It’s been a long time since Pale Saints‘ Ian Masters and His Name Is Alive’s Warren Defever worked together as ESP Summer on their country-tinged 1995 self-titled release, so it came as a pleasing surprise when the project was mysteriously resurrected last year – even more so the strange disembodied ambience that they gathered into that tantalising instrumental offering.
Now the duo return to flirt with the song-form once again for its follow-up, Kingdom Of Heaven, another LP that plays homage to — or should that be disintegrates — The 13th Floor Elevators’ garage classic of the same name.
It’s a hazy effect-saturated tribute, and “Tengoku No ōkoku”’ darts into your consciousness like a Cocteau Twins dream, riveted by splashy puddles of drum machine as Ian Masters’ reverbed voice waltzes the air like an endless smokey twirl of an extinguished match. A sweet psychedelia, the Japanese like germinations of “Kumamushi” decants in gentle piano rolls, butterflying the hemispheres further in Livonia-like acoustics and vaporous vocals, to be overcome by a brief bit of guitar shredding (Defever likes to keep us on our toes), its buzzing aftermath warmly netting folding harmonics and sleepy florals. You could say they’ve thrown too many effects at this one, then “Taishōgoto No ōkoku” removes Ian’s voice from those sun-drenched dynamics, resets the song’s purity amongst strummed guitar and frosted orients, before falling off on quieting wah waves. Which leaves the Mali-esque mulch of flute and randomised frets to invite us to the fourteen-minute finale of “Uchū”, a track that revisits the song’s hippy hooks in rim whipped percussion and spidery dice, harmonically spiralling in washy messiahs, Cumulus-like curls that phonically invade, opening out to a heat-hazed serenade roasted in feisty FX-combed feedback.Kingdom Of Heaven‘s four tracks seriously out-drugs the original.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
