LAPSED

Bardo Pond are one of the new bands I discovered this summer and I'm very happy that I did although it wasn't that good the first time I heard it. When the first seconds of the album started to play I immediately turned down the volume until I heard all of the distortion and noise would stop, but after 2 minutes into the songs I realised that the distortion won't be stopping any time soon or at all. I got turned off because of the nonstop distortion in every songs from start to finish so I didn't enjoyed my first listen at all.

After a while I wanted to listen to the band again to see if they will work out this time and the first songs was still hard to listen to, but now I payed more attention to the music instead of whining and complaining about the noise and I started to enjoy them. After the second song I was hooked and then the rest of the album was very easy listening and enjoyable. Isobel's singing is very nice and plesant and it often reminds me of Jefferson airplane's Grace Slick. She sings heavenly even though the music doesn't really reflects that. The music is rather slow and while one guitar is making alot of atmospheric drones and another is making some good melodies, the bass and the drums are very present in the overall sound delivering great rythim lines that keep the songs alive and interesting. All of those elements are perfectly well mixed and the results are interesting and good! And thus Bardo Pond's sound is made. Their space rock sound is made of hipnotic and repetetive riffs and melodies that puts you in a trance and with the help of the distortion as well.

There are alot of great songs and I can only think of one bad song in the whole album, but of course the best song on the album is the 14 minute Aldrin. The song starts very nice and slowly with a repetetive melody and Isobel whispering the lyrics. When the song has 3 minutes left they change the pace a little faster. It's guaranteed that you'll be nodding your head from start to finish with this song. Very chilled, very smooth and a perfect ending to a great album. By the end of the song you'll get used to the distortion and drones and it'll leave you wanting for more.

To sum it up this isn't a very accesible band and it's mainly because of all of the noise, but after you get used to it then you'll enjoy every single minute of it. Recommended for fans of Krautrock, space rock and everything in between.