Prolific Australian psych-rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have another album ready to roll on April 29, 2016. Nonagon Infinity is now available for pre-order through the band’s Bandcamp page and the first single, “Gamma Knife,” can be heard there. It’s a loud rocker with heavy harmonica and some of their fastest drumming.
Nonagon Infinity will be released the first day of Levitation Austin, at which King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are playing, so I’m looking forward to hearing this album live.
Keep your mind open.
[Don’t leave just yet. How about subscribing to us for updates sent straight to your e-mail?]
Chicago’s The Luck of Eden Hall(Greg Curvey, Mark Lofgren, Carlos Mendoza, Jim Licka) have decided that everyone needs to groove out more in these crazy, hectic times, so why not double your groove dose with a double album – The Acceleration of Time?
The album starts with bell chimes that become something like a warning klaxon until we’re dropped into “Slow” – a solid rocker with prog-rock guitar and vocals that remind me of King Missile if King Missile decided to rock out more. “Blown to Kingdom Come” ups the reverbed vocals a bit and has more killer drum fills than I can count. It also has a damn catchy melody that gets your toes tapping.
“A Procession of Marshmallow Soldiers Across the Clockwork Pudding,” an instrumental, is the best title to a psych-rock song I’ve heard all year. I love bands that include instrumental cuts, and this one has soaring guitar work from Curvey.
The title track appropriately starts with a ticking clock that becomes weird piano you might hear in a haunted saloon. It has heavy George Harrison and Tom Petty influences that work well. The whole song crackles and is a fine showcase for the band.
“Channel 50 Creature Feature” is a favorite, as I grew up a “monster kid” watching such programs. It doesn’t have a lot of creepy organ or Theremin like you might expect. It has the sound and feel of an epic Frank Zappa jazz track. Imagine something you’d hear at a late night chill-out party in Klaus Kinski’s house and you’ll get the idea.
The guitars on “Arthropoda Lepidoptera” soar like the butterflies in its namesake. “The Family Timekeeper” continues the theme of time and the perception of it. The drums tap out a clock-hand beat and the guitars have this weird jangly sound that slips into a nice alt-rock riff between verses. “You Asked About Water on Mars” is appropriately spacey (the synths) and cosmic (the guitars).
“Only Robots Can Search the Deep Ocean Floor” follows it. “We’re empty vessels. In the end, it’s all for naught. Some find love, some find luck, some lose touch,” Curvey sings. If only robots can search things we can’t reach, we can at least search deep into ourselves if we brave the journey.
“Another High Speed Blowout” starts off sounding like a New Pornographers track with its groovy beats and growing synths, until it goes from a rolling boil to a simmer and lulls you into a warm trance. “The Happiness Vending Machine” is great power pop and about the benefits and (mostly) hazards of money. Hard-hitting bass combines with slightly fuzzy guitars and rock drumming. It’s an instant hit.
The twelfth track is appropriately named, “Twelve.” The song takes us from noon to midnight as a couple deals with what appears to be a relationship that is turning into a boring routine. Can they break the monotony and save each other, and will they have the same battle the next day?
“White Caps in the Wind” is over eight minutes of lush dream pop. Flute (or flute-like synths, I’m not sure which) floats along as more clockwork guitar guides you like the wind mentioned in the title. “The Saints Are Quiet Above Us” is something you hear in a dream while sleeping in a desert lodge with the window open and sandalwood-scented air blows over you. The closer, “A Man of Conservative Style,” has crazy Beefheart saxophone, strangely syncopated vocals, and more good guitar work from Curvey, who has convinced me he’s one of the best unheralded guitarists out there right now.
This is one of the best psychedelic rock records I’ve heard all year. It succeeds on all fronts: psych, power pop, dream pop, prog-rock, and alt-rock. The Acceleration of Time is so good that it seems to go by too fast for a double album, which is only fitting for its title. The album alters your perception of time and the world around you while you listen to it.
Keep your mind open.
[Don’t waste another minute! Subscribe to us today!]
I first discovered The Dunes(Stacie Reeves -vocals and percussion, Matt Reiner – guitar, Adam Vanderwerf – bass, Jess Honeychurch – keyboards, Brett Walter – synths, Clair O’Boyle – drums) in 2014 when I was writing for Outlaw Music Magazine. These Australian psych-rockers create music as big as their homeland and trippy as the night skies above the desert there. I don’t know if they’ve ever toured the United States, but getting this fine live recording is a good appetizer for a future full course live meal.
The album opens with “When You Wake Up,” which plunges you into their deep, dark psych-rock at the first note. It’s almost induces a trance with its droning synths, fuzzed-out guitars, echoing vocals, thick bass, and drums that sound like they’re being played in a red rock canyon, so I imagine the band is referring to waking up from illusions and seeing true reality rather than waking from a good night’s sleep.
“Badlands,” the title track to their September 2014 release, is nearly ten minutes of freak-out mind-warp madness. The synths spin around you, the drums would fit in a pow-wow, and the bass buzzes like a drunken hummingbird. We get an extended cut of “A Thousand Crimes” after it, and I like how the synths sound like a sitar and the guitar work has a bit of a surf edge to it.
“End of the Beginning” is strong and bold, with great shoegaze guitars and heavy bass and percussion while the keys, synths, and vocals float along like a weird fog. The use of a tambourine on this track is both excellent and jarring. “Door to the Mind” blends shoegaze and psych-rock so well that I’m not sure where one ends and the other begins. It definitely will open your mind as it blends Doors, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, My Bloody Valentine, and the Jesus and Mary Chain. It’s an amazing track with some of the finest guitar and rum work on the record.
“Lunar Effect,” all eleven minutes and six seconds of it, ends the album on an uplifting note with vocals that rise like the sun. The band goes out on an ethereal note as they flow back and forth until the final chords.
