is truly infectious and I keep coming back to Casulo and Farol too, which feature plenty of elegance. It'll all depend on where they go from here, as the next album could make these songs outliers in their catalogue or the beginning of what they do. I for one am eager to find out.

Full Earth - Cloud Sculptors (2024)

Country: Norway
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 15 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Here's something special and notably ambitious from Norway. Few bands tend to start out their debut albums with twenty-one minute instrumental jams, even within the psychedelic rock world. Fewer follow it up with a twenty minute title track. That's an album right there, but precious few keep on going, delivering four more tracks, none of them quite as long as those openers but two more making it past ten, with the second part of the opener bookending the album and pushing that track to almost thirty-five minutes alone. There are eighty-five minutes of music here.

Of course, that's exactly what Full Earth do here and they had me completely riveted by the end of that first piece of music, Full Earth Pt I: Emanation. I wasn't immediately sold, as the drums are pretty routine as it kicks off and the guitars are clearly repetitive, but everything builds and I do mean seriously builds. I had to temporarily ignore the rest of the album by starting it over again the moment it ended. The first step up is around the two minute mark, then again at three and a half, once more at four and a half and over and over again until I was totally mesmerised by all its swirling chaos.

There are five musicians in Full Earth and they play the typical rock instruments—Ask Vatn Strøm on guitars, Simen Wie on bass and songwriter Ingvald Vassbø on drums, with both Wie and Eskild Myrvoll adding additional guitars—but two of them are also credited on different keyboards and the fifth member, Øystein Aadland, provides a whole bunch of them. This is like we're watching an entire galaxy form and develop and eventually explode. There's much to take in but it's glorious. I'm not at all surprised to find that Vassbø is playing with Motorpsycho nowadays, as well as being a long-standing member of Kanaan, along with Strøm and Myrvoll.

The section that kicks in at around 13:45 when Wie's bass introduces a heavy riff and Vassbø starts improvising drum fills but the keyboards continue to dance is breathtakingly good and that's not my only favourite section. There's already been a gorgeous step up in pace that shows up around eleven minutes and the finalé is wonderful too. Much of this is built on repetition and slow build, so there are ritual and trancelike elements to it, but there are solos all over the place too, from both guitars and keyboards, and so this never quite falls into drone territory.

However, that influence is definitely there and so are a host of others. Their Bandcamp page has a few names listed on that front, not just stoner rock bands like Sleep, Elder and High on Fire, but a collection of minimalist and avant-garde composers too, both ones I know like Terry Riley and the incomparable Györgi Ligeti and ones I don't like James Ferraro and Onehotrix Point Nevers, who are names I clearly must check out. These are cited as inspirations for the two short organ pieces, Weltgeist and Echo Tears, but there's experimentation in the middle of Cloud Sculptors.

Talking of Cloud Sculptors, the title track feels like whatever deity we're playing here pressed the zoom button and whipped inward to focus on a single planet. It isn't ours, as the fluttering flutes and liquescent guitar paints an alien landscape dominated by frolicking butterflies and keening land whales. The drums vanish entirely at points to reflect a King Crimson influence, but that wild and fascinating midsection is something else again, feeling like the pulsing of a planet that may be bursting at the seams.

I have to admit to feeling that this was my long overdue first 9/10 for the year during the opener, but I started to think during The Collective Unconscious that it's the first contender for my album of the year, because, once this one gets going, it's even better than the opener.

I had wondered a little because Weltgeist is a plodding ambient organ piece, almost a turn based improvisation with notes shifting up and down on a particularly ruthless beat (Echo Tears is more of a Philip Glass rhythmic effort), and The Collective Unconscious starts out in a similar vein, but it grows a few minutes in with some sumptuous seventies organ that brings King Crimson promptly back to mind. That gives way to searing guitar solos and a bludgeoning road home that brings up scale again, one way or another. I can't tell if I'm a galaxy watching a neighbour form or one single cell watching a human body evolve around me, but it seems utterly momentous. There's more of that in the closer, Full Earth Pt II: Disintegration.

And, beyond sounding momentous, this is energy-infusing stuff. I haven't felt particularly down at all this week and I've been getting stuff done, but I feel thoroughly revitalised listening to this. It will be hard to move on from it.

Grinded Grin - Charlatan (2024)

Country: Croatia
Style: Psychedelic Rock/Jazz Fusion
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Mar 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

Opening up a prog rock album with horsehead fiddle and throat singing is a plus for me, though it does sound rather like an orchestra warming up. Then again, that may be the point because this is just a quick seventy second intro. Masquerade, the first track proper, leaps headling into a wildly different vibe with a psychedelic guitar solo at the top of the mix and right in our face. A minute in, it steps back and we're in strange territory, appropriately so for prog rock. The drums are pure jazz. The guitar morphs into an exploring synthesiser. And then the throat singing returns as an overlay.

It's an interesting approach that reminds a lot of jazz fusion, because it's generally instrumental, that throat singing apart. However, it's clearly ethnic and I don't believe Mongolia is particularly known for its jazz fusion. The guitar is very prominent too, so loud in the mix and so psychedelic I'd almost call this stoner rock, a tag that is indeed listed on the album's Bandcamp page, along with avant-garde and alternative. Jazz and fusion aren't there, though, and there's no mention of this world music flavour either. Tellingly, progressive rock doesn't show up there either, so I'll think of it as psychedelic jazz fusion instead.

That world music changes as the album progresses, the contributions of Javier Morales left in the openers and the didgiridoo of Michele Fortunato only lasting into Deceptive Delirium, where the Mongolian flavour is replaced by the plaintive trumpet of Josué Garcîa. Ascent into Illusion turns to the saxophone of Vedran Momčilović to be its lead instrument and adds some weird percussion that sounds like woodblocks. The result is a sort of acoustic industrial jazz fusion track that I can't leave alone. After all the exploration of the earlier songs, this one feels repetitive and pounding, but it works wonderfully for me. Even at over six minutes, I didn't want it to end.

