We love a bit of Soma Crew here at Aural Aggravation. ‘Got it Bad’, which prefaces the release of their new album, is perhaps the most definitie statement of their sonic capabilities yet. Check it hre:
Posts Tagged ‘Psychedelic’
Watch: ‘Got it Bad’ by Soma Crew
Posted: 14 March 2017 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: Got it Bad, Indie, Psychedelic, Rock, Soma Crew, video stream
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Watch: ‘Where Wild Flowers Grow Fondly’ by Andy Oliveri & the Mountaineers
Posted: 31 January 2017 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: Andy Oliveri & the Mountaineers, Psychedelic, Shoegaze, video stream, Where Wild Flowers Grow Fondly
You want slow-buiding, psych-tinged shoegaze with a magnificent motorik groove? We’ve got it right here. Lifted from their upcoming debut album Call Them Brothers, it’s seven and three-quarter minutes of blissed-out, FX-laden alternative rock steeped in the haze of 90s greats like Ride and Chapterhouse. But enough preamble. Watch and listen. And enjoy.
11PARANOIAS – Reliquary For A Dreamed Of World
Posted: 15 October 2016 in AlbumsTags: 11PARANOIAS, Album Review, Groove, Heavy, Psychedelic, Reliquary For A Dreamed Of World, Ritual Productions
Ritual Productions – 28th October 2016
11Paranoias do heavy psychedelic with the emphasis very much on the heavy. Their fourth album, Reliquary For A Dreamed Of World is a downtuned, ultra-low frequency, mega low-tempo doom sludge trudge through the darkest places of psychedelia. The crushing riff that lands halfway through ‘Peripheral Metamorphosis,’ the album’s first track, registers around the same sonic zone as Swans’ ‘Cop’. There’s an eternity between each pulverizing drum smash, which lands with the force of a planetary collision, and the power-chords are heavier than is conceivable for mere instruments to make: this is music that’s nothing short of galactic in its enormity and weight. It’s the sound of dark matter combusting.
Five minutes into the 15-minute mammoth that is ‘Destroying Eyes’, a whip-crack treble-topped snare snaps through the dense murk of noise to propel a vocal track, layered in delay and reverb to plough a New-Wave inspired furrow before it all explodes, unexpectedly, in a blistering wig-out centres around a driving goth-tinged groove.
After the hypnotic ‘Avallaunius’ chills the intensity – at least for the first three minutes or so, at which point it brings the noise – ‘Mutus Liber’ brings it low and slow and goes for the crushingly heavy in a big way, the mangled vocals all but lost in the tsunami of immense power chords. ‘Meditation on the Void’ is the darkly hypnotic workout the title suggests, whipping up a cyclone of psychedelia which threatens to collapse in on itself. After the slowly spiralling ‘Phantom Pyramid’, the brevity of the final track, ‘Milk of Amnesia’ is unexpected. In fact, a squalling barrage of feedback a snarling, ripping bass from which emerges something that for all the world resembles a distorted segment of Fields of the Nephilim’s cover of Roxy Music’s ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache’, it’s unexpected in pretty much every way imaginable.
Conjuring mental spaces and a hallucinogenic, mirage-filled alternative reality, Reliquary For A Dreamed Of World conjures a world that’s s much a nightmare as a dream. It’s a powerful album which, while heavy – and oftentimes, monumentally so – displays a remarkable knack for a deep groove. It’s an album that will bend your brain, while crushing it by sheer force at the same time.
Soma Crew – EP 01 (Soma)
Posted: 29 September 2016 in Singles and EPsTags: Black Angels, Drone, EP 01, Motorik, Muttley Crew, Psychedelic, Review, Soma Crew, Yrk
A year or so back, maybe, from the ashes of York-based psychedelic drone act Muttley Crew emerged York-based psychedelic drone act Soma Crew. Sort of. The same band in essence, it was undoubtedly time for a change of name, but there’s been something of a lineup reshuffle in the process, and, on the evidence of this, the first Soma Crew EP, a sonic evolution too. This means that while there are still heavy hints of Black Angels, and the songs are still built around two or three chord chugs swathed in layer upon layer upon layer which twist and turn over the course of six minutes or more, there’s new stuff going on which wasn’t present on the Muttley Crew album which came out in the Spring of 2015.