This is a fine psychedelic rock record and one of the best live albums I’ve heard in a long while. The Dunes need to get to the U.S. soon so more can hear them.
Keep your mind open.
[Give us a subscription, won’t you? Each one helps the cause.]
Legendary German kraut rock band Faust are playing a rare performance at Levitation Chicago on March 12th, closing out the three-day festival. Faust built a devoted fan base in the 1970’s with their mixture of kraut rock and psychedelic rock before breaking up and disappearing until the 1990’s. Only two of the original members remain (Werner “Zappi” Diermeier – percussion, Jean-Herve Peron – bass), but this will still be a special set.
Keep your mind open.
[Keep discovering new music by subscribing to our blog. You’ll get updates sent right to your e-mail.]
Night Beats(Danny Lee Blackwell – guitar and lead vocals, James Traeger – drums, and Jakob Bowden – bass) are a fantastic psychedelic rock band hailing from Seattle, Washington. I first saw them at Levitation Austinin 2013 and was blown away by their mixture of psychedelia and blues. They put on another great performance the following year at the Levitation Austin pre-festival kick-off party. I got to meet Blackwell there, and he signed my copy of Sonic Bloom. He was a humble, nice chap.
I’ll see Night Beats any chance I can get and look forward to seeing them again and picking up their new record at Levitation Chicagoon March 12th. I’ll have my Sharpie ready.
Keep your mind open.
[Get groovy with us all the time by subscribing to 7th Level Music! Drop your e-mail address in the box to your left. Each one helps. Thanks.]
Ryley Walkeris a singer-songwriter who is also an excellent guitarist. I hadn’t heard of him until he was listed as a performer during Levitation Chicago, and now I’m keen on seeing him live. He has a simple, elegant style that reminds me of early Yes records. He’s playing the festival on March 11th.
Keep your mind open.
[Like what you see? Subscribe to us in the scrolling column to your left. Thanks.]
Nite Fieldsare an Australian four-piece who make hypnotic shoe gaze psychedelia with guitars that sound like they were recorded in a box canyon and vocals that sound like old Love and Rockets or Jesus and Mary Chain records.
Their newest album, Depersonalisation, is full of dreamy stuff that I’m sure will be good live and put the audience into a trance. They are opening Levitation Chicago on March 11th.
[Like what you hear? Pay us back with a subscription in the column to your left. Thanks!]
This Israeli shoegaze trio hails from Tel Aviv and only sings in Hebrew. Don’t understand Hebrew? Neither do I, but like me you won’t care because good music is good in any language. Vadaat Charigim(“Exceptions Committee” – Yuval Haring – guitar and vocals, Yuval Guttman – drums, Dan Fabian Bloch – bass) play finely crafted shoegaze that borders on dream-rock. Their stuff reminds me of early albums from A Flock of Seagulls – lots of reverb on the vocals, spacey guitar, trippy synths, and drums that sometimes hit heavy and sometimes almost seem to disappear.
I missed them at Levitation Austin last year, but they’re playing Thursday March 10th at Levitation Chicago. I look forward to the set.
Keep your mind open.
[Enjoy finding new bands? Why not subscribe to 7th Level Music? Drop your e-mail in the box to the left and you’ll get updates mailed straight to you!]
Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor’s (Sean Morrow – guitars and lead vocals, Eric Oppitz – bass and keyboards, Rick Sawoscinski – drums) Desert Brain is the first album from the Detroit psychedelic trio that is one flowing piece of art instead of an album of individual tracks that stand apart from each other.
“We’ve always wanted to make an album that was one continuous flow,” Oppitz told me when I saw SOYSV in October 2015. “We felt like we had the clout to do it after the first two records.”
He’s right. Desert Brain is a fine piece of work that reminds me of early Pink Floyd records that were part-rock albums, part-metaphysical journeys. “Seventh Scene” opens the album with a spacey feel SOYSV do better than most. It flows into the organ-heavy “Major Medicine,” which has become one of their wildest cuts at live shows because it dissolves / evolves into the mind-bending chaos of “What’s Your Cloud nine, 37?” and “Magic Mother’s Tongue / A Little Jaunt into the Light.” “Little” is an understatement, considering this “jaunt” is full of Morrow’s wall-flattening guitar, Oppitz’s thudding bass, and Sawoscinski’s Detroit auto factory-precision power drumming before it becomes something you might hear in a giallo movie by the end.
There’s a brief break of silence before “Girl of a Thousand Voices” when you flip over the vinyl and start the second leg of the journey. It’s a lovely track with distorted vocals and more of those guitar riffs that Morrow seems to pull out of dreams or mystic rituals, whereas the frightening follow-up, “The Prettiest Sounds of Purgatory,” sounds like something out of a Lovecraft story.
“Long Lovers Sun” shows the band’s Doors influences with jangly guitar, ethereal synths, and cryptic vocals about a beautiful woman. The title track showcases Sawoscinski’s drumming as he lays down beats fit for Apache warriors charging on horseback and then switches to near silence just before the song almost spins out of control and drops into “Like a Forest Runs” – a near-shoegaze cut that would be great for walks through bleak Detroit streets or while gazing across a frozen lake with your “Highly Enchanting Eyes.” This last track is something you might hear on a Captain Beefheart record – guitars and synths that mesh so well that they’re often difficult to tell apart, drums that sneak up on you, and slightly skewed vocals that intrigue you almost to the point of giving you the creeps.
I’m a big fan of SOYSV, so it’s no surprise I love this record. It’s a great move for the band as they get weird and pull us down the rabbit hole with them. They are on the verge of being one of the “Next Big Things,” so don’t miss any chance you get to see them. They’re also good chaps, so give them your support.
