Lamp of the Universe - Hidden Knowledge

Clostridium Records (CR 023)

Craig Williamson's one-mand psych band Lamp of the Universe from New Zealand has been one my favourites since the first album came out in 2001. His mystical, spiritual, laid-back, hypnotic and highly psychedelic soundscapes are just the kind of music I like relax to and float away with. It's wonderful that he has found a new home for high-quality vinyl versions of his albums at Clostridium Records in Germany. No wonder then, that his latest outing Hidden Knowledge is one of the best albums in 2016 for me.

Hidden Knowledge includes just four long tracks. The very hypnotic and repetative "Space Craft" captures us for over 13 minutes, and you can sense the presence of the highly evolved extra-terrestial beings. Amazing! "Mu" is a melancholic and beautiful praise for the lost continent and takes us back there in spirit. "Dawn of Nebula" is a great, atmospheric instrumental that also has some old Berlin-school ambient vibe. Very nice! The longest track "Netherworlds" is over 14-minute-long and what an excellent, floating and charmingly beautiful trip it is! Just close your eyes and let Lamp of the Universe to carry you to mystical, wonderful places you have probably never dreamed of before. Again, there are several different limited vinyl editions available. I naturally bought the die-hard version on amazing splatter vinyl including a poster and a slip mat... As far as I know, there is no CD version of this one. At least Craig hasn't sent me one like usually nor is one mentioned on Discogs or Craig's Bandcam page. If you don't buy vinyl, you can always buy the digital version from the Bandcamp site. Very much recommended!

lampoftheuniverse.bandcamp.com

J.K.S. - Universe Beyond Universe

Royal Foulup (RF004)

Jorma Saarikangas is Finnish amatour musician and poet from Lahti. He used to record these weird, experimental and psychedelic soundscapes in the 70s at home with a primitive gear and has been releasing these previously unheard home-recorings on limited edition vinyl issues since 2004. This is the fourth (and final?) part in the series and limited to just 250 copies.

The overal vibe on Universe Beyond Universe is very experimental and weird. It's composed mostly of cosmic synth experiments, but there is also some spoken word, strange, manipulated, howling voice and vocals and a little bit of guitar etc. All the tracks 11 tracks (three of which are only very short intros/outros) on the LP have been recorded in between 1974 and 1976. "Cosmic Travel Begin" and "The Big Crunch" are credited to Hannu Pohjonen, who must have been a good pal of Jorma's in the 70s, as both guys sound like they operated at the exactly same brain wave lenght. The drum machine on "Greatest Story Ever Told" sounds so very 80s that I'm having hard time believing this is from the mid 70s? Anyway, this is probably the best release in this series and very psychedelic and odd. Universe Beyond Universe is definitely worth checking out if you enjoy the weird, trippy lo-fi home-recording vibe of the 70s. I'll just end here with a quote from the back cover to get you some idea: "All this life is part of Divinity. The meaning of life is to develop intelligence into such high level that, when the end comes, it can recreate itself... When the whole of existence collapses, the excisting life-forms will be able to code a new script on the generation of a new universe.The past and the future will be perfectly omnipresent when the divinity says: LET THERE BE LIGHT."

 myspace.com/jksonemanband

Teksti-TV 666 - 1, 2, 3

Svart Records (SRE113)

Teksti-TV 666 is a new Helsinki-based band known for their very energetic live shows. They have released one limited edition 12" EP a year since 2014, and these three EP's have always sold-out pretty quickly. It was a wise move from Svart Records to release all the EP's as one double LP/CD, so that people have the opportunity to buy these great tracks. The band's music has strong roots in punk, indie, noise and krautrock, and has also some psychedelic vibes. Most of the tracks are rather fast and straight-forward with a steady, motorik beat and LOTS of guitar. The guitars are the main thing here for sure, although most of the tracks also have vocals in Finnish.

I've been lucky to score all the individual EP's and have been enjoying them a lot. Teksti-TV 666's music works well in small doses. However, since most of the simple but effective tracks sound and feel sort of the same, a double LP compilation might be a bit too much in one setting. Maybe they could expand their musical scale a bit in the future? Add some synths at least? More cosmic, experimental vibes maybe? Well, I'm sure they will do what ever they feel like and that's just fine by me, since they are hip and they seriously kick ass. Check them out!

www.facebook.com/tekstitv666

Dj Astro to blow minds in Tampere!

On January the 7th 2017 I will be playing a special groovy psych/space/kraut rock set at the five-years birthday party of Thirsty and Miserable club @ O'Hara's in the center of Tampere with the wonderful djs Lady Summerisle & Supervixen!

It's a free party so make sure you will be there if you live in or near Tampere and happen to be there at the time. Should be a lot of fun!

 www.facebook.com/events/1375158215828029

Kremlin - S/T MLP

Svart Records

Kremlin is a new band from Helsinki playing "Southern space rock". This self-titled mini-album is their first release, and it is a cool mix of heavy, bluesy boogie, twang guitar, surf, Roky Erickson, Black Sabbath and analogue space sounds. There are six tracks on the record and I will now go through them all.