I should mention that every name I've mentioned thus far appears to be a guest, because they all show up for one or maybe two tracks and leave again. The band is a duo at heart, with Aleksandar Vrhovec playing guitar, bass and those idiosyncratic synths that tend to sound rather like a swarm of musical bees, and Linda-Philomene Tsoungui contributing drum loops. Of course, that's not the typical make-up of a duo, hence quite the list of guests. Looking back through their Bandcamp at earlier albums, it seems like there have been more traditional line-ups. Vrhovec is at the core of whatever they do.

In whatever form they've held, they seem to be prolific, this being their eleventh album since 2018 with six of those arriving between February and July 2021, one a month like a magazine. Those all seem to have a different mindset, most of them longer than this album but often boasting only a single track and never more than three. This batch of seven shorter pieces isn't typical for them, a twelve minute closure called Epiphany's Exposure notwithstanding. That length pales when faced off against the forty-one and a half of Terra, the only track on the album of the same name.

I haven't heard any of those earlier albums, but each piece of music here has its own character, an overall psychedelic jazz fusion feel throughout but explored in different ways each time, not least through a succession of dominant instruments, the Les Claypool-esque funky bass riff in Pinnacle of Illusion following the respective guitar, trumpet and sax of the first three tracks. The other pieces are less memorable for being ensemble works, though Epiphany's Exposure does find some focus during a squealing saxophone dominated second half when Sebastian Lopez finds the spolight. Until then, it was more of a Frank Zappa orchestral piece.

It took me a moment to understand what Grinded Grin were doing here, but I got on board pretty quickly and I find that I like this album a lot. Jazz fusion is a coin flip for me, as I find that I dislike as many albums as I like. It's a genre that can get very indulgent. However, it's also often led by a virtuoso guitarist and, while I cast no aspersions on Vrhovec's talents there, the spotlight shifts a lot here and rarely to the guitar. It becomes far more of a soundscape album, where Grinded Grin conjure up a new sound for a new track and hopefully take us to a new place. Like the Qilin album earlier in the week, this didn't transport me often but I appreciated those soundscapes anyway.

Now, how have I not heard of Grinded Grin before and which album in a bountiful back catalogue should I dive into next? After I dive back into the delightful Deceptive Delirium, of course. And Ascent into Illusion. And...

Qilin - Parasomnia (2024)

Country: France
Style: Psychedelic Rock/Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 12 Jan 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

This album is a few months old now, so counts as less recent than I tend to prefer to review here at Apocalypse Later, but I enjoyed Qilin's debut album, Petrichor, so much in 2020, that I didn't want to miss out on its follow-up when it crossed my path recently. I also didn't want to wait until next January when I do catch up on what I missed from 2024, because I'd probably forget and then feel bad when I stumble onto it again, having missed my window.

Qilin are French and they play heavy instrumental rock that straddles the border with metal. You could fairly describe what they do as psychedelic rock but it's just as often doom metal and all the best pieces move between the two. That's one way in which this album echoes the debut. Most of the tracks are long and the band, which I believe remains unchanged from last time, allow them to breathe, which leaves room for a couple of modes. There's the heavy mode, with the bass turned up high and the guitars switching between cavernous riffs and wailing solos. And then there's the mellow mode, which is much softer and drenched in atmosphere.

The result is as immersive as last time out but oddly still mostly fails to work as a travel agent for me. What I mean there is that instrumental psychedelic rock often takes me places. Sure, I listen to it as music but it also sends me on a journey too. I have aphantasia so can't frame images in my head, but I still get impressions in the form of feelings. These albums often make me feel like I'm on another planet or drifting between the stars, to cite just two common examples. This doesn't, though it hints at it in those mellow sections.

Instead, it remains stubbornly music, but it's music that I really enjoy. It's heavy but melodic and it's immersive, as if it's so big that it surrounds me. It starts out achingly slow with three minutes of funeral doom called Ouro, that's emphatically an intro to set up the sound palette and lead us into the best track, Lethean Dreams. This isn't three minutes long, needless to say—it runs eight and half—and it builds carefully.

It begins mellow in the closest section anywhere on the album to take me somewhere. It feels like I'm in a huge echoing cavern, perhaps like the cover art, but I'm not the character walking towards it. I'm inside waiting. There's a real sense of patience to it, as if there's no reason to move at all, a feeling of centering where I settle down and wait for everything to come to me. And it does, but I sit, safe and still, in the middle of that cavern while the music changes around me. Even when the song ramps up into heavy mode, playing out like a force of nature, I'm not part of it. I'm calm and unaffected, but not unappreciative, as it rages around me. I listen and enjoy.

And I remain there for forty calm minutes, listening and enjoying, while the remaining four pieces of music play out, along with an interlude in the middle of them. It's odd to see an interlude, as it's not uncommon for the shift between heavy and mellow to effectively incorporate interludes as an inherent songwriting component, but Innervision is very mellow and introduces the heaviest piece on offer, which is the bludgeoning Hundred-Handed Wards.

I like Qilin when they're being mellow, though Innervision may be the weakest such section on the album. However, I like them most when they're raging and the swirl of tasty feedback that wraps up Hundred-Handed Wards is raging indeed. It's probably beaten only by the finale to On Migoi's Trail and the core of Lethean Dreams. I love how they generate maelstroums of energy and whip them around like ancient wizards, destroying everything in their wake yet never losing control of their tools of destruction.

