Menu

Rocket Recordings

a1347594348_16

Centrum, “För Meditation” (Rocket, 2019)

,

I probably do not follow the contemporary psych-rock scene as closely as I should, so this 2019 side project from Sweden’s Hills managed to elude me for a couple of years. On one level, the leap from Hills to Centrum is not exactly a dramatic one, as För Meditation arguably resembles a Hills album with the electronic guitars and jammier tendencies excised. On a deeper level, however, the spell that Centrum casts is very different from that of most modern psych bands, as För Meditation feels like a lost classic from the late ’60s/early ’70s nexus where hallucinogens, Pandit Pran Nath, and eastern religion collectively transformed the more adventurous fringes of rock forever. 

In more practical terms, that means that För Meditation is full of droning, chanting, and raga-damaged psychedelia great enough to earn Centrum a place in my personal pantheon of Swedish psych/free music titans like Pärson Sound and Träd, Gras och Stenar. They clearly also learned a trick or two from more recent bands too though, as they do an impressive job of sidestepping the genre’s more indulgent tendencies and beautifully channel the killer ride cymbal grooves of classic Om (albeit opting more for hypnotic repetition than muscular intensity and virtuosic flourishes).

The album’s description begins with a quote from David Lynch about transcendental meditation and its tenet that “true happiness lies within,” but Centrum seem to enthusiastically embraced the Zen ideal of ego death as well, as the band’s enigmatic line-up is given only as “members of Hills and Weary Nous.” That anonymity admittedly makes sense here, as the focus is not on individual performances so much as it is on the band members seamlessly converging in perfect harmony for a series of great droning grooves. Or, as the label puts it, “beguiling tapestries of drone-based hypnosis, mantric vocal chants and ritualistic folk along with field recordings” (the latter made by the band in India). 

The opening “Vid Floden” is a representative introduction to that aesthetic, as a slow, heady groove of pulsing Shruti box swells, muscular bass riffage, hazy chanted vocals, and a cool flute hook unfolds for ten straight minutes with minimal evolution. There are some subtle effects and a decent amount of guitar soloing (both clean and distorted), but the magic primarily lies in how the various musicians interact and embellish the groove without ever breaking the spell with indulgent missteps. 

Instead, elements like the smoldering guitar solo in the following “Sjön” serve more of a textural and dynamic purpose than a cathartic or melodic one. That said, that solo does inject a soulful intensity that plays a significant role in making “Sjön” one of the album’s strongest pieces. Of course, the warbling wah-wah improvisations and heavy ride cymbal beat play crucial roles as well (especially once the tambourine kicks in).

The remaining two pieces are unsurprisingly devoted to variations on the same themes. The brief “Stjärnor” is the closest thing to a single, as it distills the Centrum vision to a tight five minutes and enhances it with a melodic violin theme, but it also breaks the hypnotic spell a bit with a very prominent wah-wah solo in its final moments. The closing “Som En Spegel,” on the other hand, heads in the opposite direction and stretches out for twelve epic minutes with little threat of derailing. 

Initially, it feels a bit too fast and too muscular to quite hit the raga/drone comfort zone, but it gradually blossoms into a masterful slow burn with the addition of tambourine, serpentine flute melodies, and a very cool finale of dub-inspired percussion flourishes. Aside from the mixed success of “Stjärnor,” För Meditation is a damn near perfect album in my book. While it is not terribly hard to find other psych-rock bands who look to the east for inspiration, very few are able to match the natural chemistry and sublime execution that Centrum bring to the form.

Samples can be found here.

a1762510542_16

Gnod, “Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing…” (Rocket, 2017)

,

I had a very unfortunate false start with Gnod, as the first time I heard them, I mistakenly concluded that they were basically the UK version of White Hills rather than a deeply radical and experimental entity of Swans-like intensity. With the benefit of hindsight, however, I have since embraced them as one of the single most exciting forces to emerge from the underground in recent years. Thankfully, no one at all will be likely to repeat my mistake after hearing Just Say No, though it admittedly tones down the band’s more arty and indulgent tendencies quite a bit in service of visceral brute force (the album title provides a very unambiguous clue as to the band’s current mindset). 

Of course, as much as I enjoy raw power, punk energy, and hardcore fury on their own, the beauty of this album lies in how brilliantly Gnod manage to blend heavy music with their longstanding Krautrock and psych fascinations, enhancing the expected monster riffs with bulldozing no-frills repetition, seismic percussion grooves, Gang of Four-style minimalism, and a wonderful textural chaos of electronics and radio broadcasts.

