Recorded across the span of three shows (July 15 – 17, 2015) at San Francisco’s Chapel, Thee Oh Sees’Live in San Francisco captures the band in full sweaty, raw power that threatens to blast you to smithereens.
Starting with the hard-charging “I Come from the Mountain,” the band (John Dwyer – guitar, vocals, synth, Tim Hellman – bass, Ryan Moutinho – drums, and Dan Rincon – drums) takes off like a rocket and barely gives you time to catch your breath between tracks. The “Whoa-oh!” chants of “The Dream” combined with Dwyer’s gasoline fire guitar work instantly invoke moshing (or at least the desire to do so) wherever you hear it. “Time Tunnel” sounds like that gasoline fire has spread across the rest of the stage and Hellman’s bass is dumping wood on the blaze. The song stops on a rough dime for a jarring effect.
The psychedelic surf swing of “Tidal Wave” is is a great example of the dual drumming of Moutinho and Rincon as they play different parts in different time signatures that match up at the best times to induce organized chaos. “Web” ramps up the reverb to send you into a calmer state, as does “Man in a Suitcase” (which is not a cover of the Police song, although I’m sure that would be outstanding) before that song’s wild guitar solos and heavy cymbal bashing smack you back into the present.
The happy, swelling grooves of “Toe Cutter Thumb Buster” practically make your speakers pogo. You’re almost exhausted by the time they get to the calm opening guitar chords of “Withered Hand,” but the song soon erupts like Old Faithful and dares you to keep up with it. “Sticky Hulks” gives you a little break with psychedelic fuzz to lull you into a warm place between mosh outbreaks.
The last two tracks, “Gelatinous Cube” and “Contraption” sound like riots. “Gelatinous Cube” has more precision drumming from Moutinho and Rincon while Dwyer’s guitar roars and soars all over the place and Hellman’s steady bass groove is like a gravitational pull keeping the rest of the band from blasting through the ceiling. “Contraption” brings in garage punk shredding and pounding and psychedelic freak-outs to powerwash off whatever’s left of your face by this point.
The vinyl edition of Live in San Francisco came with a DVD of the performances. This is widely available on YouTube as well. This recording is as close as you can come to being in the crowd at an Oh Sees show because it captures the incredible playing and the manic energy of one of their gigs so well. You owe it to yourself to get to one of their shows, but this album will hold you over in the meantime.
Alexander Ahmadi and Derek Cowart, the core members of Los Angeles’ psychedelic rockers Cosmonauts, went back to basics on their new album, Star 69, recording it “as live as possible,” as Ahmadi put it.
The opener, “Crystal,” has them declaring, “Life is confusion.” It certainly can be, and is for most of us skittering around from deadline to deadline or trying to live in a past long gone or a future that doesn’t exist. The repeated chorus of “Are we clear? Are we crystal? Do you feel me in your system?” behind sharp psychedelic riffs is both a plea for understanding and a bit of a joke, as psychedelic rock is all about altering perceptions.
“Seven Sisters” is one of my top singles of 2019, and will make anyone who hears it crank up the volume. “Everybody’s trippin’, everybody’s falling down,” Ahmadi sings, and he’s right. Everyone is either stumbling over their egos instead of being in the moment or purposely falling on their faces for more YouTube or Instagram hits. “Medio Litro” is a witty take on partying and the rock and roll life and how they can be exhausting (“We’ll go to the party if we can find parking. We’ll go to the show, but we don’t have any money.”).
“Cold Nature” is a solid shoegaze track with some early 1990’s Brit-rock beats. “Wicked City (Outer Space)” kicks off like a roller coaster racing to make it up the first hill and then shooting down it for the first loop. It slows down just enough during the verses to let you catch your breath and then lulls you into a mellow bedroom with an exotic lover playing old tunes all night. “Heart of Texas” continues swirling the incense smoke around you with guitars and tribal beats that evoke spaghetti westerns and a lovely addition of female backing vocals in a song about lost love (i.e., “I’d give anything to be with you again.”).