These two aspects constitute the majority of the album, but there's one further touch I should let you know about, because it surprises me every time those waves of feedback in Hundred-Handed Wards feedback subside and Qilin launch into the final track. This is Boros and it opens up entirely like AC/DC. Sure, the bass is drenched in fuzz, but that's an AC/DC build if I've ever heard one. It's happy to not continue down that path as the piece grows and no vocalist shows up, whether Brian Johnson or anyone else, but it does still stay perkier than anything else on the album, even as the longest track here. It doesn't really slow down until about halfway through its nine minutes and it doesn't calm until six and a half minutes in.

And so that's Parasomnia, which refers to sleep disorders that crop in when you're not asleep but not truly awake either. Your brain is still only partially awake and that does seem to be the perfect time to let an album like this wash over you. That would be a way to start the day!

Emergency Rule - The King of Ithaca (2024)

Country: Australia
Style: Stoner Rock/Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 9 Feb 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

Metal Archives lists Emergency Rule as a southern metal band and I guess we can't go much more southern than Adelaide, South Australia. However I found this, their debut album, listed as stoner rock and that rings truer to me. There's definitely a southern flavour on The Hook, which kicks off the album, and there's as much metal here as rock, the majestic Something to Say as close to the old school Black Sabbath sound instrumentally as I've heard recently. However, I'd see Clutch as a powerful comparison, both in tone and approach, so hard/stoner rock seems to fit best. Of course, the band's own description of "Sabbath with attitude, Skynyrd with power" is pretty accurate too.

The other reason I'd call out stoner rock here is because there's also a powerful psychedelic sound here, starting in Garden and reaching its peak on the intro to Ulysses. The guitars—plural, even if many stoner rock bands are trios—get all mellow during verses on the former, which allows singer Doug Clark to endow his voice with some notable attitude. That only grows further on Bartender, which is a performance for him more than it's merely a song. Everything on this one is nuance for him, which is admirable because he's also the band's bassist, so is always doing far more than sing.

I can see Bartender being a lot of listeners' favourite song, but mine is Something to Say, because it's so impeccably old school that even the opening silence sounds like it was recorded in a studio in 1972. It starts out stoner rock but finds quintessential Sabbath riffs. Clark growls this one, so is nowhere near any of the various vocalists Sabbath had over the years, but I love that guitar tone and there's a glorious instrumental section, as indeed there is on a number of these songs, which benefits from there being two guitarists, Chris G and Callum Wegener. It reminds me that, even if a band has an obvious and strong lead singer, they can still absolutely deliver instrumentally.

It's why I always think of how tight Clutch are instrumentally, even though Ned Fallon often leads songs with his vocal phrasing. The same holds here and Emergency Rule are imaginative on that front. The mellow Sabbath guitars in Garden are part of that and they return on From the Grave, though that song also features perhaps the most overt southern riffs, along with what may be a banjo at points. So is that glorious psychedelic opening to Ulysses. Another is the inclusion of an unlikely instrument for stoner rock on Abuse, namely a string section. That's a cello, I believe, to provide the intro and there's a frequent underpinning of violins throughout the song. The cello especially works with this sort of heavy material.

The album starts strongly with The Hook and continues to be strong through the eight tracks most of which run in the five or six minute range. Something to Say was my favourite from my very first listen and that hasn't changed maybe seven or eight times through. However, which I'd pick as my next choice has changed often, because this benefits from each song being subtly different but of a pretty consistent quality. For a while, I'd have gone with The Hook or Ulysses, but gradually the second track has enforced itself. It's called Garden and it's a real grower, that does all the things I love about The Hook and Something to Say in one four minute song, with a neat psychedelic edge.

Emergency Rule have been around for a while now, having formed way back in 2011 with their line-up still intact from that time, but this is their debut album. It's obviously not their oldest material because their first two singles, Flag and a Medal and The Zealot, aren't included, so I'd dearly like to know why it took them this long to get this far, only to suddenly nail everything right out of the gate. And I'd also dearly like to know that we'll see another album in a couple of years, instead of waiting another decade and change.

Schubmodul - Lost in Kelp Forest (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 23 Feb 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

I've been listening to this album, the second from German psychedelic rock trio Schubmodul, for a few days now and it's still as fresh as ever. They play entirely instrumental music, but there is voice here, just not in the form of a band member singing. There's a female voice on Voyage that seems to be a sample, but it must be a long sample, because she's back on Renegade One, Silent Echoes and Ascension. A male one joins in on Revelations, to provide a radio news broadcast update on a kinda sorta concept that the female voice built.

I have to confess that, after maybe twenty listens thus far, I still haven't paid enough attention to that voice to figure out exactly what's going on and whether this is a true concept album, but the gist is that we're underwater, as the title suggests. There's a vessel called Renegade One which is doing something down there in the depths but the narrator or whatever she is sounds corporate in her demeanour and I imagined her as an inspirational canned voice over the PA on this vessel who anyone who's used to it simply ignores, relegating her to a sort of background instrument within a broader ambience.

I certainly didn't get any particular mood from her, just from the music. Much of the album seems welcoming to me, from Voyage onward, as if we were born under the waves and are very happy to return there on this mysterious mission. Emerald Maze, easily my favourite track, is a much more dynamic piece that suggests exploration. It's a long track, only a whisper off ten minutes in length, but it does a lot in that time. Maybe it's doing all the exploration the album needs, so that we can get back to the mission on Renegade One.

Talking of Renegade One, this is the only track where an obvious influence leapt out. Schubmodul, which means Thrust Module, tend to play instrumental psychedelic rock but without any real focus on a particular style. There are points where this is soft and peaceful music that reminds of post-rock, but more where it's harder, driving music right out of stoner rock. However, the name that I couldn't ignore on Renegade One is Mountain, a hard rock band from the seventies I encountered first on a TV theme, of all things. It's that heavy part from Nantucket Sleighride that Schubmodul echo here, a little slower but with the same tone and heaviness.

