London 12 November 2015 It was my friend Lee Nite who first played me an album by High On Fire. I knew and loved Sleep’s work, but had kind of considered that HOF’s sound was a little too fast for my doom/stoner rock ears. He slipped on their first album and said something like “this is fucking brutal and psychedelic”. And he was right (as with most of […]
Gary Parsons
259 posts
London 16 October 2015 It’s a sold out show tonight, so there is a real buzz going around about Siena Root and this whole gig. Swedish bands do seem to be leading the way with the retro/occult rock vibe over recent years and have produced some outstanding bands, so this seemed to be the place to be as the winter nights begin to creep in. The Black Heart […]
Bureau B ESB’s album lands on my doorstep at the same time as the first pictures of Pluto filter through the cosmos and are shown for the first time for all humanity to see. Somehow the music created by the trio of Yann Tiersen, Lionel Laquerrière and Thomas Poli is fitting as its soundtrack. “Market” is the album opener, and it’s full of glistening synths that seem to […]
London 9 October 2015 October is the month of Samhain where the boundaries between other worlds and our own is at its thinnest. It is the time of ancient occult rituals to the ancestors and a sign that year is slowly crawling to its end. While the autumnal sun shine hangs in the air the creeping nights have more than a hint of chill to them. It is […]
Tin Angel It’s harvest time and the nights draw in and we prepare for the long winter ahead. In a few weeks the warmth of long summer days will be a distant memory and we will count the days down to the sun’s warm return.
Sulatron Krautzone have to be one of my favourite new bands of the last couple of years. Not only are the covers of the albums (by Komet Lulu) so beautifully designed, but the music is powerful, hypnotic, trance-like and just plain out there. Here, we are treated over two CDs to the complete recorded works of the band, plus one never-before released bonus track that gives you enough […]
The Lexington, London 9 September 2015 There is something about Wednesdays, something odd that doesn’t quite fit right. Wednesday is the square peg in the round hole. It seems to bring out a strangeness in the universe, as if all those planets and solar systems and galaxies out there somehow know that that it’s Wednesday.
London 3 September 2015 I cling unto the burning Æthyr like Lucifer that fell through the Abyss, and by the fury of his flight kindled the air. Aleister Crowley It had been raining for days. Every morning for the last week I awoke to the sound of water beating against the window. All it needed was the tolling of an iron bell and the first massive chord of […]
Sulatron Kick out the jams and get your freak flag flying with two new releases from Sulatron. Zone Six are a mindbending mixture of members of Electric Moon, Modulfix and The Pancakes (who also get together under the name Krautzone) playing spiralling hypnotic psychedelic madness in free-form jams that have been condensed down to these four blistering tracks. Komet Lulu’s bass kicks us into the title track, its […]
Rocket Sprawling its way across three sides of vinyl and two CDs, Infinity Machines is Gnod at their most epic. There’s a lot of it and can feel initially daunting to step into it as you realise the weight of expectation, and the fact that your brain has to disseminate so much music, creep up on you. So I’m going try my best at reviewing such a large […]
Cardinal Fuzz (Europe)/Captcha (North America) White Manna’s previous album Come Down Safari was an almost lilting psychedelic trip to the outer reaches, like a 1968 Nepalese bhang shop of lysergic loveliness that wasn’t a million miles a way from bands like Lamp Of The Universe in its recreation of bedroom Ganges travelling. What White Manna have delivered with Pan, though, is a totally different beast. If Come Down […]
The Dome and Boston Music Room London 24 May 2015 I have to admit that I’ve never been to Raw Power before. Every year, more than any other festival, there are always an amazing bunch of bands that I have wanted to see, or at least witness again. So even though I was unable to do both Friday and Saturdays events, I managed to race to the venues […]
London 12 May 2015 Ozric Tentacles gigs now seem like a celebration. They are the meeting of the multi-coloured clothed tribes come together in one place and celebrate the wonderful psychedelic sounds of the Ozrics. The fact that the band are now 31 years along their long strange trip to Erpland also proves the continuing love and respect and support the band have with their far-out fans. The […]
London 8 May 2015 I remember quite a few years back after a Magma show, a friend of mine turning to me and saying, “That was like being on another planet for two hours”. And he was right, very few bands make you transcend to another realm but Magma has the capacity to do this. Maybe it’s because the songs are sung Kobaïan, a language invented by band […]
Svart Wow, ten years between albums is quite a feat; I mean we are talking Kate Bush levels of time here. But it’s not as if Acid King have been sitting around doing nothing — in fact the band have been constantly touring over that time, playing festivals and building an even larger loyal following. So were all these years worth the wait? The album opens with “Intro”, […]
Deep Distance (2LP)/Sulatron (CD) Sci-fi is the theme behind David Schmidt’s latest (re-)release as Sula Bassana. Even though part of this was originally available on CD, Deep Distance have done a marvellous job with the vinyl version. Not only do you get two different coloured discs (it’s a double album) but also Komet Lulu’s artwork looks absolutely gorgeous on 12” vinyl size and gives off the perfect visual […]
Nuclear Blast Blues Pills are one of the best new bands to emerge in recent years that very generously tip their hat at the great heavy rock and psychedelic music of the late sixties. This limited release album by Nuclear Blast finds them performing live at the Freak Valley Festival (and what a great name for a festie) in May 2014. OK, let’s start off with the cover; […]
London 13 March 2015 Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future. H G Wells – The Time Machine The Orb are celebrating 25 years of making music that has headed for the outer reaches and then […]