The Mind Expansion Thread - Psych/Space Rock

This band pushes all the right buttons for me. Rocking guitars mainly riff driven (for all you aficionados who needs splintering unbelievable high soaring solos, this is not the place...), thumbing walking bass, slow creepy-crawley organs, tight 50-60´s drumming tied together with the twin vocals of what sounds like Grace Slick in her prime with Jefferson Airplane together with Jack White of The White Stripes.

Recalling a scorchingly hot summers day last August, dazing on the beach just north of Copenhagen in what most people here in Denmark call the "Whiskey-belt", because of the abundance of folks who have cars of gold, exotic pythons as guard dogs, sneeze in their money and live in larger than life castles, that would make for great viewing in the sort of MTV cribs television. -Anyway, we had with us a huge stereo chuck full of - well let´s just say alternative music attacking the beach side with tunes very unfamiliar from the drum n´ bass that usually dominates the airwaves. This album got about 6 or 7 spins, and it was like a great sorting machine - collecting long haired freaks from the darkest corners of the beach, as well as a handful of "rock chicks" that jump at anything showcasing a female voice (you know who you are Björk fans)... Whenever "Tyrants" got played, the loud cries and otherwise disturbing chit chat from the sands around us quieted down, and you could feel how they got swept away by the music. It starts out crushingly loud like a herd of wild buffaloes - changing suddenly into laid back soft singing transforming the song completely, and to those of us who know our rock n´ roll history will pick up the tiny acoustic ode to "Stairway to Heaven" that follows. The song crashes into some of the most beautiful female vocals, that I promise you - once heard, you will never forget it. Kind of reminds me of "War Pigs" live, when the crowd sings "Uuuuuuhh Uuuuuhhh" along with the guitar at the end. An instant hit for sure... Another favourite of mine is "Bright Lights" that really shows the psychedelic side of Black Mountain´s music, and clocking in at about 17 minutes this should arouse even the most rusty wine gummy prog boner... (-Even if they use a couple of those min on ambient noise)

This is not an album with great virtuosos and faster than light time changing signatures of any kind. It is however an honest album with heart and soul, that at times rips through the dull and enclosing jail bars of everyday life. A must for old school psychedelic mice, Zeppelin balloon people, proggy beavers and the likes who enjoy their beach music slow and brooding like a caterpillar up your misses thigh...

AmbianceMan I bought this album on a whim at the used CD store as I always pick up one or two I've seen listed in progarchives but never heard. This is one I wish I would have left at the store. I would describe it as "retro minimalist Deep Purple" with smatterings of other groups. I feel all the instrumentation and vocals are less than inspiring at this point. The keyboards run the gamut throughout the album, from mellotron to organ to synth...and back again. Guitars aren't varied much and the beats and grooves by the drums and bass leave much to be desired. I feel the vocals are the weakest part of the record. There are two vocalists: one male and one female. They generally sing in different spots, with probably 65% of the vocals done by the male. The female I am guessing is one of the other members' girlfriend due to her lackluster vocals. She tries too hard for the Stevie Nicks vibrato, and wavers quite a bit without any power.

The album begins with two weak songs, followed by two longer songs (8 and 6 minutes respectively). Then it just kind of meanders to song 9 which is a 16 minute track that at 6 minutes I thought "can I listen to this for 10 more minutes?" Then it ends with the "Stevie Nicks wannabe" vocals on track 10.

All this being said, I don't think that they are without potential. However, the feeling I got throughout listening was that it all seemed disconnected. Maybe it was the mix? Whatever they were striving for, I just didn't "get it". I had to put something else on right away to get it out of my head

I'll give it 2 stars, with better vocals 3.

UMUR
In the Future is the second full-length studio album by Canadian hard rock/ psychadelic rock act Black Mountain. I recently reviewed the self-titled debut full-length studio album by the band and while that album is a pretty solid hard rock/ psychadelic rock affair, it didn´t exactly make my blood boil. So I didn´t have great expectations to In the Future. My fears that this album would sound pretty much like the debut ( not that it´s a bad album by any means) was unfounded though. In the Future is like a 100% improvement over the debut, and we´re talking about a big surprise for me here.

The sound on In the Future is very retro late sixties/ early seventies hard rock/ psychadelic rock styled. Lots of vintage keyboards, hard rocking guitars and a tight rythm section. I´m thinking a mix of Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath ( the more hard rock part of their seventies material) and Jefferson Airplane. The latter mostly because of the use of both male and female vocals and the kind of stoned delivery. In the Future succeeds very much in having a great balance all the way through the 57:15 minute long playing time. There are hard rocking tracks like Stormy High and Evil Ways, psychadelic pop/ rock tunes like Angels and Stay Free, the two female vocal led and dark tracks Queens Will Play and Night Walks, the short David Bowie like Wild Wind, the two almost progressive tracks Tyrants and Wucan and of course the centerpiece of the album the 16:41 minute long Bright Lights. The latter is an outstanding track and I recommend starting with that one. If you´re not impressed by that, chances are you probably won´t enjoy the rest either.

The production is organic and greatly enjoyable.

