Lumerians – High Frontier
Partisan records
Lumerians’ debut
album, Transmilinia, was a
breathtaking rush of glittery, space age psych-pop which held an immense amount
of promise. High Frontier takes that
strain of utopian greatness even further. Imagine a large inscrutable
technological artefact from the future had been sent back to an equatorial
forest of the past, and is unearthed in the present by a team of tripped out,
long-hair anthropologists – that’s what Lumerians remind me of. Hell, they even
used to dress up like some unused intergalactic witchdoctors from that weird
1980s ‘Flash Gordon’ film.
Unquestionably, one
of my favourite albums of last year was a fairly low key release by Lumerians. Transmissions from Telos IV is a
fantastic collection of free-form, instrumental exotica – taking in Middle
Eastern dirges, wonky organ jams (fortunately not the medical kind) and an
extended wig-out that would not have been out of place in the ‘Electric Miles’
(Davis, that is) canon. It’s a fantastic album, and if you can snap up it up, I
highly suggest you do.
Dogon Genesis gets
the ball rolling with a pulsing organ figure and bongo driven groove, ending
with some Peter Hook style bass riffing. It is clear that the mutant grooves of
Can have lodged themselves somewhere in the collective consciousness of
Lumerians, yet they never descend into generic Krautrock pastiche. In fact,
there are a lot of compelling elements that fit together seamlessly, including tropicalia,
orientalism, post-punk bass rumblings, noir-ish Gainsbourg style euro-pop and
darkly tinged psych.
Each song is crafted
with skill and sophistication featuring time changes that turn unexpectedly on
a sixpence, guitar lines that glance off at odd angles and analog synths that
bubble in the ether. The Bloom (which was last heard on the great Horizon
Structures EP) is an icy and tense ballad culminating in a heart stopping
guitar freakout.
Smokies Tangle is a spooky
instrumental that Lumerians excel at; insistent, angular and urgent - recalling
a lysergically enhanced Lalo Schiffrin. Life Without Skin comes on like
prime-time Jean Jacques Perrey, featuring francophone female vocals. The album ends with Abudhabijhab which brings to mind the mighty PiL as
post punk dubbiness , alien synthesizers and a slowed down monologue adds to
the unsettlingly trippy groove.
This is a
fantastically inventive album by a band that can seemingly take their disparate
influences, and synthesize them organically into something startling and
original. Highly recommended!
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