With a ragged guitar sound and Simon Micklethwaite’s vocals adopting a sneering, drawling tone, there’s a punk edge to the EP’s first cut, ‘Pulp’. After a left-turning detour around the mid-point, it bursts into a raging racket of dissonance. And all the while, the drums keep on hammering out a relentless mechanoid rhythm, holding it together while everything else collapses to beautiful chaos. The slow-burning ‘Path With Heart’ brings it down a notch or two and offers a more low-key and introspective aspect. It’s exactly the music you’d expect from a band named after a muscle relaxant which works by blocking pain sensations between the nerves and the brain.
‘Vital Signs’ is perhaps the first track here that’s truly representative of their live sound, a motoric droner, with murky, overdriven and reverby guitars yawning and veering across one another over a thumping locked-in groove with no let up for over six and a half minutes. The eight-minute ‘Prizefighter’ begins at a lugubrious crawl. It takes its time… and then the overloading lead guitar breaks in, noodling in a smog of a chugging rhythm to drive it to the end.
The rough edges and hazy production give the songs an immediacy, and beneath the layers of reverb and cavernous delay, there’s a pulsating energy that gives EP 01 (aka Soma) a rare vitality. Rebirthed, re-energised, this band may be habit-forming and should be used only by the person it was prescribed for.
The Lucid Dream / Eugene Gorgeous / Soma Crew – The Basement, York, 17th September 2016
Posted: 25 September 2016 in LiveTags: City Sreen Basement, Drone, Eugene Gorgeous, Hypnotic, Live Review, Psychedelic, Soma Crew, The Lucid Dream, York
Christopher Nosnibor
Soma Crew were an obvious and natural choice of support for cult psych at The Lucid Dream on their first visit to York in their nine-year career. I first heard The Lucid Dream back in 2010, when they set their stall out with a brace of impressive EPs. Since then, they’ve released two long-players, with a third out next week – hence the tour.
Soma Crew, playing their second set of the day, are on top form. They’re loud, and they’re in synch. In other words, they’re exactly as they need to be for an optimum performance, and they piledrive their way through a set which opens with the spiky, angular ‘Remote Control’ and culminates in a squall of feedback.
Soma Crew
Call me prejudiced, but I had low expectations for Eugene Gorgeous. It’s a shocking name, for a start, never mind the fact the band members and the gaggle of mates they’ve brought along, who have little to no grasp of gig etiquette or what moshing is about, are barely old enough to drink but fuck me, they’ve got songs and, mannequin-like bassist notwithstanding, energy. Stylistically varied, there’s an alternative / punk edge to the bulk of an impressive set. And, credit to them and their fans, they don’t do the all-too-common thing of sodding off afterwards, and instead stick around for the headliners. It’s a wise choice.
Eugene Gorgeous
The Lucid Dream ae stunning, and seem determined to make their first trip to the city is memorable one. They may look mundane, but musically, they’re sublime, and they sizzle their way through a set of kaleidoscopic songs which are densely layered and deeply melodic. It’s hazy, blurred, hypnotic shoegaze par excellence. With an early start to the set, it looked like being an early finish, but The Lucid Dream have slowly but surely built a following based on slow-burning epics, and when they announce that they’ve got three songs left and they’re quite long, they’re not kidding: the segued three-track finale sees them lock into a sustained crescendo that explodes for the best part of half an hour. With the set crashing to a climactic close, it makes for an exhilarating and convincing performance. If only they’d had copies of the new album on sale…
The Lucid Dream
Watch: ‘Upside Down (the death loop)’ by Mayflower Madame
Posted: 7 July 2016 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: goth, Mayflower Madame, Psychedelic, Single, Stream, Upside Down (the death loop), Video
Having already guaranteed themselves a slot in the AA best albums of 2016 list, Mayflower Madame are offering up a video to accompany the track ‘Upside Down (the death loop)’. The psych/goth act enlisted Norwegian art collective Born For Burning to direct the video: "We wanted to make the impression that the video consists of two different found tapes. Inspired by the gloominess of the song we sought to make the images of the video disturbing and shot with a lo-fi camera. Some key ideas were trafficking and crime scene footage, partly inspired by the movie Lilya 4-ever by Lukas Moodysson."
Watch the video here:
Listen: ‘Samadhi (So Far Away)’ by Racing Glaciers
Posted: 23 June 2016 in Recommended Streams and VideosTags: Psychedelic, Racing Glaciers, Samadhi (So Far Away), Shoegaze, single stream, Transformers 4: Age of Extinction
Racing Glaciers return with a stellar new single ‘Samadhi (So Far Away)’, out this June, and ahead of their debut album release through Killing Moon this August.