“Faces for Radio” has a fun title, referring to someone with a great voice but not enough looks to be on television, and a fun groove throughout it. “Molly on Glass” ups the shoegaze fuzz while Ahmadi sings about struggling to get through the boredom and rat race of everyday life. “I’m still trying,” he sings on “Humming,” a bright song that seems to be about dusting yourself off and moving on from heartbreak. “The Gold Line” almost ends the album on a downbeat, but the final track, “Suburban Hearts,” brings back dance drums and plenty of reverb and distortion to send you off strutting down the street.
It’s good to have Cosmonauts back and inviting us to their party…and making sure we get home okay after the rough afterparty.
Mixing power doom riffs with shoegaze, psychedelia, and, for all I know, mystic rituals carved onto pillars in Atlantean ruins, Blackwater Holylight‘s second album, Veils of Winter, is another fine, mysterious, heavy album from them.
The opener, “Seeping Secrets,” is doom metal perfection, and those doom metal riffs continue onto “Motorcycle” – which even puts into krautrock beats and synths. “Spiders” is so close to post-punk grooves that I kept expecting to hear a saxophone solo in it. We get spooky house synths instead, which is even better.
“The Protector” seems to be about some sort of forest spirit that is an absolute beast if crossed. The heavy drums and fuzzed guitars sure seem to indicate this. The haunting vocal harmonies on “Daylight” are counterbalanced by war hammer bass and drums. “Death Realms” has a foreboding title, but it’s a lovely track with some of the brightest guitars on the record and dreamwave-like synths. It’s a great example of Blackwater Holylight‘s love of musical contrasts and toying with the listener’s expectations.
“Lullaby” has a hypnotic, repeating three-note structure that builds into a lush, trippy track with a neat fuzzy punch near the end. The album’s closer, “Moonlit,” combines psychedelia with Middle Eastern rhythms and more fascinating vocal harmonies.
I’ve tried to figure out what “veils of winter” could be. The first image that came to mind was a winter day with a cloudless sky and bright sun but bone chilling temperatures. The sun is a veil over the cold. Another was a moonlit winter night over a snow-covered landscape with the moonlight reflecting off the snow to push back the veil of the surrounding dark.
I could also be reading far too much into the album’s title, but those images that came to my mind seem fitting for Blackwater Holylight’s music. They veil and unveil their musical influences throughout Veils of Winter whenever the mood strikes them. It becomes mysterious, thrilling, and sometimes chilling.
Keep your mind open.
[Take a ride to the subscription box and subscribe while you’re here.]
I’m not sure if anyone but Föllakzoid would have the guts to make an album like I. Every track on the album – guitar, synths, drums, vocals, and bass – was recorded in isolation. This is the first time the band haven’t recorded an album all together and in one take for each track. They then gave all of these elements to their producer, Atom TM, who hadn’t heard any of them before, and told him to arrange the elements in whatever order or time length he wanted. As a result, the album is a wild experiment that is a collaborative effort and yet order brought out of chaos.
The album is just four tracks, “I,” “II,” “III,” and “IIII.” They alternate between seventeen and thirteen minutes in length. The first is like a synth wave dreamscape that includes a neon-lit highway and roadside ramen bars. It blends so seamlessly in to “II” that you’ve taken an offramp from that synth wave highway into an industrial park that builds androids before you’ve realized it.
There’s a slight break before “III,” which is not unlike pulling over at one of those ramen bars and getting out of your hover-car to stretch, double check the power source on your laser gun, and scan the horizon for bounty hunter drones before heading inside to order a bowl of soup and a green tea. As the track grows over the next few minutes, you look up at the mirror behind the bar and see the reflection of hunter drone lights in the far distance approaching your location. You might have time to finish the soup and tea, but not much. The ramen is far better than you expected, and might be the last meal you have for a day. Is it worth the risk of being caught, or killed?
In “IIII,” the hunter drones are scanning the ramen bar for traces of your DNA and heat signature while you’re driving, but not too quickly, through an industrial area to camouflage your hover car’s thermal image among all the heat put out by the plants churning out recycled metal. The drones follow your trail to the factories, soon setting up a wide perimeter around it. You ditch the hover car and head out on foot, immediately gaining the notice of unsavory characters in faux-leather coats (Real leather is a luxury only afforded by the elite.) who wonder if you’re the cause of the drone perimeter around their neighborhood. Some wonder if there’s a hefty price on your head. Some look ready to collect. You know someone at the protein mill who might be able to hide you, but…is that an Ultra Corporation helicopter landing nearby? They’re the ones who hired you to find her, but why are they unloading corporate gunmen? The situation has gone from bad to worse. Action is imminent.