Oddly, when we get to Revelations, the final track, that radio newscaster explains that this wasn't particularly welcoming at all. This vessel was off the books, doing dubious science that backfired on its captain and whoever else might have been on board during the mission. I don't believe that spoilers really mean anything on an ostensibly instrumental album, so I'll point out that it was on a mission to create an energy source out of manipulated kelp, only to find that it generated some sort of psychedelic substance that sent the captain insane. Even more oddly, it still feels like it's a welcoming piece of music, so maybe that was a good thing. The environmentalists clearly think so.

Concept aside, because it really doesn't matter, I liked this album a lot. There are only six tracks to comprise almost three quarters of an hour of music, so Schubmodul let their music breathe. There isn't a rushed track here, but nothing overstays its welcome either, even though much of it is built on rhythm, the drums often setting the stage for the riffs to join in. They also like their rhythms to be repetitive, but without reaching the sort of trancelike states that come with drone metal. The variations are constant but relatively straightforward and they feel utterly natural, as befits this setting in the entirely natural world we're exploring.

There's only one previous release that I can see, a 2022 debut album called Modul I that suggests an outer space motif in its cover art and track titles. Maybe that dips into space rock, something that this album doesn't even hint at. I'm intrigued to find out, especially because that particular release schedule suggests that we won't see a third album until 2026.

Hexvessel - Polar Veil (2023)

Country: Finland
Style: Psychedelic Folk Rock/Black Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 22 Sep 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Tumblr | Twitter | YouTube

Well, here's something that I totally didn't expect. My last experience with Hexvessel was with an album called Kindred in 2020, which became my Album of the Year, just nudging out Solstice. Both of those albums were folk music, though former took that into psychedelic rock but the latter into progressive rock. It's a haunting album and I've gone back to it often since, as well as checking out a few odd earlier tracks on YouTube. I haven't listened to earlier albums yet, perhaps with a little fear that they might not be up to Kindred's incredibly high standard.

Well, this follow-up, their sixth studio album, is hard to compare because it adopts their style into a completely different genre, namely black metal, and it's a fascinating shift that I'm still coming to terms with. The black metal is in guitars, now exclusively Mathew McNerney's domain because I don't see Jesse Heikkinen in the line-up, which are no longer acoustic psychedelic folk but a full on wall of sound bleakness. The change is from pastoral meadow or maybe sparse desert to nighttime blizzard, literally day to night. However, neither the vocals nor the drums follow suit, except for an anomalous couple of moments.

That means no blastbeats, except for Eternal Meadow and Homeward Polar Spirit, which are both as frantic as we expect from black metal drumming. Otherwise, Jukka Rämänen keeps a slow beat, which fits the bleakness but carries a little more inherent warmth. It fits reasonably well, because it means we pay attention to mood more than we might usually for black metal and there is some variation there. It also forces us to slow down while we listen, which helps us pay closer attention to the voice, which delivers lyrics rather than serving as another musical instrument.

And yes, that means no harsh vocals, except for the very end of Older Than the Gods, where there are hints at something harsh. This is less successful to my thinking, because these approaches are almost mutually exclusive. What made McNerney's vocals special on Kindred was how much sheer nuance he was able to infuse into songs. Even when other instruments did something interesting, I was always listening to the words he was singing and feeling them in the way he felt them. It was a highly immersive storytelling technique and individual words carried powerful meaning. Here, he seems to do the same thing, but I just couldn't hear that nuance. I mostly couldn't hear words. The lyrics may be as meaningful but I couldn't back that up or give examples.

So the overall effect is very different. What preserves from the psychedelic folk sound is a strong sense of ritual. It was easy to fall into rhythms and flows and those remain powerful, if not of the same level of impact. McNerney's voice stands out best on Crepuscular Creatures, where all that nuance is still evident, but A Cabin in Montana is the track that easily carries the most impactful groove because the beat works perfectly with the voice. It's mostly on these two songs that I was able to catch lyrics. "Who speaks to the world?" "Freedom!"

Elsewhere, I like that overall effect as a sound but not how it plays out over the whole album. It's fascinating to hear what I still think of as psychedelic folk music drenched in feedback and with an entirely clean voice almost battling it out for dominance with an abrasive guitar. However, over a full album, this is generally too opaque, too distant and too dense, except in rare moments, like a snatch of something special at the very end of Listen to the River, as the wall of sound fades away and we hear what was behind that curtain.

Of course, I have to wonder if this is a one-off experiment or an indication of where Hexvessel are going. As the former, it's certainly interesting and, on occasion, it works rather well. Some tracks continue to grow on me, even if I have to pay serious attention to figure out why. Ring is one, with some excellent guitarwork underneath the wall of sound. As the latter, though, it seems unlikely to me that this approach will work long term. It's inherently limited and, as such it's missing a lot of what I find special in this band. By a lot, I mean far too much. I guess only time will tell.

Black Sky Giant - The Red Chariot (2024)

Country: Argentina
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Black Sky Giant, one of my favourite South American psychedelic rock bands, tend to knock out an album every January, occasionally adding another later in the year, and here's their 2024 release, a year to the day since Primigenian. I say "their" but I still know nothing about the band, which is very possibly one highly talented multi-instrumentalist recording in his basement somewhere in Rosario, Argentina. Whoever's responsible, I'm a confirmed fan of theirs because this is the third emphatically reliable release in a row that I've heard from Black Sky Giant.

As I've mentioned in my previous reviews, they play a form of lively psychedelic rock that's always in motion. I don't think I've heard a single track by them where I feel like I'm sat in one place just looking at some sort of spectacle; I always feel like I'm being transported through that spectacle, usually on the surface of some alien planet. While there's always a space rock tag on the album's page on Bandcamp, the same caveat as ever applies. Sure, I'm out there somewhere when I hear this, but I'm firmly planted. I'm not travelling through the cosmos, I'm travelling through the cool desert geography of a very large rock in space. I have no idea which planet I'm on but it's not this one.

