Cave – Psychic Psummer (2009)

Chicago’s Cave have returned with their distinct blend of momentum rock and it is, fittingly, their most fully realized disc yet. Tighter, funkier, spacier and more driving than anything they’ve done, this is the group at their best, concocting neo-Krautrock grooves that perfectly soundtrack the continued and colorful descent deeper into the new millennium.
Mixing equal parts Can and Stereolab (who, of course, took more than a bit from Can themselves) with a grooving and cruise-worthy psychedelicism propagated by the likes of Funkadelic, Cave manage to sound at once immediately familiar and entirely original, a trait uncommon in today’s increasingly oversaturated music landscape. Where many bands seem to be loosening their belt of late however, Cave is continually tightening, forging their jams into focused demonstrations of their collective potential. -check out review at.. brainwashed.

Track List:
01 – Gamm (6:22)
02 – Made in Malaysia (3:37)
03 – Encino Men (8:04)
04 – High, I Am (4:35)
05 – Requiem for John Sex (6:36)
06 – Machines and Muscles (3:57)

Weltraum – Magnolia (2009)

Weltraum = Space. This name is surprisingly occupied by a relatively young german band. Nevermind – it suits fine. Whenever or whereever you think of or talk about producer of trippy music – you won’t ignore this band any longer after listening to their current album ‘Magnolia’. The Weltraum crew around drummer Denniz Gockel and bass player Dora Gockel is experienced, busy for about ten years now with the preference on playing improvised psych/space music. During this time they produced more than 20(!) self-released albums, mainly recordings from their live gigs.
The band name obviously points to the stylistical fundament, the space rock. However – a synthesizer is missing here and the songs are made up in a special meditative mood accompanied by a proper portion of ethno flavour. This is reminding me of the Russian band Vespero during some parts.-full review at ..progarchives.

Track List:
01 – Magnolia (14:48)
02 – Break It (10:50)
03 – Leaving Astral Airport (2:46)
04 – Canalize (10:29)
05 – Drunken Eagle (4:42)
06 – Ufo Voices (1:29)
07 – End Ending (16:37)
08 – Dubrocks! (7:24)

LineUp:
– Dora Gockel (bass)
– Jens Dittberner (bass)
– Boris Mihatsch (guitar)
– Sebastian Widjaja (guitar)
– Denniz Gockel (drums)
guests:
– Tom Kosiowski (Didgeridoo, voice)
– Armin Wenk (Djembe)
– Jochen Kosanke (Fujara)
– Stefan Schindel (effects)

 

Vibravoid – Burg Herzberg Festival (Live) (2011)

Recorded live on July 15, 2011 at Burg Herzberg Festival in Breitenbach, Switzerland.

Take a deep breath, relax and float downstream with the multicoloured sound of Vibravoid. After the sensational success of last year’s ‘Vibravoid Live At Burg Herzberg Festival 2010’ and the phenomenal highly acclaimed ‘Minddrugs’, this year the group took over the main stage to dominate the ceremonies! On late Friday night Vibravoid played a superb performance accompanied by a heavy psychedelic lightshow – second to none! Vibravoid played a mixed set from ‘Minddrugs’, previous albums as well as a blistering 20 minutes version of Pink Floyd’s “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.
Heavy and fully loaded psychedelic freak out noise will set fire to your soul!”

–all that is heavy.

Track List:
01 – Save My Soul
02 – She Is Just 13
03 – What You Want
04 – No Silver Bird
05 – SeeFeel
06 – Ballspeaker
07 – You Keep On Falling
08 – Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun

Datura – Visions For The Celestial (1999)

Originally released in 1999 on Cranium Records, the excellent US label Brainticket has taken the chance to release this album now in 2001 again. Datura were formed back in 1995, and after three demos they released the mini CD ‘Allisone’, also on Cranium Records. This band is from New Zealand and they are influenced by 70’s acts like Hawkwind, Blue Cheer, Sir Lord Baltimore or Mountain. If you want to compare them with 90’s bands, then you can find Datura somewhere between Kyuss, mid-90’s Sleep and Monster Magnet, but these three guys are talented enough to present us their own 70’s influenced heavy brew. Check out the fastest track ‘Reaching Out’, a heavy fuzzed-out rocker or the melancholic ‘Voyage’.
The album ends with the nearly fifteen minutes long track ‘Mantra’, a psychedelic space song where they use additional instruments, like flute, keyboards, clarinet and percussion. –keep reading in… cosmiclava.