I is a stunning record, both in its sound and how it was made. The way it melds so many solo elements into a creepy, trippy, hypnotic landscape is nothing short of astounding.
I might have given you an odd look in the last year or so if you’d told me that the psychedelic rock pairing of Moon Duo were making a new record that was going to include a lot of stuff that you could easily slip into a house music set.
Sure enough though, and in keeping with their nature to explore any kind of music they like, Moon Duo (Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada) made Stars Are the Light, a fine record of grooves influenced by 1970’s disco, krautrock, synth wave, and, naturally, psychedelia.
The opening track, “Flying,” immediately makes you feel like you’re floating not only off the ground, but through the roof of your house. The vocals never outweigh the trippy instrumentals, they only enhance them. The title track continues our drift around the Earth with bubbly synths and Moon Duo’s lyrics reflecting how all of us are unique stars in this universe.
“Fall (in Your Love)” brings in spaghetti western guitars to the slippery electronic beats. “The World and Sun” is one of the funkiest cuts on the record, mixing spaced-out synths with South American hand percussion and reverb-laced vocals to produce a sweet sound. “Lost Heads” is psychedelic bliss taking you out of orbit and floating toward the star cluster of your choice.
“Eternal Shore” boosts the krautrock influences a bit with the beats, but keeps the vocals firmly in psychedelic territory. The touch of steel drum-like synth stabs is a nice one and reflects the image of a never-ending beach on an idyllic planet. “Eye 2 Eye” brings in fuzzy guitar to race alongside EDM beats for a fast track that belongs on your next favorite anime action film. “Fever Night” slows down the album for the close, but it’s nothing maudlin. It’s a perfect end to a groovy time, almost like slipping into a hot tub after you’ve had great sex.
Stars are indeed the light, and so are we. Each of us are divine beings connected on this small orb in the middle of space. We are connected with each other and what lies beyond our senses. Moon Duo seek to remind us of this cosmic connection and acceptance that is there for us to embrace. Stars Are the Light is like a singing bowl, providing us the tones to remember who we are and who we are to each other.
Portland, OR quintet Blackwater Holylight have shared the second single from their forthcoming sophomore album Veils of Winter (RidingEasy Records). Hear and share the pop-hook laced “Death Realms” via YouTube and Bandcamp.
The band previously dropped the immediately classic lead track “Motorcycle” via YouTube and all streaming platforms last month. Blackwater Holylight hit the road later this month, supporting Thou for a handful of Southern dates, followed by the full US with former RidingEasy label mates Monolord in November. Please see complete dates below.
Blackwater Holylight, as the name suggests, is all about contrasts. It’s a fluid convergence of sound that’s heavy, psychedelic, melodic, terrifying and beautiful all at once.
As a heavy band, their songs aren’t anchored to riffs, but rather riffs come and go in waves that surface throughout the band’s meditative, entrancing songs. It’s a hypnotic sound, with orchestral structures that often build tension and intrigue before turning the song on its head — not by simply getting louder or heavier, nor by just layering elements. They expertly subvert the implied heaviness of a part, dissecting it and splaying the song’s guts out to seep across the sonic spectrum. Now, having toured extensively following the band’s wildly-successful breakout self-titled debut in 2018, Blackwater Holylight has honed their sound and identity to a powerfully captivating beast. Their live set is all about the slow build, seeming to combine the melodic tension of early Sonic Youth crossed with the laconic fever-dream blues of the first Black Sabbath album and wiry experimentation of post-punk and krautrock. The lineup on this album is Allison (Sunny) Faris (bass/vocals), Laura Hopkins (guitar/vocals) and Sarah McKenna (synths), with new guitarist Mikayla Mayhew and drummer Eliese Dorsay fleshing out their sound in exciting ways.
“The process of this album was vastly different from our first record,” says Faris. “One, because we recorded it over the course of a few weeks, whereas the first record was over the course of about a year. And two, this album was a true collaboration between the five of us. Each of us had extremely equal parts in writing and producing, we all bounced ideas off each together, and we all had a say in what was going on during every part of the process.”
