LISTEN UP: NEW RELEASES OF VARYING DEGREES OF BRILLIANCE (11.20.2021)

  RAJA KIRIK - RAMPOKAN




From a Ugandan label we are graced with Rampokan:  Compositions rooted in the sound of shamanic trance dances, specifically the Jaranan, or Jathilan, a Hindu-Buddhist-era dance from the 11th Century symbolizing the ways common people could overcome their rulers using evasion and agility.  It's a mind-bending fusion of traditional Indonesian percussion, digital noise and over-driven Dutch hard-style. The work roots itself in the stage of Jaranan performance where the players become possessed, connecting to their subconscious mind and the body's collective memory and trauma.   This is effectuated by dousing evocative microtonal clanks from an arsenal of home-made instruments in expertly designed digital noise, and stringing the disparate elements together with the oppressive pneumatic pressure of high-BPM, warehouse-ready kick drums. Like the trance dances that inspired this, these tracks evolve and cycle from misery to ecstasy, spinning distinctive narratives with rhythm, texture and repetition. 


THE IDEALIST - COSMIC MUSIC FOR HIGHER AND LOWER AWARENESS





Noga Nord (Gothenburg, Sweden) continue to rouse spirits from the dead with this latest release from The Idealist. A creepy, acid-driven, sonic voodoo ritual with the 303 the main tool of manifestation; it lurks in the shadows waiting to entice the weirdos and freaks away from the mainstream beige. 

Both primal and modernist in equal measure, there's a tense, foreboding overtone to it all which makes it sound like a lost soundtrack to a film about witches, ghouls and goblins. With elements of dub, cosmic and acid all thrown into the cauldron oblivious to the multi-dimensional fallout and ramifications which might occur. We highly recommend listening accompanied by a recognized spirit guide. 


GIOBIA & THE COSMIC DEAD - THE INTERGALACTIC CONNECTION





Heavy Psych Sounds Records (Rome, Italy) gives us what they feel is the psychedelic-space split of the century.  Hey, it may be, as offhand we can't bring to mind too many psychedelic LPs with two bands sharing a side apiece.

And with a title like this, how could you not jump in head first?  Yes, man, yes: The Intergalactic Connection:  Exploring The Sideral Remote Hyperspace.  It's Giöbia  (from a northern Italian festival much like Samhain) matching wits with The Cosmic Dead (an amorphous visceral blob of space rock energy powered by celestial vibrations hailing from Glasgow, Scotland).  So, you get, not one, but two, two of the best modern space-rock bands traveling the interstellar highway. The Italian quartet graces us with three far out cuts while the amorphous Scottish guys deliver a nineteen-minute long space odyssey.

A must-have for all time benders. Fans of Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, UFO and Gong will be more than enthusiastic.  They will be . . . well fill in the blank for "more than enthusiastic."  We can't do all the work for you.


LF58 - AL27:  LF58 LIVE AT BRANCALEONE






Recorded as a live performance at Brancaleone, a cultural center and one of the best underground clubs in Rome, the eponymously titled album offers a sprawling journey across the pan-dimensional ether.  So you know it's heavy.  Spread across six sides of vinyl, the performance includes fully improvised material as well as choice selections from a number of composers you've never heard of.

More importantly, lend your peepers to this sublimely incomprehensible description of the music from the band's record company:

With seemingly no beginning nor end, the session emerges in suspension; an electric ocean of infinite deepness. Gleaming across the patter of galaxies on a wide black backdrop, its myriad vistas are projected like transitioning scenes of an unending story. The gentle tide brings with it specks of cosmic debris and mysterious signals. Soon, quiet drones are overtaken by ripples of solar flare and percussive clamours. Forms melt like liquid, a ball of amorphous plasma pulsating with ecstatic radiance. Prying open universe within universe, ‘Live at Brancaleone’ has a vastness that cannot really be contained.


ELECTRIC MOON - FLAMING LAKE (LIVE)





A psychedelic experience that facilitates the possibility of having an encounter with your innermost self.  That's how this German acid-rock improvisational trio describes their music.

Others have this to say:

Songs that build into massive crescendos, fading back into hazy trance like soundscapes before crumpling in on themselves like white dwarf stars - O. Pium (Bagginsville, NZ)

Electric Moon plays the best acid rock on the planet - Zara Thustra (Pluto, NY)

Probably the best psych ever recorded. - Zeus Horrorwitz (Tampon, Finland)

I had a wonderful journey through the psychedelic meadow there were plants and birds and rocks and things and Ganesh offered me a smoke of his magical pipe - Thomas De Mincey (White Cheeks, UK)

Eat my brain - Dixie Fried (Trailer Park, AR)

WE SAY:  INDELIBLE PROOF THAT GOD EXISTS!






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