Carlton Melton – Always Even

Carlton Melton – Always Even

Agitated/Mid To Late

After delivering a brace of incredible albums last year, Carlton Melton have upped the ante again this year by delivering three records that are every little bit as good.  Nowadays, it seems that John McBain (ex of Monster Magnet – Spine Of God era,/Wellwater Conspiracy) has pretty much been installed permanently into the Carlton Melton camp and ‘Always Even’ is definitely touched by his presence. That being said, Carlton Melton’s modus operandi has not changed one iota – they still record their spaced out freeform psychedelic jams inside of their geodesic dome in North California. In many respects, the dome has become an instrument in itself, being an organic and cavernous space with its own sonic idiosyncrasies that add much to Carlton Melton’s sound. It really would be inconceivable to think of Carlton Melton recording their music anywhere else, especially given how much the dome has completely woven itself into their being.

Slow Wake is a mellifluous cosmic amble which opens the album, which gently inflates into its seven and a half minutes running time. Dreamy synths and delicately interweaving guitar leave vapour trails hanging in the air on this graceful and meditative introduction. Keeping On takes a more space/kraut route with huge guitar chords and equally gigantic drumming, underscored by burbling keyboard arpeggios. Spiderwebs is another dreamy drone, except this time there is a bit of a sinister undertone gnawing away at the edges. There is almost a sense of a dark psychedelic nursery rhyme being played out.

Sarsen sounds like a pared down Hawkwind, as an unrelenting motorik beat pulls guitar drones and post punk keyboard oscillations along in its wake. The Splurge ends the album with Carlton Melton taking a more dissonant course than usual, reminiscent of Bardo Pond at their most freeform. It is a beautiful monochord jam that brings to mind gigantic grey rainclouds, ready to burst. It does in my mind, anyway.

If you’re looking for three minute concentrated bursts of constructed pop, then you are going to be left sorely disappointed. However, if you like sublime dreamlike explorations into freeform space jams, then there really is no finer band than Carlton Melton, and Always Even is about as good as it gets

It’s Not Night; It’s Space – Bowing Not To Knowing What

It’s Not Night; It’s Space – Bowing Not To Knowing What

Self Released via Bandcamp

Firstly, what a fantastic name for a band. It suggests to me the boundary line of being on Earth and not being on Earth, or perhaps the boundary line of mystical consciousness, as the mundane gives way to something more wonderful and imaginative. In some respects, this sums INNIS (as they shall be referred to from now on) up well. There is something of the cosmic and mystical contained within their feverish grooves. Imagine the muscular, loping riffage of Earthless bound together with the more esoteric elements of Grails and then you are perhaps some ways to picking up on what INNIS are putting down. This is very heavy Raga rock for Ragnarok! Hailing from Upstate New York, INNIS have quickly progressed from their excellent ‘East Of The Sun, West Of The Sun’ EP from late 2011 to record this crowd funded debut. Over $5000 was sourced by hungry fans willing to call down ‘Bowing Not To Knowing What’ into physical form.

The album opens with the ritualistic groove of ‘The Gathering’, which (if I’m correct) features a sample of the lilting tones of the Machine Elves’ Earthly spokesperson, the late, entheogenic Terrence McKenna, which is very in keeping with the tone of the album. What’s great about this album is the graceful way that songs on this album can change their pace on a sixpence. It puts me in mind of the great Kogumaza debut from 2011. Although they have very different approaches and sound, the spiritual hum of both bands is very similar.

‘Magus In The Valley’ shows at least a passing knowledge of the first few Sabbath albums and ploughs the same golden furrow that Earthless sagely describe as ‘the cosmic nod’.  ‘Painted Serpent’ zig-zags in a similar manner to the solar worship of the likes of the My Sleeping Karma’s of this world, whilst ‘Blue Mountain Freedom’ and ‘Vibration Eater’ step it up a gear with an intensity that borders onto ‘Dopesmoker’ territory. The Raga theme reasserts itself in a manic fashion as ‘Palace Of Bees’ takes us to the finishing line.

This is instrumental music that is neither all head nor all heart; it is probably a Chakra somewhere inbetween.

Hills - Master Sleeps

Hills – Master Sleeps

Rocket Recordings

First released in 2011, Master Sleeps is a welcome and timely reissue (not least as the original vinyl pressings are rare as hen’s teeth) from Gothenburg’s Hills. Thankfully, the design conscious team lads at Rocket have seen fit to re-house the album in a much more attractive cover by Bruno Borges. Hills have been playing dreamy, organic psych rock since 2007 and earlier this year released their ‘Live’ album which channelled the relentless pagan repeato jams of primetime Parson Sound/International Harvester and the Velvet’s Sister Ray. As an aside, Hills also have some inscrutable links to fellow countrymen – the all conquering Goat, and also share their love of all things tribal and hedonistic.  

Rise Again opens the album with a rumbling Wooden Shjips style drive, shot through with phased guitar solos and tape echoed vocals. Bring Me Sand starts in a much more meditative fashion but soon ramps up into a spacey raga infused jam, pushed forward by an intense, unvarying motorik rhythm that underpins the exotic melodies powerfully.  You could well be heading out on an unscheduled and invigorating inner flight.  Clara’s Vaggvisa offers gentle respite with its sleepy organ lines and the sound of babies mewling ambiently. It’s actually quite beautiful and much less saccharine than you would imagine.

The Vessel arcs back to Rise Again with its fuzz guitars weaving in and out of a tumbling backbeat, offering something of a wake up call after the somewhat dreamy lullaby of the previous track. The title track Master Sleeps fades in from midway through, suggesting that it could be part of a longer stoned-out jam. Reminiscent of CAN at their height, the vocals take on Damo Suzuki’s soft focus stream of consciousness, whilst the rest of the band lock in to a wonderful classic kraut groove which mesmerises all the way to the end. Operating heavy machinery at the same time as listening to this could prove to be unwise. The album ends on the mystical dirge of Death Shall Come, a spacious ritualistic drone wracked with existential fear and finished the album on a sombre and ominous note.