With well over 2million Soundcloud plays on just their first four tracks, their track ‘First Light’ featured on the Transformers 4: Age of Extinction movie and won the band support from BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6Music DJ’s including Annie Mac, Huw Stephens, Greg James, Fearne Cotton and Steve Lamacq.
The band have also performed at the BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend, Liverpool Sound City, The Great Escape Festival, Secret Garden Party, London Calling in Amsterdam, Berlin Music Week, Y Not Festival, Wakestock and Beacons, as well as a 35-date UK tour late last year.
Racing Glaciers will release this new single ‘Samadhi (So Far Away)’ this June, the first exciting glimmer of what is to come from their debut album release ‘Caught In The Strange’ this August, and a track that pulls together all that is great about the 5-piece from Macclesfield, as gloriously cinematic, inventive and essential as we need right now.
Racing Glaciers release their debut album ‘Caught In The Strange’ on August 5th 2016 through Killing Moon.
Get your lugs round he psychdelic-tinged shoegaze belter that is ‘Samadhi (So Far Away)’ here:
Man of Moon / Party Hardly / Treeboy & Arc – Headrow House, Leeds, 25th March 2016
Posted: 26 March 2016 in LiveTags: Gig, Good Friday, Headrow Houase, Indie, Leeds, Man of Moon, Party Hardly, Psychedelic, The Twilight Sad
Christopher Nosnibor
I could easily harp at considerable length about the rather disappointing attendance, noting that Man of Moon have received considerable exposure in recent months by way of a tour supporting fellow Scots The Twilight Sad (which is how I came to discover them, and I note singer / guitarist Chris Bainbridge is sporting a Twlight Sad T-shirt on stage) and a fair bit of airplay on 6Music. Another city, another night, you might blame apathy, but Leeds on a Friday night is not apathetic, even when it’s Good Friday and the students are away and people are on holiday. And it would be wrong to blame the band. This is simply what happens when you’ve got Laetitia Sadier playing across town, as well as headline sets from Department M, Sunset Sons, The Stranglers, Lower Slaughter supported by Workin Man Noise Unit, and, perhaps not so much, Eddi Reader and almost a dozen other little gigs. The point is, it’s impossible to be everywhere at once, and being spoiled for choice can have its downsides.
No regrets about my choice, though. Arriving a song or two into Treeboy & Arc’s set, initially, I’m largely indifferent to what appears to be just another college band who’ve brought some daft mates along for the beer and some silly dancing. But they’ve got overtones of early Psychedelic Furs, not just on account of the tom-centric drumming, which works well, but the guitar sound, heavy on chorus with a brittle, metallic flangey sound. It all amounts to an above average take on indie with an 80s alt / post punk vibe (a dash of Echo & the Bunnymen, perhaps). They’re sounding good and by the end of the set, they’ve won me over.
Party Hardly won me over when I caught them in February, alongside Post war Glamour Girls supporting Fizzy Blood for their single launch. I’m not saying I’d rush out to buy their music or actively listen to it at home, but they’re a more than passable live act whose competent indie rock stylings hint at The Smiths filtered through a 90s reimagining. With positive vibes, good energy and some strong, hooky songs, there’s not a lot to dislike here.
Party Hardly
With a brace of dates south of the border (Manchester and Leeds) ahead of a more extensive tour in support of their ‘Medicine’ EP, released in May, Man of Moon are still in the position of a band building a live following. But if they’re disappointed by the size of the crowd, they don’t show it, and the duo put on a proper show.
The set starts with a Suicide throb before exploding into thunderous krautrock at 100 decibels. Between songs, they’re pretty unassuming, but the duo have seemingly grown in confidence and sonic stature as they build some heavy psychedelic grooves – think Black Angels on speed –over the course of their 45-minute set.
Man of Moon
Mikey Reid has an unusual drumming style: sitting with his stool raised high over his minimal drum kit – a combination of acoustic drums with a huge splash cymbal and an electronic pad set – he’s tight and plays with an attention to nuance, adding a strong dynamic to the songs. Meanwhile, Chris Bainbridge’s guitar style is geared toward a layered, textural sound that really defines Man of Moon.
Man of Moon
Tonight’s outing reaffirms that they’re a quality act with an evolving repertoire. They’ve also clearly got the grit, the determination and the professionalism to build a substantial cult following. And when they do, I probably will say ‘I told you so’.
Aural Aggravation 