“One of our favorite things about this album is that because it was so collaborative, we didn’t compartmentalize ourselves into one vibe.” She continues. “It’s heavy, psychedelic, pop, shoegaze, doom, grunge, melodic and more. The whole process was extremely organic and natural for us, we were just being ourselves.”
Veils of Winter opens with fuzzed-drenched, drop-tuned bass and baritone guitar leading a dirge riff on “Seeping Secrets.” Faris’ lilting and funereal vocals drop in, adding to the mournful atmosphere until a short turnaround progression hints at changes to come, as Faris and Hopkins harmonize eerily and the tune suddenly turns into a krautrock charge. “Motorcycle” kicks off deceptively with a heavy grunge riff building up for about 40-seconds before the song abruptly shifts gears into a synth-led post-punk harmony, sounding something like Lush meets Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd. “Death Realms” is perhaps the poppiest track, based around soaring shoegaze guitars and interwoven light vocal harmonies. Soft piano notes, occasional woozy whammy bar dives and a driving tom-tom beat solidify its hooks. “Spiders” is a creepy-crawly guitar riff and counterpoint keys, while “Moonlit” explores prog-structures with a shredding guitar solo crescendo. The penultimate track, “Lullaby” is exactly that, a lulling, expansive tune exemplifying Blackwater Holylight’s genre smashing sound as it subtly moves across a vast sonic landscape atop a hypnotic 6/8 beat and repetitive 3-note motif. Throughout the album, their songs shirk traditional verse-chorus-verse structure in favor of fluid, serpentine compositions that move with commanding grace.
Veils of Winter will be available on LP, CD and download on October 11th, 2019 via RidingEasy Records. Pre-orders are available at www.ridingeasyrecs.com.
BLACKWATER HOLYLIGHT LIVE 2019: # 09/28 Gainesville, FL @ The Atlantic # 09/29 Pensacola, FL @ Chizuco # 10/10-13 Lake Perris, CA @ Desert Daze Festival 10/24 Portland, OR @ Star Theater – Album release show 11/05 San Diego, CA @ Brick By Brick * 11/06 Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress * 11/07 Albuquerque, NM @ Sister * 11/09 Austin, TX @ Barracuda – Levitation Fest – RidingEasy Stage 11/10 Lafayette, LA @ Freetown Boom Boom Room * 11/11 New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks * 11/12 Atlanta, GA @ 529 * 11/13 Asheville, NC @ Mothlight * 11/14 Richmond, VA @ Camel * 11/15 Baltimore, MD @ Metro Gallery * 11/16 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church * 11/17 New York, NY @ Saint Vitus * 11/20 Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s * 11/21 Indianapolis, IN @ Black Circle Brewing * 11/22 St. Louis, MO @ Fubar * 11/23 Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck * 11/25 Denver, CO @ Marquis Theater * 11/27 Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom * 12/05 Seattle, WA @ Neumos ^ 12/06 Eugene, OR @ WOW Hall ^ 12/07 Portland, OR @ Bossanova Ballroom ^ # w/ Thou * w/ Monolord ^ w/ Yob
Keep your mind open.
[Stay up to date on music news and reviews by subscribing.]
For their first album of 2019, Fishing for Fishies, prolific and unpredictable psych-rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard wrote a blues record and an album promoting environmentalism.
The title track instantly puts down a happy grove while the lyrics suggest that our oceans need rescued and maybe we should lay off fishing for a while. The album’s cover features a robot (Han-Tyumi from Murder of the Universe?) casting a burning fishing line into a fiery lake that might be covered in a blazing oil spill. Stu Mackenzie and Ambrose Kenny-Smith sing about the cruelty of commercial fishing and how it would be better to just let the fishies swim.
“Boogieman Sam” has a heavier groove that gets your head bobbing and toes tapping. It also lets Kenny-Smith cut loose with his harmonica, as do many of the tracks on this record. It’s fun to hear his playing in the forefront. The jazz swing of the back-to-nature ode “The Bird Song” (which gets into existential philosophy – “To a bird what’s a plane?…To a tree what’s a house?”) is great. It’s like a Steely Dan or Doobie Brothers track.
