More than 25 years after the start of collaboration with Acid Mothers Temple mastermind Makoto Kawabata (including the INUI series and the classic Kawabata/Youngs release) comes the first proper VHF LP by the prolific quintet. One of an occasional series of “minimalism” inspired LPs by the group, “In a Not C” is a not a barely changing drone, but a wild ride with the band in full flight, rushing along in a glorious swirl of psychedelic madness. Like the band’s well-known 2001 version of Terry Riley’s “In C,” the group uses a small cell of repeating sound as a jumping off point and then gradually revs up to maximum velocity.
The current Acid Mothers Temple lineup has produced a series of fun and unique variants on the band’s longstanding signatures, with…
Category: psychedelic rock
…The album has been newly remastered and cut directly from the analog master tapes.
It starts with a crackle of feedback shooting from speaker to speaker and a voice intoning, “Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y’all have knocked her up” and talking about rising “above it all or drown in my own sh*t.” This could only have been utterly bizarre back in 1971 and it’s no less so decades later; though the Mothership was well on its way already, Maggot Brain really helped it take off. The instrumental title track is the key reason to listen, specifically for Eddie Hazel’s lengthy, mind-melting solo. George Clinton famously told Hazel to play “like your momma had just died,” and the resulting evocation of melancholy and sorrow doesn’t merely rival…
Pop historian Jon Savage knows his way not only around compelling books, but also around coherent compilations of the most varied sonic contexts. Now he excavates, once again, the musical spirit of an era that produced legendary things: Savage illuminates San Francisco’s subculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s, beyond the clichés of flower power. The picture Savage draws sounds scruffier, grainier, above all more faceted and more branched than the polished historiography would suggest.
‘Alabama Bound’, originally a folk traditional, was interpreted around 1966 by The Charlatans – meaning the psychedelic rock band that also bore this name – in a rather dragging, almost trance-like manner. Even so, the song’s country…
Around the time that he formed the White Stripes, Jack White had a stint as a guitarist for The Go, a wooly and psychedelic Detroit garage-punk band. White was in the Go when they recorded their debut album Whatcha Doin’, which came out on Sub Pop in 1999. Shortly thereafter, White left the Go, and they recorded another album called Free Electricity. It never came out. But after 26 years on the shelf, Free Electricity finally see worldwide release via Sub Pop.
The Go recorded Free Electricity with their Whatcha Doin’ producer, Outrageous Cherry frontman Matthew Smith. In a press release, Smith says that he and the band were listening to a lot of ’60s free jazz when they recorded the LP and that “there’s a heavy jazz influence on this…
The dawn of the British folk revival broke in 1965 when Bert Jansch’s “folk-baroque” finger style revolutionised tradition, providing the early morning light for a burgeoning psychedelic scene which, by 1972 had traveled from folk clubs to the high-concept landscapes of progressive rock, exemplified by the Eastern-tinged sitar-guitar on Yes’s ‘Siberian Khatru’.
Western artists utilised Eastern forms as a new musical bedrock. The Byrds transitioned from folk-rock into the uncharted territory of ‘Eight Miles High’, a track widely cited as the first true U.S. “Raga Rock” single. Driven by Roger McGuinn’s solos – inspired by Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane – it proved pop could embrace complex modal structures. Similarly, The Yardbirds’…
Steered by their co-founder, Will Greenham, musical collective Blind Yeo is a hodgepodge of all-ages misfits from around the UK who found solace in an arts hub called The Cornish Bank.
Onstage, this Falmouth-based crew move about like spinning tops and dress as wizards in colorful capes. They sound a bit like fellow beach town residents The New Eves — if that band’s loose, chant-based noisemaking looked to the laidback experimentation of The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band rather than stern-faced NYC cool.
Their debut album, The Lemoine Point, takes just a few seconds to stutter to life and snap into a Switched On Volume 1-era Stereolab groove complete with blinking arcade-game crossfire.
After 10 releases that have garnered Montreal’s Rishi Dhir and his band Elephant Stone a staunch cult following and collaborations with the likes of The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Beck, maybe after their latest album Asha, they will get more than they deserve.
After all, Dhir has been around for a while, covering almost a whole spectrum of psych rock known so far, not only with Elephant Stone but with The Datsons/The High Dials before, and has been one of the more forward purveyors of that branch of psych that looks to India and all things on the Eastern side of the globe.
And so far Dhir and Elephant Stone have not missed a beat in that respect, and obviously had no intention to miss it on their eleventh…
Since 1964, there have been numerous interpretations of The Beatles’ music. Stax, jazz, classical, Motown, country, Bing Crosby, Laibach, and easy listening have all had a go at Beatles cover albums. Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles’ Psychedelic Psongbook may be the most original, and after 60-some years, that is a huge accomplishment. Jah Wobble and his sons, John T and Charlie Wardle, have collaborated on a dub/drone version of Beatles songs, focusing on their more psychedelic tracks, which makes great sense.
…On paper, this might look like it would not work. The complete opposite is true. The use of traditional Chinese instruments, alongside Wobble’s distinct and trademark bass, creates an unusual yet fascinating take on these songs.