This is more of the same, but with a few more tweaks. One becomes obvious on the title track that opens up the album, because it does so like an eighties goth song perked up in the early industrial era, before it develops into another psychedelic journey. A Timeless Oracle goes back to this sound too, as if it's a Bauhaus song played at double speed. It's an odd feeling, as if we're looking at this landscape through frosted shower glass rather. It's definitely more mechanical than anything I've heard from the band before, but it never trumps the organic feel that's inherent throughout. It's there on Submerged Towers too, so it's definitely a slight direction shift.

I like all three of those tracks but I like Path better. This one begins with a heavy chord and moves on slowly. As I mentioned, Black Sky Giant's music is always about motion for me but it's rarely this slow. It's steady too, as if we're unafraid of anything that shows up in our vision and from any side, given that the guitar darts around like it's playing every inquisitive animal on this planet. Even at the three minute mark when it gets dangerous and we speed up and that fauna gets agitated, we still feel safe because we're armoured. Two and a half minutes later, it all calms down again, as if we've passed the danger area or perhaps simply made friends with whatever was in it.

Danger is a rare creature in Black Sky Giant's music. Illuminated by Reflection is more typical for them, because there's all the exploration without any of the danger, either apparent or ignored. It's a more joyous trip, even when it bulks up late on. And that's how the album works through its second half. If there's danger, it's weird western danger, which is wild and unexpected and harder to plan for, so we just maintain an element of awareness wherever we go but don't overly concern ourselves with what might be out there.

I've praised the bass a lot on previous Black Sky Giant albums and every instrument does its job on this one, but, especially as the album moves towards its end, the guitar comes to the fore in ways that deserve credit. Everything here is instrumental, so it could be said that the guitar is soloing all the time on every track, but it's often playing a part. On Electrical Civilization, it feels open, as if whatever Moebius-esque vehicle we're travelling in has an open top and we're standing up and expressing our pleasure to our surroundings. I almost suggested that a passenger stood up to play guitar but I've never felt like there are passengers in these Black Sky Giant vehicles; I'm always on my own, revelling in the isolation.

Even more than Electrical Civilization, Augury is the first track where the guitar solo feels as much like a guitar solo as it does some sort of living being or emotional outburst. It's very tasty indeed, even though it's overshadowed by the best guitar on the album, which is on the closer, In the Sight of the Mountain God. This is the epic of the album, which isn't unusual for a closer, but it's only six minutes long, which doesn't seem particularly epic. However, it does bring back some of the weird western flavour that is never far from Black Sky Giant's sound.

And so this is a third 7/10 in a row for Black Sky Giant at Apocalypse Later. They certainly work in a very specific niche but they've nailed it and I relish these return trips to wherever it is that they're taking us.

The Cosmic Gospel - Cosmic Songs for Reptiles in Love (2023)

Country: Italy
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 15 Dec 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

I could swear blind that I received this album as a submission for review but I can't find any details of that anywhere: no download, no e-mail, no message, no nothing. So maybe I was dreaming, but I took a listen anyway on Bandcamp and found it an interesting album, especially immediately after the weird but wonderful new Gama Bomb album, which is different in almost every way. This is pop music that's far too interesting to be just pop music, with the Beatles's psychedelic years the first point of reference. It's also often psychedelic rock, occasionally progressive rock and sometimes a little garage rock too, though this latter is rarely forceful.

The Cosmic Gospel is primarily one man in Macerata, Italy who writes, records and mixes, as well as singing and playing most of the instruments on this debut album. He's Gabriel Medina and he even painted the cover art, I believe. The only other musician involved is Louie Cericola who contributed some keyboard work on Core Memory Unlocked from his Korg Sigma. The Bandcamp page suggests that these songs were either inspired or grew out of songs by other bands that Medina must have been involved with that were either never finished or not released, so its patchwork nature makes sense.

If there's a common thread, it's that most of these songs create a particular mood that is utterly subverted by their lyrics. Usually, that means perky moods and dark lyrics, but occasionally that's reversed. I often let albums wash over me without actively seeking out their lyric sheets, but this only works that way if we refuse to let odd words and phrases grab our attention because they're not remotely part of the mood we're in. I'd suggest that following the lyrics isn't the best way for a listener to go, because Medina delivers lyrics in an unstructured manner, almost conversationally, finding whatever melody works. Letting it wash over us is better, treating it as an instrument, but it's going to get jarring when you realise what he's singing.

Exhibit A, your honour, is the opening track, It's Forever Midnight. It's a perky opener, with garage rock guitar, synth handclaps and Medina's soft psychedelic voice. It's laid back but catchy, masking dark lyrics about our narrator breaking into his neighbour's house to save his baby from perverted Mr. Goose. It's a happy psychedelic pop song with some subdued garage rock emphasis until we're in on the story, at which point it only gets darker the more we think about it. Is this an actual baby or a term of endearment for a girlfriend? Does that make it better or worse? What precisely does perverted mean here? Maybe we don't want to know.

Exhibit B would be the song after it, The Richest Guy on the Planet is My Best Friend. It opens with sugar sweet synths taking the place of the guitars, which only show up on slightly more emphatic sections. It's less perky but it's still happy until the lyrics start to make us wonder. This one's open to more interpretation but it could easily be read as a cult suicide. Whatever it means, it doesn't mean anything sugar sweet unless there's something seriously wrong with our brain.