If I had to succinctly summarize Gnod’s aesthetic with Just Say No, Entertainment!-era Gang of Four would be the clearest reference point, but with the caveat that all their equipment was stolen right before an important gig and that they had to perform using gear that was already set-up and soundchecked for Ministry or Neurosis. There are plenty of tight grooves and “angular” guitars, but they are often atop an incredibly dense, earthquake-level low end. The opening “Bodies For Money,” ostensibly the album’s lead single, is a bit of aberration from that template though. 

In fact, Gnod are roughly in White Hills territory again, barreling along at a double-time pace with a simple power chord riff and even erupting into a noisy guitar solo at one point. There are some key differences though, as Jon Perry’s drums are jacked-up to rumbling, elemental force and vocalist Paddy Shine’s ragged, world-weary vocals are more of a sincere, snarling, and rueful denunciation of the state of the world than a melodic hook. Put more glibly, it is Motörhead music with a Crass intellect. 

That is an admittedly gratifying and bracing aesthetic, but it is not nearly as compelling as the more distinctive fare that Gnod conjures up elsewhere. For example, the following “People” is every bit as bludgeoning, but slowed and pared down to little more than pummeling, fill-heavy drums; densely buzzing bass; and a flanging sample that sounds like a processed muezzin’s call. Eventually, an ascending strummed guitar motif appears, but the foundation of the piece is essentially just a sample and some stomping, improvisatory drumming and it all works beautifully. In fact, it seems like Gnod work best when they are working with the fewest materials.

The following “Paper Error” unexpectedly brings shades of Steady Diet of Nothing-era Fugazi, as Gnod lock into an obsessively repeating two-chord riff while Shine howls elliptical and scathing thoughts about errors and bodies. While it is not exactly my favorite piece on the album, “Paper Error” makes one of the stronger cases for Gnod’s brilliance: it is built upon an incredibly simple riff and a lyric sheet that probably only has like three lines scrawled on it (“Error! Error! Error! Error!”), yet it feels like being run over by a goddamn tank. 

It is the perfect distillation of the album’s description of “a harsh and repetitive riff-driven rancor refracted through a psychotropic haze of dubbed-out abstraction,” as the riff is an unstoppable juggernaut, Shine’s raw-throated intensity is magnetic, and the underlying music is a dense and roiling onslaught of furious crash cymbals and buried snarls of ugly guitar noise. 

Even better still is “Real Man,” the album’s muscular and hyper-minimal centerpiece. At its core, it is essentially a cutting denunciation of macho culture delivered over a heavy and perversely funky drumbeat. There are some embellishments, like a blown-out one-note bass line and stabs of discordant guitar, but all of that is secondary to the perfectly swaggering menace of a song mocking swaggering menace. Eventually “Real Man” erupts into a crescendo of noisy guitars and jabbering loops, but the lasting impression is that Shine and his drummer are about to curb-stomp a bunch of football hooligans.

The album finally winds to a close with the epic “Stick in the Wheel,” which initially reprises the band’s winning formula of heavy drums, Shine’s bitter and blackly funny rants about society, and well-placed splashes of noisy guitars. Bizarrely, it suffers a bit from having too many ideas, as Gnod seem to reach their peak when they focus all of their energy on just one simple thing with face-melting intensity. I suppose I cannot blame them for including it though, as its extended length (just over 12 minutes) gives the band a chance to shift gears into a lengthy dub-damaged interlude of simmering psychedelia, reminding me that the rest of Just Say No is not necessarily the true Gnod. 

Of course, the true Gnod is a very fluid concept that varies greatly from album to album. The band have certainly made some stellar albums exploring their more hallucinatory and abstract side, but Just Say No works best when the band sticks to no-frills thuggish brutality, so the arty coda mostly feels like it accidentally wandered in from a different album. 

Aside from that, my only real critique is that the band has a tendency to drag their songs on a bit longer than necessary here, as riding a groove for ten minutes works a lot better with psychedelia than it does with eruptions of violence. With music like this, the best approach is to get in, tear my goddamn head off, then get out. There is no need to linger. I have absolutely zero problem with the vision and the execution here though, as Just Say No is otherwise an absolutely crushing and timely tour de force of controlled fury. This album will deservedly be all over “Best of 2017” lists in December.

Listen here.