The mini-album starts off with the very Roky Erickson styled mid-tempo "Ghost Flyers" that also has some surf like twang guitar and some space noises. A very nice opener with powerful vocals and strong playing, it rocks! The second, slower track "Krühn" is closer to Black Sabbath and has some great melodies as well. I like it! "Waiting for You" is a bluesy, more atmospheric number, but not bad at all. "Lizards" is the heavy boogie piece of the album and gets your foot stamping. There's also a rather psychedelic, hypnotic part in the middle... "Transition" is a shorter, cosmic instrumental synth interlude that sets the mood for the melancholic, doomy and dark last track "World Is Coming Down" that does not give much hope for our future. Again, the vocal lines bring to mind Roky a bit which is not a bad thing at all. All in all, this is very promising debut release by this new band that's definitely worth keeping your eye (or ear) on. You can see the band live on the 17th of this month when they play with Albinö Rhino, Kaleidobolt and Getsemane at Ääniwalli, with Yours Truly as a dj. This should be fun!

www.facebook.com/kremlinfinland 

 

The best albums in 2016

This has been a great year in music... In alphabetic order, just full studio albums, no reissues, live albums, splits or compilations. Check out the videos at the bottom! Have fun & Happy Holydaze.

The best 30 foreign albums in 2016:

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. - Wake to a New Dawn of Another Astro Era
Baby Woodrose - Freedom
Blown Out - New Cruiser
The Chemistry Set - The Endless More and More
Camera - Phantom of Liberty
The Cosmic Dead - Rainbowhead
Dreamtime- Strange Pleasures
Dungen - Häxan
Earthling Society - Sweet Chariot
Electric Orange ‎– Misophonia
Farflung - 5 
Ghost Box Orchestra - High Plaine
Gong - Rejoice! I'm Dead! 
Hashish - A Product of Hashish
Hawkwind - The Machine Stops
The Honey Pot - Ascending Scales
Kikagaku Moyo - House in the Tall Grass
Lamp of the Universe - Hidden Knowledge
The Luck of Eden Hall - The Acceleration of Time
Megaritual ‎– Mantra Music
Mugstar – Magnetic Seasons
The Myrrors - Entanced Earth
Psychic Lemon – S/T
Saturnia ‎– The Real High
Sendelica - I Walk with the Stars for You
Sendelica - The Cromlech Chronicles
The Spacelords - Liquid Sun
Sun Dial - Made in the Machine
Our Solar System - In Time
Vibravoid - Wake Up Before You Die


The best 10 Finnish albums in 2016:

Dasputnik - Psykhixplosion 
Jess and the Ancient Ones - Second Psychedelic Coming: The Aquarius Tapes
K-X-P - III Part II
Laserdrift - S/T 
Octopus Syng - Hollow Ghost / Rochelle Salt
Oranssi Pazuzu - Värähtelijä
Seremonia - Pahuuden äänet
Spiritus Mortis - The Year Is One
Throes of Dawn - Our Voices Shall Remain 
Tähtiportti - Eetterimessu

Dreamtime -Strange Pleasures

Cardinal Fuzz/Sky Lantern Records/Tym Guitars (CF065/SLR203/TYM050)

Strange Pleasures is the third album by Australian psych/space/prog rock band Dreamtime. It is released today on 2LP by Cardinal Fizz (U.K.) together with Australian labels Sky Lantern Records and Tym Guitars. Their first two vinyl albums were originally released in tiny quantities (100 pieces each) and I have not been able to locate original copies unfortunately... There are some (again limited edition) reissues for those who are reasonable enough to be able to live with those. Anyway, this 76-minute album limited to 500 copies is so wonderful that you definitely need to hear it if you like mystical, spiritual, dreamy and psychedelic rock music.

The album has 12 tracks, most of which are rather long. The superb opener "Luminous Light" sets the tone in a great way. The groovy beat, great, fuzzy guitars, synths and female vocals sort of bring to mind Goat from Sweden, but this is a bit more progressive and melodic. Excellent! On the next track "Golden Altar" the band gets more spiritual and spacey, this is really deep, hallucinatory, atmospheric and beautiful stuff, that gets more intense later on. "River Sprites" is a pretty and melancholic song with male/female vocals and a sort of ancient folky vibe. The bit heavier, amazing and hypnotic "Fire" brings to mind Liquid Sound Company (like some of the other tracks) and also Hills and I love it. The last track on the first disc is the meditative and deep "Ascension" and I again enjoy the male/female vocals very much. Before the three-minute-marker things get weirder and more experimental, whoah!

"The Sentient" has an experimental, spacey ambient intro, and then the band goes into heavy, hard-rocking and rather fast space rock mode sounding like a mix of Hawkwind, Monster Magnet, Chrome and Yuri Gagarin but with a twist of their own. My mind is blown to pieces! The title track "Strange Pleasures" is more progressive and even a bit funky and reminds me of some of the early 70s psychy prog rock bands. The spacey and atmospheric instrumental "Celestial Spores" is the shortest piece at under three minutes, and then it's time for the album's longest track "Spectral Entrophy". It starts off slowly, and has a great, uplifting vibe that brings to mind DarXtar or Melting Euphoria, some very cool solo guitar work and a trippy overall mood. "Gamma Gobulin" is another weird, experimental and ambient instrumental piece that seems to come directly from the Australian aboriginal dreamtime. The album is finished with the powerful and mind-blowing psych rocker "Serpent's Tongue". This album is a true masterpiece of spiritual, psychedelic and mind-altering space music and definitely one of the best albums in 2016. Do not miss it!

www.facebook.com/Dreamtime-144028152308276/