Exhibit C works the same way but the other way around. Core Memory Unlocked opens soft like a folky psychedelic pop song from the late sixties, flutes behind a strummed acoustic guitar. It's less Beatles here and more Vashti Bunyan, maybe as covered by Tyrannosaurus Rex. There's a sadness here that wasn't on the opening couple of songs, but its lyrics reflect simple melancholic longing rather than anything actively dark. So, as the music darkens, the lyrics lighten. That's not a usual approach, but I found it fascinating.

What else I found fascinating is how this often feels relatively simple, built on simple melodies in that Beatles-esque way. Their most powerful songs were often the most simple and Medina knows that. However, there are a number of places on this album where he dips into something far more complex. There's some of this on Hot Car Song, which is more emphatic from the outset, its John Kongos beat shifting into almost a Cramps vibe at points, but this mostly kicks in at the end of the blobfish song, Psychrolutes Marcidus Man, when it shifts into what sounds like a kazoo orchestra.

The Demon Whispers opens like avant-garde classical, but its ominous nature is overwhelmed by a folky acoustic guitar, the unusual returning halfway with the advent of a theremin-like melody. It gives way to Wrath and Ghosts, which starts out unusual and only gets more so as it builds. This is an almost entirely electronic track onto which voices are added, though they may be manipulated samples. It becomes an avant-garde choral piece for a while, like Henry Cow taking György Ligeti and shifting his polyphony into something prog.

It's been too long since I've been this surprised by an album in any way other than quality. Sure, it happens that I expect a lot from a band who fail to deliver or not much from one that utterly nails it this time out. Here, I had no expectations of quality because it's a debut album. What I expected was something psychedelic, with influences beyond the Beatles listed on Bandcamp being Damon Albarn, Beck and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. I wasn't expecting this experimentation and the thoroughly unusual contrast between music and lyrics. So, thank you if anyone actually did send a copy of this over to me. If not, I must have dreamed my way into an interesting find.

Pink Fairies - Screwed Up (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Jul 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Wikipedia

This was released back in July but I've only just noticed, so I'm reviewing it now because, hey, I can. If you don't know the name, they're a legendary British rock band whose alumni include musicians as diverse as science fiction author Mick Farren, T Rex percussionist Steve Peregrine Took and the original Motörhead guitarist, Larry Wallis. Current band leader Paul Rudolph played on their first two albums and some Brian Eno solo efforts, then he replaced Lemmy in Hawkwind. Joining him on what I think is his fifth stint with the band are ex-Hawkwind bassist Alan Davey and the only other member of the original Motörhead line-up I haven't mentioned yet, drummer Lucas Fox.

With those connections, it probably shouldn't be surprising that Hawkwind are one of the obvious influences here, and indeed there's a kinda sorta Hawkwind cover here in Hassan I Sahba, with an interesting guest appearance from Hawkwind violinist Simon House. I say kinda sorta because it's a Paul Rudolph song, written with Robert Calvert, so it's not entirely a cover, and it sounds utterly authentic, especially when followed by a dreamy space rock instrumental in Dreamzzz and a piece of space rock ambience with a title as quintessential for the genre as It Came from Zeta-77073. A later piece, Big Pink Chopper, plays in the same ballpark.

However, Hassan I Sahba doesn't show up until track four and the album builds towards it with the title track, Digital Sin and WhatchaGonnaDo all sounding like garage rock songs that merely have an increasing amount of psychedelia infused into them. Sure, Rudolph's guitar is psychedelic over Screwed Up, but the rhythm section is no nonsense solid and the vocals, as they across the album, are basic but effective and appropriate. When they're playing songs with hooks and choruses and riffs and all the other typical components of rock music, it's done without any frills at all, just like they recorded it live in the studio.

Given that, and song titles like Screwed Up, Punky and Big Pink Chopper, it probably shouldn't be a surprise to realise that the overall sound is exactly the sort of thing that might catch your ear as it comes blaring out of a random nothing bar. You follow it in and, a few pints later, realise that it's a highly varied audience, so you're surrounded by rockers, metalheads, punks and bikers, a melting pot who are all totally on board with it, because the Pink Fairies are common ground in exactly the same way that Motörhead always were. This is that sort of old school. "We just play rock 'n' roll."

Talking of Motörhead, We Can't Get Any Closer could have been an early Motörhead song, except, of course, that it isn't. Suddenly Rudolph's vocals seem out of place, on a song he probably wrote, simply because he isn't Lemmy and the song conditions us to expect his memorable voice. Davey's bass is closer to Lemmy's and that just adds to the effect. Fox, of course, drummed for Motörhead, so it can't surprise that he can sound like he's still there. Wayward Son does a similar job but with better success for Rudolph, who stamps his authority over it with both vocals and guitar, even if it could again have been a Motörhead song.

I haven't heard the Pink Fairies in forever, but I'm very happy to hear them again in this latest of a countless number of incarnations. The sense of fun that the glorious cover art suggests is here on most of the vocal songs, but only WhatchaGonnaDo cares to actually dip into comedy in the sort of way that Dumpy's Rusty Nuts might have done. Digital Sin also manages to get some surprisingly deep social commentary into its lyrics without losing its sense of fun. They're strong when rocking out with regular rock instruments; they're strong when experimenting in Hawkwind style without most or any of the above; and, crucially, both those sides work well together.

I liked this on a first listen but it didn't feel like it would necessarily work as well on a second time through. I was happy to find that it did and continued to do so on a third and fourth. In fact, it felt more complete as an album the more times I listened to it. Tracks I initially thought were weaker grew on me and only one faded away, which is the closer, In the Ether. It never bugged me so much that I removed it from the playlist but, as everything else grew, it started to feel a little awkward in their company. It's here as a way for the album to end and that's its only real value.