Master Sleeps is something of a minor classic and hits on a lot of major touchstones of psych rock without ever seeming contrived or a dead eyed retread of classic tropes. Hills are currently busy beavering away on their next album, which is due next year. This reissue of Master Sleeps has set my expectations levels very high indeed

First published on Beard Rock
 

Anthroprophh - S/T

Anthroprophh – S/T

Rocket Recordings

Avant/Psych/Space

Over the course of the last 20 years or so, Bristol’s The Heads have steadily matured from a fairly marginal psych­­-grunge/stoner outfit into fully fledged cult status. This is in spite of the fact that they have seemed to have been on a semi- permanent hiatus for a good while now. Live dates and a positive tsunami of archive releases have kept them firmly in the imagination in their growing legions of fans, whilst widening fissures that exposed some of the more esoteric influences that drove the band. There are any number of US psych rock bands willing to attest to the lasting influence of The Heads, not least one Ripley Johnson of Wooden Shjips/Moon Duo fame.

Anthroprophh is the solo work of guitarist Paul Allen, who along with Simon Price (who released the marvelous Kandodo album earlier last year) formed the two guitar offensive wing of The Heads. Recruiting the help of fellow Bristolian noise merchants, Big Naturals and The Head’s compatriot, Hugo Morgan , Anthroprophh manages to channel Paul Allen’s more kraut-y, avant and proggy fantasies and certainly turns up the weird dial somewhat.  And really, it’s all for the best.  If the Silver Surfer owns an Ipod, you really wouldn’t be surprised if you found Anthroprophh blaring out of it.

‘Hermit’, the album opener, is probably the most Heads-like track here; reminiscent of Hawkwind’s cosmic roamings. The ‘Proff’s guitar here at times sounds not unlike Nik Turner’s weirdo sax skronk.  ‘Discretion Shot’ is an odd, short acoustic ditty that melts away into a burbling analog synth meltdown.  ‘Precession’ proceeds along one of Sun Ra’s Outer Spacelanes, powered by the same exotic Intergalactic Tropicalia that the Arkestra specialized in. Allen spirals out guitar lines that I imagine would make (Can guitarist) Michael Karoli nod approvingly in the hereafter.

 ‘Ende’ is a more morose, hazy and yet oddly affecting funereal dirge – which by the sound of it, was a funeral service conducted inside a giant galactic wormhole. The 16 minute ‘Entropy’ takes you on a disorientating ride. Twilight Zone guitars hold you in place whilst spacey glissandos and oscillations attempt to pull you away with its hypnotic undertow. This is a shining doorway to Krautrock (at its most ‘out there’) heaven.  Album closer ‘We’ takes us back into more Hawkwind/Kraut territory, as the’ Proff’s intergalactic chants, metallic riffing, mellifluous flute and bubbling synth take us finally towards the vanishing point.

This is certainly weird and exotic, if not exactly easy, listening. That said, it is never really inaccessible or impenetrable. However, If you were just looking for The Heads-style psych-rock thrills, well, I’d say you might be barking up the wrong tree here.  All the same, it’s certainly worth the effort, and may take you miles further from home than you have ever been before.

Endless Boogie - Long Island

Endless Boogie – Long Island

No Quarter Records

Musical repetition, certainly in the minds of some, can seem like an unending nightmare, like reality caught up in some kind of temporal loop, where mere irritation slowly turns into maddening torture. Less dramatically, some people just find it boring. There is another side to this quality that borders on the transcendental; where the act of unchanging repetition pushes through the boredom barrier and frees the mind from its inundation by the mundane. Each repetition grows in power. Buddhist monks swear by it.

Long Island is the album where Endless Boogie gets to cast off the shackles of their past, and strike out in a new, unprecedented direction. Nope, of course they don’t, which may turn out to be good news or bad news depending on what side of the fence you stand. To some Endless Boogie may sound like an interminable Free Festival Roadhouse Rock biker band, or others may find that transcendental and mesmerising quality in them. Luckily, I’m a fan and this is another strong release from the EB boys.

If you’ve not encountered Endless Boogie before, they radiate with an alien heat found in the old records by John Lee Hooker (from who they got their name, no doubt).  Imagine 15 minutes of a long, snaking blues riff trailing off to a vanishing point that never arrives. This no vanity project for some sub Clapton-esque guitarist to hang his ‘oh so tasteful’ soloing on to: this is digging into prime locomotive blues power.  They have more in common with driving ‘Endless Straight’ of Neu!, or the more drone-y end of psychedelic music. So with opener ‘The Savageist’ (great name, by the way – I imagine it’s a tribute to me), you seem to be tuning in halfway into Endless Boogie’s err… endless boogie. Vocalist Paul Major intones his blues mysticism over a torrid, hypnotic blues chug. You’re either in for the duration, or you are not.

’Occult Banker’ (which calls to mind the weird Masonic imagery found on dollar bills) sees the Boogie on a more Stooges-y trip, still pushing forward into the distance. Cliché as it may be to describe it as such, but you can really picture a heat distorted open road here. Possibly the most interesting track here is the just shy of 15 minute finisher ‘Montgomery Manuscript’, which is more astrally inclined than the rest of the album. Major sings almost subliminally as the momentum builds in wah-wah riffs and a chiming blues raga guitar. Peyote may have been involved, who knows?

If you’re looking for an Endless Boogie album to start with, this one is as good as any other exactly because it is as good as any of their others. Never changing, continuously moving forward. 

(first published on Beard Rock)