“This is a brilliant album”
07/22/2015 ambient / Andrulian's Blog / Deep Water Acres / Evening Fires / psych rock / sapce rock
Where I’ve Been Is Places and What I’ve Seen Is Things
This is a brilliant album which has a superb jam quality to it covering slow burning grooves, space rock and a bit of what lies between. There are some excellent jams, improvisations and the grooves evolve with brilliant exploration of different themes.
Unsurprisingly it’s been very popular, so the first thing I have to do is apologise for taking so long to publish the review because at the time of writing, Cardinal Fuzz have only got 4, yes 4, black vinyl copies left so you better move quick. They are available from their website here.
For listeners in the USA, there are still black and gold (but only 8 at the time of writing) vinyl copies and also a digital copy available from Sunrise Ocean Bender’s Bandcamp page.
Roll Away The Stones
A brilliant slow evolving groove with great background sounds effects, a banjo and excellently layered guitar are joined by great drumming and bass as momentum gradually builds. The song has a great chilled groove with an excellent build and release of tension.
We Cast Our Lots With The Waves
To put it simply, this one is brilliantly trippy. It has a slow accordian groove with some excellent background sounds and a ‘space’ sounding arpeggio too. The song has a great groove, there’s a really good evolution of the sound.
Staring Down The Gullet of the Great Beyond Part I
This song has a more uptempo groove to open with which is provided by solid drumming and bass. It has excellent layered lead playing, it is a great improvisation with mesmeric qualities.
Space Mountain
There are great delayed feedback type sounds to open, this is accompanied by free-form drumming and bass and there’s some great delayed guitar too. Another evolving groove with an excellent jam feel to it there’s some great improvisation and exploration of different themes.
Too Many Ravens Not Enough Corpses
This song has a great guitar riff and bass to open, strings add a haunting quality against the background sound effects. A slow evolving groove with a great tension throughout.
Staring Down the Gullet of the Great Beyond Part II
This song has an uptempo feel to the opening, great drumming and bass again with sparse guitar, tempo slows to a great groove with excellent delayed guitar and background sound effects. Another mesmeric song, brilliant exploration of the theme with a great release to round off the song and album.
Incredible Adventures
This is a sister album to ‘Where I’ve Been is Places and What I’ve Seen is Things’ which I’ve previously reviewed here. It contains tracks which didn’t quite make it onto that album and is available from Deep Water Acres or Sunrise Ocean Bender’s bandcamp page.
This is a great complimentary release, it is a superb album. There’s some excellent acoustic guitar, improvisation and feedback sounds with great layering of background sounds too. There’s a really nice edge of tension but that said, there’s also great meditative and hypnotic qualities at times and a great improvised / jam feel at times too. The songs are great soundscapes, slowly evolving with great movement in the sound too.
Big Farmer Big Jesus
An acoustic riff to open, subtle drumming gives a great momentum and great layering of sounds builds a great soundscape. There’s a hint of tension from dissonance at times, the song is a slow groove with great movement in the sound and feel, building to a fade out release.
There is no Going Without Returning
A great soundscape, the song opens with layered sounds and bass adds a really nice element. The song slowly evolves, there’s a good tension to the song that really holds your attention. There’s great movement in the sounds with background sounds evolving and changing. An organ sound builds gradually and there’s great interaction of its prominence against background sounds and there’s a really nice guitar lead part to end.
Unaussprechlichen Kulten
This song has a cinematic feel to the opening, sounds like it’s improvised guitar and there’s some great background sounds too. Again there’s an edge of tension which really holds your attention. There’s a nice contrast between the slower background sounds and more intense guitar playing. Another great soundscape, the intense guitar becomes more sparse turning into a more jangly type sound. The song has hypnotic qualities and meditative qualities too as the tension builds really well through the song with a final release.
Staring Down The Gullet of the Great Beyond Part III
There’s an acoustic riff to open with background sound effects, drumming and bass provide a solid foundation. This song has great jam / improvisation qualities with great layering of sounds. The song evolves slowly again with great meditative qualities and just a hint of tension, increasing to a final crescendo and release.