“Plastic Boogie” is another solid groove cut with Mackenzie and Kenny-Smith sharing lead vocals throughout it as KGATLW discuss how space age polymers are ruining our oceans and polluting everything in sight. “The Cruel Millenial” has Kenny-Smith singing lead while the rest of the Wizards sound like they’re having a blast playing behind him with pub-rock beats and riffs. “Real’s Not Real” bring back that cool 1970’s jazz-rock swing thing that is hard to describe, but recognizable once you hear it. They add some psych-fuzz and blues harmonica to it, which makes it even better.
Speaking of blues harmonica, it’s front and center on the sweet rocker “This Thing” (which also has a fine bass line from Lucas Skinner). “Acarine” brings in a touch of the Middle Eastern rhythms found on their album Flying Microtonal Banana as it floats along in a bit of a psychedelic haze and discusses how even the smallest of creatures are worth saving. The song slides into synthwave sounds and beats that flow well into the closing track – “Cyboogie” – which blends synthwave pulses, robotic (Han-Tyumi again?) vocals, and boogie jams.
It’s a fun record, one of KGATLW‘s most accessible in a while for listeners who haven’t heard their stuff before, and a great set up for their second album of the year – Infest the Rats’ Nest (review coming soon) – which continues the environmental themes of this one.
Keep your mind open.
[Why fish for music news and reviews when you can subscribe and have them delivered to you?]
Canadian psych-rockers Elephant Stone have released “Land of the Dead,” the first single from their upcoming 2020 album. The song was premiered at Brooklyn Vegan, where you can hear it now.
The track is surprisingly heavy for an Elephant Stone tune, and frontman Rishi Dhir has admitted it’s “much heavier than anything we’ve ever done. It wasn’t intentional. I just had this sitar riff and then it evolved / devolved from there.”
Stoner metal fans rejoice!
Elephant Stone are also soon to embark on their fall tour. Dates are below.
11/5 San Diego, CA @ The Casbah 11/6 Phoenix, AZ @ Yucca Tap Room 11/8 Austin, TX @ Barracuda/Levitation 11/9 Dallas, TX @ The Foundry (FREE SHOW) 11/11 Santa Fe, NM @ Rufina Tap Room (FREE SHOW) 11/12 Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive 11/13 Fort Collins, CO @ Surfside 7 11/15 Portland, OR @ Doug Fir 11/16 Seattle, WA @ Freakout Festival 11/17 Vancouver, BC @ Wise Hall 11/19 San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel 11/20 Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
Never ones to rest on their laurels, the Reverb Appreciation Society (the group behind Austin, Texas’ Levitation Music Festival, as well as the Levitation France festival in Angers, France coming up this weekend) have added three more shows to their November 7 – 10, 2019 Texas lineup.
That Damo Suzuki Network show should be a trip. Nots put on a packed show the last time I saw them in Austin, and that Chelsea Wolfe / Ioanna Gika show is an added show because the first quickly sold out. I wouldn’t wait to get tickets to this second show if you missed the first one.
Moon Duo shares the final pre-release single, “Eternal Shore,” from their new album, Stars Are The Light, out September 27th on Sacred Bones. It follows the previously released title track and “Lost Heads.” Across “Eternal Shore,” Sanae Yamada’s hazy vocals drift over reverberating synth and flitting guitar licks. She says, “The lyrics are about the search for a sense of belonging and for the truth of one’s inner being, beneath the masks we’re conditioned to wear in order to function in society.” “We were experimenting with a lot of different rhythms for this record, and this one is in 5/8ths time, which is a real departure for us,” continues Ripley Johnson. “It moves us further away from the classic motorik beat. And it’s special because it’s the first song on which Sanae wrote the lyrics and sings lead.”
Stars Are The Light has a sonic physicality that is at once propulsive and undulating; it puts dance at the heart of an expansive nexus that connects the body to the stars. These are songs about embodied human experience rendered as a kind of dance of the self, both in relation to other selves and to the eternal dance of the cosmos. Johnson’s signature guitar sound is at its most languid and refined, while Yamada’s synths and oneiric vocals are foregrounded to create a spacious percussiveness that invites the body to move with its mesmeric rhythms.
“We have changed, the nature of our collaboration has changed, the world has changed, and we wanted the new music to reflect that,” says Yamada.
After playing dates in Europe, the duo will bring a new live audio-visual show across North America. All dates are on sale now and can be found below.
