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2020 has been a terrible year for all of us, that goes double for musicians, but with the latest Cloud Seeder record and now this album by Terry Gross, things are ending on a high note. Terry Gross for the uninitiated are guitarist Phil Manley of (Trans Am), bassist Donny Newenhouse, and drummer Phil Becker. Here the songs have time to build, subside, and then enter the hallucinatory realm, where the music makes that vital cerebral connection. I thrive on this sort of music, probably because of my love of bands like Hawkwind, The Myrrors and Black Sun Ensemble. Space Voyage Mission is a dope, 19-minute stormer of a song. The first part of the song made me recall Amon Duul, 18th Dye and Sonic Youth with a smidgen of Can thrown in for good measure. The song is the perfect balance of muscular drumming and deft guitar playing, cut with a copious assortment of pedal effects. The first part of this song is molten hot and sucked me into its vortex. Part two is the right hook that keeps hitting you in the cranium. The tight beat, sludgy bass and smokin’ guitar was pure bliss for this 48-year-old psych fan. But wait, then the drums start rumbling and we find ourselves catapulted into part-three of this song. As we race towards the event horizon the music takes on a more frenzied pace that made me feel disoriented and detached from reality. This was truly an epic experience that deserves a place among the pantheon of psych-classics. 

Worm Gear begins the second half of the record with a searing, warped, acid-washed throb that engenders a dissociative sense in the listener. The sonic assault is conveyed with a firming intention of pummeling you into an alternate reality. The sonic brutality slashes and burns everything around it and left me imagining how incredible music like this will sound in a live setting once Covid-19 is in the rear-view-mirror. These two songs take up 33-minutes of the album and make it completely worth the 18$ price tag (see the official unboxing video below-Ed). I think this record is a definite must have for any heavy psych fan out there. The stellar playing and song-craft is imbued with a virtuosity and grit that will stand the test of time, whilst providing ample trips away from planet earth. Now if they can only get their namesake, NPR’s Terry Gross to tour with them, that would be a show for the ages.

Jonathan Levitt-December 18, 2020- 4/5 stars

Purchase at the link down below.

Dutch band Rats on Rafts are back with their third full length LP, set to be released on Fire Records on January 29, 2021. This is a full 8 days after the orange clown moves out of The White House and seems the perfect time for an album chock full of wit, spunk and innovation to be released. Calling it a concept album might put some people off, but here this Dutch band, the one that gave us the awesome Tape Hiss show just how keen their analysis of the world is. Tokyo Music Experience perfectly nails the big brother is watching us vibe. The sense we are under surveillance and losing our grounding in reality starts to creep over you. This song grabs hold and feels like being on an acid trip with no way off the merry-go-round. Here the bouncy rhythm and sonics, buttress the pre-programmed nightmarish future the band are alluding to. An absolutely stunning moment.

Then there is Another Year which references the Swell Maps in all their fucked up, isolationist glory. In the space of just over a minute, the band show they’ve really expanded their sonic palette.

Fragments builds on this vibe and immediately made me feel I had been dropped off in some unknown neighborhood smack in the middle of Pudong Shanghai with its gleaming skyscrapers, crass materialism and detachment from reality. Where is my Dream proves a harrowing yet very rewarding sonic experience. The band really know how to ratchet up the tension and sense of unease. A pop song at its core, here the music veers off into a distorted dilaudid haze that references the scream in Pink Floyd’s Careful with That Axe Eugene, and then implodes into a hail storm of warping distortion. This was such a well rendered piece I had to listen to it a few times. On each successive listen, I felt as if a secret code was being revealed to me. Part Two: Crossing the Dessert is another epic stunner with its sonic barrage. Here the band slay everything in its path. The deftness of the playing, the paranoid singing and harsh production stretched over a giddy up beat, gave this reviewer a psychological workout that I hadn’t expected. Completely scary and intense this record should come with a warning label that it only be administered during the day. Proceed at your own risk because as the legendary band Hawkwind once said via Michael Moorcock:

Do not waste time blocking your ears
Do not waste time seeking a sound proofed shelter
Try to get as far away from the sonic source as possible

Do not panic, do not panic, do not panic!

牛逼啊！

(purchase the record using this link)

