Hypnodrone Ensemble – The Shape of Space

Calostro Recordings (LP) / Little Crack’d Rabbit (CD)

Following up on the success of Aidan Baker and Eric Quach (thisquietarmy)’s 2014’s début live album of the same name, the now-expanded Hypnodrone Ensemble is now a band in its own right and presents here a set of four new studio recordings laid down in Berlin. Judging from the album and track titles, the group seem intent on seeing just how much further they can warp the fabric of the universe through the power of psychedelic music.

The answer apparently lies somewhere out between the Lagrange points of stable Earth orbit and the curving trajectories necessary to send a probe out beyond Pluto. The paired guitars and triple drumkits set off from a base of muscular percussive interjections which traipse from sub-light manoeuvrings to thundering motorik burnouts which are both fully aware of their musical heritage and seemingly unfussed as to whether they fit neatly into the space rock mould or not (quick hint: they do, very much so, but on their own terms).

Whether space they encounter is “Elliptical” or “Hyperbolic”, “Euclidian” or “Dodecahedral” in its dimensions,the Hypnodrone Ensemble push far beyond the confines of the structural envelope that their name might suggest, the hypnotic overtaking the drone on most occasions. Together they reshape and recurse their layers of guitars, bass and drums — many drums — in four musical geometries which set out to rearrange the very fabric of the space-time-audio continuum through the power of hypnotic repetition, blissful dynamic interplay and rhythmic undulations.

Baker and Quach’s guitars flicker and unfold in psychedelic washes and reverberating waves with a flowing sense of texture more often than of melody, breaking out the phasers, loopers and synthetic sounds to suit each track’s particular dimensions. They are held to their course by some languorously deep bass from Caudal‘s Gareth Sweeney; but it’s the trio of drummers (Felipe Salazar, Jérémie Mortier and Dave Dunnett) who set the album truly travelling in many directions at once. The trio seem to have a particularly steely grasp of the sextet’s shared sense of purpose, each branching and rejoining the onward ride which propels forever starwards, each player determinedly set on achieving their final collective destination — and for whatever next mutation awaits the group upon their arrival.

-Antron S Meister-