In the Future has simply blown me away and I find the album highly recommendable. To those, who like me, have only listened to the debut and haven´t bothered to check out In the Future yet, I say you should get started and make your way to the nearest music pusher and purchase this album right away. What a great find and my 4 star rating is fully deserved.

The first track, Stormy High, consists of a pulverizing rhythm and an unforgettable Tony Iommi-inspired guitar riff. This in fact received the Bucky Award for 'Best Hook of 2008' from CBC Radio 3. With all due respect to the good people of Canada, the significance of this award is lost on a guy from Scotland (well, it's lost on me anyway) but I guess it's a nice achievement. It is definitely a great riff though. Angels is altogether more laid back, although the drums are still pretty loud, and there's some nice Mellotron (strings and flute) here. Black Mountain has drawn comparisons with Jefferson Airplane, I suppose in part due to the combination of male and female vocals. I don't know the Jefferson's well enough to comment on that (something I'll have to rectify!), but I wasn't initially impressed with some of the lethargic, stoned-out vocals on this. However I'm getting to like them the more I listen, and they do suit the music surprisingly well. Track 3, Tyrants, is the first of the more complex pieces on the album. It begins with thunderous bass/drums and ominous- sounding Mellotron that essay in subdued vocal and acoustic sections. The powerhouse drumming then returns along with some blistering guitar work from Stephen McBean (with that name, he must surely be Scottish!) and finally a reprise of the acoustic section. Darn it's good.

The near raga Wucan features synthesizer and Mellotron against a trance-like rhythm, with guitar flaring up intermittently. Stay Free is a largely acoustic ballad that was featured in the Spiderman III soundtrack. Female vocalist Amber Webber sings alone on a couple of songs, the first of these being Queens Will Play. This song also contains more guitar in the style of Tony Iommi, this time sounding subdued but edgy. The underlying tension is finally released in the closing few seconds of the track once the drums are let loose. Evil Ways (not the Santana song) features more forceful drumming and guitar soloing but is my least favourite track, while the brief Wild Wind is a sing-along ballad featuring fuzzed-out guitar. That brings us to the centrepiece of the album, the near 17-minutes Bright Lights. Back in the day, a track this length would have been exceptional whereas nowadays it's hardly worthy of note. Bright Lights is densely structured with extended instrumental excursions involving bruising bass and snarling guitar... actually, I'm not going to try to navigate the reader through every twist and turn of this song. My suggestion would be for the reader to just buy the album and listen for them self. Night Walks is the final track and the second to feature Amber Webber going solo. It's an ambient and reassuring way to finish the album.

I haven't heard Black Mountain's debut as yet, so I can't comment on how the band has progressed. However from the evidence of this, the notoriously 'difficult' sophomore album, they're definitely heading in the right direction. This is somewhere between good and excellent, so I'll give it 3 stars.

When bands seek to re-create the spirit, texture and feel of earlier exemplars of a musical form, they enter some tricky territory. They may well lure some younger listeners, and might even get the attention of older fans who yearn for the glory days of their long- gone youth, but they also risk sounding like second-rate imitators -- even plagiarists -- of those who invented the form. Regrettably for this 70s survivor, the latter case applies here. The man has definitely left the silver mountain.

Yeah, you get the shade of Jon Lord's organ, you get pounding drums, big guitars, and the recorder sound from Zep's "Stairway" plus "artful" acoustic accents, but you'll know all along that as with New Coke, it's just not the real thing. None of the riffs are particularly killer, and the singers (one male, one female) are a particularly weak link, sounding half-asleep, half stoned. You'll find no Plant-ian, Gillan-esque or Byronic vocal pyrotechnics here! My biggest complaint, though, is with the overwhelmingly lame, school-boyish lyrics. Cringe-worthy, painfully clichéd lines such as "you've got to change your evil ways"(now where have I heard that before -- Santana, perhaps?), "you will die by the sword," "ride the wild wind... fight the demons at your door" and "blood sprawls across the walls" might wow the schoolyard set, but they make me snort in disbelief. (I'm not convinced that blood, as a liquid, even can "sprawl.") Still, like, hey man, isn't the image of gore-covered walls a real deep and cool one? Well, frankly, no -- it's not. I outgrew Dungeons & Drag-ons, and I've had a surfeit of short half-baked songs which go nowhere, along with over-long songs which end in abrupt "we don't know how to end this" fadeouts. Repeatedly chanting "bright light/light bright" might be great fun over a bowl of BC bud, but poetic or profound it ain't. Hard rock, alright -- hard to get into.

The ironically titled IN THE FUTURE (where it's all been done before -- and better, it seems) is sixty misbegotten, misspent minutes of empty, pretentious, unmemorable bombast. All bong smoke-on-the-water and mirrors, Black Mountain are akin to a dwarf shouting from the shoulders of a giant's statue, or a big wind breaking across the mouth of a long-drained bottle: full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing. Save your shekels for retirement, seniors. If you need something hard, blasting LZ4 or MACHINE HEAD in the Golden Years Sunset Rest Home will win you more points with that sexy seventy-something across the hall, anyway.

1.5 stars -- generously rounded up because the groovy cover art reminds me of my old Rubik's Cube.