ANY NOISE IS INTENDED

Zone Six are a German band that deliver a blur of Krautrock, psychedelic and space-rock styles, their founder and mainstay being multi-instrumentalist Dave Schmidt aka Sula Bassana, a notable figure in the modern German psych underground scene. Together with a revolving door of musical guests over the years, their music is fully improvised, offering darkly fluid and trippy sounds, with their second release, 2003's fully instrumental `Any Noise is Intended' having plenty to offer space music, stoner and heavy psych-rock lovers.

Fans of legendary German band Can will dig the unpredictable and atmospheric `Score Trek', the twenty-minute opener that's sedate and dreamy one minute, rippling with danger and erupting with intensity the next. Trickles of glistening synths and bleeding electronics wash over the listener, acid-rock guitar jamming laced with echo moves between loosely jangling and snarling, murmuring bass slithers around the background, and they're all swept up into a sucking vacuum of stormy noise, power and distortion.

Trilling electronic effects, exotic percussion and thrumming reverberating drones build to a maddening intensity on the title-track, and the sludgy stuttering bass, thrashing drums and rambling mantra-like electric guitar soloing calls to mind legendary German psych-rockers Amon Duul II, with dark and cool grooves and a ferocious finale also worked in. `Psss......' crosses over into ambient, drone and trance atmospheres around chilled guitar ruminations, `Bauchfellhavarie' is a jarring (and borderline aggravating!) electronic experiment of distorted voices and shimmering effects, and parts of the brooding and frantic closer `The Gotthun' sound like Hawkwind, the Ozric Tentacles and Electric Orange jamming together.

(A bonus on the recent Acid Test LP reissue is a pair of live recordings from 1998 on the fourth side of the vinyl, and `First Trip to Prog Stage' and `Cookie Overdose' compliment the swirling sounds of the studio set beautifully, just making an already superb album even better)

While newcomers should look to the incredible trippy self-titled 1998 debut to begin with (especially the recent newly- instrumental reissue version from 2017), `Any Noise is Intended' is still a phenomenal follow-up with tons of dirty, overwhelming and heady space sounds with a tasty lo-fi production that proves addictive and intoxicating on constant repeat listens. The album is easier to find than ever with the new lovely double vinyl edition on The Acid Test label in 2020, and it delivers hypnotic, vibrant psychedelic soundtracks to become lost in forever.

Four stars.