So, given that the Pink Fairies have never really had a stable line-up since they were founded, way back in 1969, I wonder how long this one will stay in place. Certainly there wasn't a single musician who played on both 2017's Naked Radio and 2018's Resident Reptiles, but the line-up on the latter is the line-up here, meaning two albums from either side of the great gap that was COVID, so I'd hold out a little hope for a third album from this trio in a year or two. How about it, lads?

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - The Silver Cord (2023)

Country: Australia
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Oct 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I blinked again. I believe I've reviewed more albums by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard than any other artist, this being my fifth, but, every time I find a new one, I realise too that I missed a host more. My previous review was of Omnium Gatherum, which came out last April but they released Made in Timeland earlier in 2022 and Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, Laminated Denim and Changes after it, plus PetroDragonic Apocalypse earlier this year, whose seven tracks apparently serve as the yin to the yang of the seven others here. I can't keep up.

What's more, this album boasts two CDs, each featuring the same songs but with greatly different lengths. The regular album runs a mere twenty-eight minutes, making it rather short for anything by this band, but the other runs close to ninety, every one of these three to four minute songs over ten in their extended versions and the opener, Theia, over twenty. As you might expect, the short versions are snappier and more commercial and the extended mixes are more immersive. Oddly, the tracks on that earlier 2023 album add up to forty-eight minutes so it's an off balance yin/yang whichever way we look at it.

I haven't heard PetroDragonic Apocalypse, but it appears to be another metal album, following in the footsteps of Infest the Rats' Nest in 2019. This absolutely isn't, because it's electronica, though none of the components we think of as being associated with pop music make it so. This is still rock music, even if it's full of pop elements and comparisons will highlight that. For instance, Set is such electronica beats that it feels like house music when it starts out, with a tone right out of the new wave era and a lively attitude that's all seventies funk. Somehow, though, it ends up more like the Prodigy than any of the names you might expect, except perhaps Steven Wilson. He shouldn't be a particular surprise. The Prodigy only become more overt on Gilgamesh.

Notably, there are no actual guitars on this album, if I'm reading the credits right. However, there are plenty of guitar synthesisers. Similarly, I don't believe there are any actual drums, at least in the traditional sense, but there are electronic drums and drum machines. In fact, the core sound for the album stems from drummer Michael Cavanagh's impulse buy of a Simmons electronic drum kit. Fellow band member Joey Walker has said that "as soon as he plugged it in, I thought, 'That's the sound of the album right there."

What all that means is that hard beats are replaced by pulses and riffs are played on synthesisers rather than guitars, five of the six regular band members credited on synths of varied description, only Michael Cavanagh excluded because he's dedicated to electronic drums. Even then, two of his bandmates also have credits for drum machine. However, there are still beats and riffs and this is generally structured like rock music, most obviously a combination of prog and psychedelic, with a lot of Hawkwind in the effects but John Kongos in the drive of Chang'e and Yes in the vocal melody in Extinction.

I've been a fan of electronic rock music for decades, but this doesn't sound like any of the artists I listened to back in the eighties, like Tomita, Vangelis and Tangerine Dream. The latter are likely to be the closest comparison in that world, because they evolved substantially over the decades and became just as important to clubgoers dancing to the beats as those of us who sat in big venues to listen carefully to the depth of the music. However, I'm far less familiar with that era of their sound so I can't offer any comparisons. What I can say is that the Tangerine Dream influence is far more clear on the extended mixes with their long instrumental sections.

This is a fascinating album for me, because it's not remotely like anything I usually listen to, most obviously in the heavily manipulated vocals on the title track, but it is a King Gizzard album, so it's hardly unusual for it to be something completely different. That's kind of what they do. This is just new territory again for them and me. I'm not particularly sold on the short version of the album, not because it's all poppy electronica but because everything about it is so short. Every time they get a groove going, it's over to make way for the next track.

Personally, I'm far more into the longer version with the extended mixes, because the band are able to truly get their teeth into these vibes. I found more influences leaping out on these mixes too. I didn't hear Pink Floyd on the short version of the title track, for instance, but they're there on the twelve minute extended mix. And so, for rock and metal fans, especially those who perhaps found King Gizzard through PetroDragonic Apocalypse, this is definitely one for the open minded, but then that's kind of required for King Gizzard fans.

Ozric Tentacles - Lotus Unfolding (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Oct 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

This is the sixteenth studio album for the Ozrics and surprisingly the first that I've reviewed here, because I missed 2020's Space for the Earth, though I did cover Ed Wynne's solo album, Shimmer into Nature, a year earlier. The core of the band nowadays seems to be Wynne, who's been there since the very beginning in 1983, and his son, Silas Neptune, who wasn't even born then, but who joined the Ozrics in 2009. Also in the current line-up is Vinny Shillito, who has been their bassist a couple of times before going back to 1990 but who rejoined this year.

If you haven't heard the Ozrics before, this is as good a place as any to be introduced to what they do, which is an enticing and unique combination of sounds. They play instrumental rock, but with a keyboard presence as fundamental as the guitar, individual pieces of music often moving from one to the other. Sometimes they seem to play entirely synth-driven landscapes, only for the electronic clouds to part so that an electric guitar can emerge from them and suddenly they're a guitar band again with us focused on the soloing. Needless to say, this is usually seen as psychedelic rock.

The thing is that there's a lot more in this sound than just keyboards and guitars. There are points when the Ozrics play space rock, as on Deep Blue Shade and midway through Crumplepenny, when Hawkwind inevitably spring to mind. However, they're looser and less driven, because they take as much from world music and new age as they do from, say, the Grateful Dead and Tangerine Dream. There is a drummer in the band, who's Pat Garvey, debuting for the Ozrics here, but there's also a lot of drum programming, so Storm in a Teacup opens up the album sounding more like pop music than rock. Of course, it soon develops into something deeper and more complex.