Track List:
01 – Magnetise
02 – Sunshine In Purple
03 – Reaching Out
04 – Euphoria
05 – Voyage
06 – Mantra

LineUp:
– Jon Burnside (Drums, Percussion #2)
– Bostjan Gombac (Flute, Clarinet, Percussion)
– Brent Middlemiss (Guitar)
– Sharnay Moxey (Keyboards)
– Danijiel Cerne (Percussion)
– Craig Williamson (Vocals, Bass, Percussion)

 

Hash Jar Tempo – Well Oiled (1997)

This collaboration between Bardo Pond and experimental guitarist Roy Montgomery is basically everything psych rock rolled into one album. And then some. If Pink Floyd’s music is lunar, Hash Jar Tempo’s music is intergalactic. -sputnikmusic.
—
Recorded in a one day session, Well Oiled lives up to the Krautrock-inspired goof of the band name (think Ash Ra Tempel) without simply replicating the time. Instead, it very much is what is promised, a collaboration between Roy Montgomery and Bardo Pond that lives up to the experimental and exploratory heights both are easily capable of. All cuts are untitled, and given the improvisational nature of the disc, the feeling is that of just listening in on six fine players working together and seeing what can happen without prompting. Unlike the group’s semi-namesake, Hash Jar Tempo doesn’t punish and haunt so much as it does engagingly trip out, with the right head-nodding pace and echoing chimes that will attract both older stoners and younger shoegaze freaks. –full review at… allmusic.

Track List:
01 – untitled (13:33)
02 – untitled (1:58)
03 – untitled (13:05)
04 – untitled (11:09)
05 – untitled (13:51)
06 – untitled (18:44)
07 – untitled (6:01)

LineUp:
– Roy Montgomery (guitar)
– Michael Gibbons (guitar)
– John Gibbons (guitar)
– Clint Takeda (bass)
– Ed Farnsworth (drums)

Hash Jar Tempo – Under Glass (1999)

Under Glass is another release from two already great abstract projects — the Hash Jar Tempo moniker denotes a collaboration between New Zealand’s Roy Montgomery and the Bardo Pond, artists whose individual work explores the extremes of spacey, atmospheric rock. Under Glass consists of eight long compositions formed from slow-building swells of sound, sometimes with a dramatic, lumbering feel and sometimes with a more drugged-out and sedate tone. The aspect of the group’s work that separate them from similar projects, however, is their use of indistinct, barely present bits of drums and vocals, making Under Glass seem less like an exercise in ambience and more like a spacey rock band as seen through a dense and disorienting fog. -allmusic.

Track List:
01 – Prälaudium Und Fuge. D-Moll (10:29)
02 – Labiomancy (8:44)
03 – Sources In Cleaveland (4:56)
04 – Hymenoptera In Amber Crybaby (9:42)
05 – Atropine (16:58)
06 – In The Cells Of Walken’s Corti / Gravitational Lens Opera (5:16)

LineUp:
– Roy Montgomery (guitar)
– Michael Gibbons (guitar)
– John Gibbons (guitar)
– Clint Takeda (bass)
– Isobel Sollenberg (vocals)
– Ed Farnsworth (drums)

Slowdive – Pygmalion (2005)[remastered]

Pygmalion is the most abstract of Slowdive’s albums; after moving from the sugary pop of Just for a Day to the more mature and more experimental Souvlaki, the band began to incorporate even more elements of ambient electronica — drum loops, samples, and songs even less tangible than on previous releases. There seem to be two prevailing opinions of the album, among Slowdive fans: either (a) it’s disappointingly ‘out there’, since it doesn’t work with the conventional pop underlying the sounds of Souvlaki, or (b) it’s absolutely brilliant, taking their sound into the realms it was always destined to go. The second opinion seems a little more reasonable; tracks like Blue Skied and Clear and Crazy for You demonstrate that the songs are still in there, somewhere — they’re just buried under more abstract sounds than before. The album is not for those seeking a direct and solid song under the surface — but for anyone who appreciates the indirect and intangible, it’s a stylistic masterpiece. –taken from… allmusic.

Track List:
01 – Rutti (10:05)
02 – Crazy For You (6:01)
03 – Miranda (4:49)
04 – Trellisaze (6:22)
05 – Cello (1:42)
06 – J’s Heaven (6:47)
07 – Visions Of La (1:48)
08 – Blue Skied An’ Clear (6:54)
09 – All Of Us (4:07)

LineUp:
– Rachel Goswell (vocals, guitar)
– Nick Chaplin (bass)
– Neil Halstead (vocals, guitar)
– Ian McCutcheon (drums)
– and Christian Savill (guitar)