A 6-show 2025 residency at the Teragram in Los Angeles turned into something special. To shake things up, Brigid Dawson joined the fold, bringing a vital spark back to this middle-era garage punk run.
Drawn from the final 3 shows, this set gathers what OSEES call the creme de la creme: some long bloated fliers, some short sweet friers, and plenty of grease. It’s a sharp snapshot of a band clearly having a very good time.
That chemistry stuck. This is the version of the band touring this year: 6-piece OSEES, with newer material and surprise crypt-crackers added to keep it up to snuff.
“Tried to mix it up for the kiddos so I brought on the big guns…Brigid Dawson.
Few bands from the original psychedelic era can return nearly six decades later with a new studio album that feels driven by artistic curiosity rather than nostalgia. Strawberry Alarm Clock accomplishes exactly that with Where’s One?, an album that embraces the group’s unmistakable musical identity while continuing to expand its creative boundaries.
The opening track, “Feel The Love,” immediately recalls the band’s signature sound. Rich vocal harmonies, swirling organ, flute, and electric sitar evoke the colorful spirit of late-’60s psychedelia without sounding like a museum piece. However, the album quickly makes it clear that revisiting the past is not its primary objective. “Monsters” introduces a darker…
Edena Gardens unleash their most expansive work to date. Quintessence is structured in 4 parts as a Magnum Opus—the ancient alchemical process of transformation. But this is not a work of high fantasy. It is a seismic meditation. A study of deep time, weighted matter, and the crushing gravity of change.
Quintessence is massive. 79+ minutes of tethered magnitude, carved into six sprawling tracks. The trio pushes further down into the void, discovering new dimensions. Each piece allow the form to stretch. To break its own boundaries. Shifting terrains and unpredictable geometry. The core remains unhurried: A slow, relentless, unabridged crawl. This sort of alchemy demands patience, allowing every sonic mutation…
The songs come trailing jets of psychedelic blues, the singing tamped down to a smoke-haloed whisper, hard rock in a liminal space. Tiger Bear Wolf, out of Greensboro, NC, distills ZZ Top, Kyuss, Sabbath and Om into a seething mesh of guitar-heavy mysticism.
This third album — 15 years delayed with some material over 20 years old — reaches back to an earlier musical era, when hairy dudes and feedback and boogie-ing blues vamps still figured prominently in the culture. Songs nod to late 1970s, early 1980s heavy metal a la Deep Purple or Blue Cheer, or later on, to the Stoner rock revival of the early 1990s that birthed QOTSA.
Tiger Bear Wolf dates to the Bush II era, taking shape in 2002, as art rock glittered and…
New York’s Prison are nebulous at best, a loose and ever-changing collective of players who consistently produce some of outsider rock’s most freaked-out jams, regardless of who’s taking part. There are key contributors like Endless Boogie’s Paul Major, Liquor Store’s Sarim Al-Rawi, and multi-instrumentalist Matt Lilly, but different sessions find them joined by various like-minded heads making for different shades of psychedelic intensity on each new record.
Prison’s third long-player, Big Rigs on the BQE, is the product of a recording date in 2024 that included percussionist Ryan Sawyer and Sic Alps’ Mike Donovan adding fuzz-saturated organ to the mix, along with former Prison-staffers Matt Leibowitz and Adam Reich also adding…
A new album from US psychedelic rock legends Dead Meadow! Foundlings is a seven-track collection that delves deep into the band’s archives, spanning over two decades of sessions, tributes, and unreleased gems.
This rare collection promises to shed light on the band’s evolution and features previously unheard material showcasing their unique ability to channel classic influences, from Sabbath-inspired heaviness to shimmering, Cure-like textures, through their own hazy lens. It also serves as a tribute to bassist and founding member Steve Kille, who passed away two years ago after a long battle with cancer.
Foundlings is set to become essential listening for long-time fans and newcomers alike. It arrives as the band continues to cement…
Austin’s The Black Drumset isn’t just a band, it’s an experiment. Brian Wiley has released three studio recordings since 2009 and the latest, Friends in Dark Places was carefully crafted over the course of seven years, its seven songs are full-bodied trips into the nexus between interstellar intrigue and carnal rhythms. With droning keyboards as copiously applied as the droning guitars, it’s the drums, other percussion, and Wiley’s mesmerizingly monotone vocals that provide a solid center. “Everything turns in time/ See my place in this life/ Every place, every time/ Beauty, hope, peace of mind,” he sings, offering a reassurance that gives way to an extended, entrancing jam.
Wiley’s music radiates a calm, justified…
REZN create psychedelic music both retro and modern, occasionally experimental but largely streamlined. It’s space rock and stoner rock with hints of Americana and prog; Sky Valley-via-Sacramento with a not-so-final destination of Live at Pompeii, though the band is from Chicago. If 2024’s breakout album Burden sounded like an ominous transmission from the cosmic depths, then Cycles in the Infinite Dream trades outer space for inner space, recalibrating those hostile frequencies in favor of a heaviness that registers as more organic, more human.
REZN guitarist/vocalist Rob McWilliams leads the way with smooth vocals somewhere in the rarefied air between Chino Moreno and Failure’s Ken Andrews. His high-flying melodies on…