https://www.firerecords.com/product/rats-on-rafts-excerpts-from-chapter3/

Jonathan Levitt, December 13, 2020 , 4.5/5

Prepare yourself for a killer cosmic journey because Cloud Seeder who are comprised of Roger Kunkel, Dave Thompson and Steve Edberg, come out guns-a-blazing on their sophomore record. This is some bad ass psych rock that manages to coax the cobra from its basket on numerous moments throughout all 12-tracks. In that Shadow Part One opens the album with a blistering funky soul surfing jam that has so many cool things going on at the same time. Here the keyboards, the spoken sound sample, the organic fluidity of the playing, left me hoping it would go on forever. Maria on the Moon, is a beautiful moody piece that shows off Roger Kunkel’s trance inducing lyrical guitar playing. I love how the song spins down into a sonic haze as if we have lost the signal and are nearing interstellar space. Caprinae reminds this drug-addled listener of Pink Floyd’s, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Here Cloud Seeder have taken their production skills to the next level, making me believe it’s 1967 instead of 2020. Laughing Gas is the perfect song to play on some lonely stretch of New Mexico Highway situated between nothing and not much else. Here I am reminded of ex-Spacemen-3 blokes The Darkside and their song She Don’t Come. The playing is exceptional all around and once again for those who love psychedelic music the song stretches out into a menacing fury and never lets up (Vincent Price cackle and all). Buckminster begins with a jazzy riff and then morphs into a Bill Frisell/ Ginger Baker type jam, that is warped and unsettling and helps set the stage for the second half of the record.

Infectious Agent is a sinister pulsating jam that rips and snorts its way towards a fiery death. This is just simply too cool for school. 牛逼! Headcharge reminds me of a narcotic-informed jam from Torch of the Mystics by The Sun City Girls. Here Kunkel and crew let things unfurl over what feels like a long-lost soundtrack to a cult 60’s road movie. The Great Departure is a fascinating song that is cut up into several distinct sections that builds to a ferocious peak and then spins down into a unsettling off axis moan. The Absence of Small Fish bounces and chugs with a glorious sonic melange squeaking and squelching in the background. It’s as if we’ve tuned into some short wave radio broadcast that is only clear for a few minutes then gets inundated in a flood of white noise. This has transient random waves with announcements in spades. I love every little flourish, from the tiniest bleep and bloop to the wide open production to the exploratory nature of the music. The record closes with In that Shadow Part Two which provides a positive end to a record that dumps the listener out somewhere familiar yet unknown. Even though I loved the first album this record completely outshines that one on so many levels. The playing here is a joy to behold. The compositions are unique and filled with the unexpected which are nourishment for the body and soul. This is one of the finest musical statements I’ve heard this year.

P.S.

This record needs to be released on vinyl because the vibe of the music, the artwork, the whole package are deserving of it.(Get a kickstarter going boys!–ED)

by Jonathan Levitt-5/5 stars- December 8, 2020

Back in 1998 I was utterly transfixed by the film The Sweet Hereafter directed by Atom Egoyan. The insular community, the tragic bus accident, the harsh landscape and the questioning of what justice is and if it really matters when you can’t (in this case) bring back a townful of children. At around the same time I was also very much into the Jim Jarmusch film Dead Man where protagonist William Blake had to shed his demure persona whilst being ushered into increasingly more difficult situations and decisions, before finally being cast adrift in a Native American funerary canoe. I mention these two films because James Johnston and Steve Gullick are both wonderful visual artists in their own right. Steve is a stellar rock photographer, and James a brilliant painter who I’ve followed now for several years. It is with this record that the two have created something utterly compelling and magical. To sum it up It’s a soundtrack begging to be paired with a film. So let’s get into it. 

First Light is beautiful and melancholic with layers of violin stretched over the sound of the ocean, squealing strings and the occasional seagull.  Then there’s Blue Rider which turned my eyes into a camera panning across the dusty horizon focusing on the faint image of a man on horseback, heading off into the painted desert, the sound of his voice commanding his stallion wafting occasionally on the breeze and then as quickly as I catch sight of him he vanishes. Here the tension of the guitar, violin and harmonica combined with Johnston and Gullick’s, mournful, harmonized vocals stay just long enough to make their point and then dissipate into the ether, making me question if what I’d just witnessed was simply a mirage.  Gullick really shines on the track Poised to Fall which finds us hitting the trail in search of revenge and redemption. He sings “For the broken speech, for the harsh belief, for the blood that’s spilled” truer words were never spoken as we inch our way towards inevitability.  Stormy Sea foreshadows the second half of the album and is an unsettling number that hints at a foreboding future.  The tense and brooding Big Star Falls, is the moment we stop and stare up at the sky questioning the path we’ve taken and yet we understand that we are being lured onwards towards some unclear fate. Swing Me is the questioning of one’s motivation. You stare into the abyss with nothing reflected back, while the tendrils of violin, plucked guitar and organ curl and eddy around you amplifying the pain in your heart. We Sail conjures images of a stormy ocean with the sound of a bell buoy off in the distance, life must now lead you across the water for a reckoning. Will you have the will to face what’s waiting on the other side? The beautifully layered vocals were completely unexpected and left me with some hope as they faded away. 

I am so impressed by this record and its ability, in often very short pieces, to summon the emotion that it did. Not many records these days have the ability to conjure up such vivid imagery. But I think overarchingly the album is very keyed into the often competing emotional forces that swirl within all of us and the fact that nature is continually contending with itself. It’s an important questioning of life at this juncture.  

Jonathan Levitt Dec. 5 2020 Rating 4.5/5