You probably won't be surprised that these pieces of music tend towards length. Storm in a Teacup runs nine and a half minutes and it's not the longest track on offer, Crumplepenny almost reaching ten. The shortest, Deep Blue Shade and Burundi Spaceport, are still over five. However, it covers a lot of ground. From that pop intro, it becomes a lively psychedelic rock track, but there's prog and space rock in the mix and it also moves through jazz and funk before it wraps. Like any good Ozrics track, it's all about immersion. You can lose yourself in these pieces of music like you're in a jungle and you haven't seen the sky in a couple of hours, but you're OK with that.

Each of the six tracks here works that way, but they explore different jungles, if you'll allow me to stretch that simile. It's not a bad word to use for Storm in a Teacup and Deep Blue Shade anyway, because they're both bright and warm and rich. If we could turn them into visuals, jungle wouldn't be inapplicable. However, Lotus Unfolding, befitting its title, is far more open. It's slower and far more interested in wide open space than dense jungle. Saskia Maxwell's flute takes the lead and we feel like we can see forever, even though life is bursting into bloom all around us. It gets richer and denser as it goes but the keyboards never stop emulating flying creatures.

That may suggest that immersion into Ozrics tracks is immersion in nature and that's roughly fair, the greens all over the cover art entirely appropriate, but it's not always the case. Crumplepenny feels far more artificial because it plays with odd sounds and rhythms that feel man made. It's not remotely industrial in tone, but it does the same sort of thing that industrial does, especially early on, in a new age kind of way. Also, when the guitar solo shows up three minutes in, it sounds like a guitar solo rather than a bird or a treetop or a meandering stream. Again, of course, it evolves to something more organic, adding some space rock in the process.

Oddly, while the titles of Green Incantation and Burundi Spaceport might suggest which way they lean, that's not entirely true. The former has artificial aspects in addition to organic ones, while the key word in the latter is Burundi rather than Spaceport, as it dips neatly into African rhythms. It all highlights just how diverse the Ozrics can be within the framework that they defined so long ago. It also highlights how much there is on this album to discover, once you've allowed it to wash over you a couple of times without digging deeper.

As with so much of the Ozrics' output, this is immediately accessible but also neatly immersive. It's not the best album they've ever put out, but it's consistently strong even if there isn't a standout track. Maybe that's why it's consistently strong, because whatever these songs are doing, they end up working well together and we end up happy for three quarters of an hour. Of course, if you're a fan of the Ozrics already, you don't need this review. If you haven't heard them before, dive in and see what you think. If it's up your alley, then there's quite a back catalogue for you to explore.

White Canyon & The 5th Dimension - Gardeners of the Earth (2023)

Country: Brazil
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 4 Aug 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

I hear a lot of intros on albums nowadays and very few of them have any reason to be there. There are some that serve to grab our attention and some that tease us into what's to come, but it's not particularly often that I hear an intro truly nail both those things but Caminho das Pedras is a fair example of an intro that does both. It sets the mood with a hypnotic swirling sitar that takes us all the way back to the late sixties but adds contemporary touches too, before rolling on into the first track proper, which is the title track. We know what we're getting into, we're placed into the right mood to receive it and we flow on into the rest of the album. It's a great start.

Gardeners of the Earth lives up to the intro too. There's that prominent old school Pink Floyd bass that I remember so well from White Canyon's prior album, Spectral Illusion, and it continues that hypnotic groove. Quite frankly, the more hypnotic this band gets, the better they sound to me. My favourite track here may be Black Holes, which is stripped down to its essence, almost like a garage rock song played at half speed. The guitar is prominent and then the voices, but I end up falling for the drums every time. It's so hypnotic that we could believe the band performed it in a trance. Its closest competitor is Harsh Down, which has been playing in my head when I wake up, and Chapter V - Mental Universe isn't far behind that one.

I mentioned voices plural and should explain that there are two vocalists here, whose names are a mystery to me, but one is male and the other female and both get the opportunity to lead songs. I remember a gothic vibe from the prior album that's here too but to a lesser degree. It's there on the title track for sure, with the male voice taking the lead and the female voice bolstering it like an echo, and it's there in Ancient Secrets of Green Leaf, with the roles reversed. As they move into Howling Pines, though, with the female voice leading the way, and Fireflies Dance, which returns to both singing together, the vibe is firmly folky rather than gothic. Others drift between the two.

Now, whether they're folky or gothic, they're always psychedelic rock with an occasional dip into a more poppy sound. Fireflies Dance maintains the American hippie psychedelia that pervades the album, but it starts out like the Beatles at their most psychedelic and never truly loses that. I love the organ in Howling Pines too, which has that perky sound that tends to belong to the earlier pop songs recorded by bands that evolved into rock music in the seventies. There's more of that within Ancient Secrets of Green Leaf, along with more hypnotic drumming, and this one feels like it could be a fascinating reinterpretation of a Nick Cave song.

In other words, there's a lot here and the songs are neatly immersive. It was clearly going to be an album to recommend from the very beginning but it gets better as it runs on. Those favourites of mine start at the end of side one and roll through side two, all the way to InnerOutside, a fantastic closer that reminds of John Kongos writing and singing for Hawkwind. Then again, I expected a lot from this band because they got a rare 9/10 from me last time out for Spectral Illusion, back in May 2021, even though they lost out for my Album of the Month to a killer Flotsam and Jetsam release.

The challenge for them was always going to be to reach and maybe even exceed the standard that Spectral Illusion set. I wasn't initially sure that it matched it, as the album wasn't as immediate for me, but it was clearly excellent and it grew and continued to grow. It reached the point where it's perhaps only falling behind it because it's not my introduction to the band. Had I heard this first, I might have been blown away just as much as I was when I heard Spectral Illusion. As it is, I'm loving it almost as much. Now I just need to stop listening to it so I can move onto another review. That is not going to be easy.