motel de moka

Image credit: Robert Gendler

In the sixth instalment of this series I actually promised it would be the last. For a while now however I’ve been feeling the urge to post some serious star-gazing psychedelic rock and drones again. So this marks the rebirth of the series and I have some really awesome stuff lying around for a handful of new instalments. First up is a selection of heavy grooving and hypnotizing monsters to get back into the rhythm again. This is the 1st heavy-artillery regiment recalibrating your psyche so you’d better be warned.

Nadja is a doom-ambient/drone-metal duo consisting of ambient/drone hero Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff. It’s interesting to see the significant contrast between Baker’s often dreamy and atmospheric work as a solo artist and the growling cacophony that characterizes his work with Nadja. Their most acclaimed work to date, Touched, was reissued last year by the awesome Montreal-based label Alien8. An album that is best described as a blurred cacophony of colossal drums and mammoth guitar- and synthesizer-driven noise. Together creating a roaring and deafening pulse that gloomily moves in ultra slow-motion like a monstrous Godzilla rip-off in an old Japanese b-movie. Sounds like a beast? It is and it kills. Alien8 also lets you stream all of their albums on their website. I truly appreciate it when artists and labels provide this service so that we can legally and easily try before we buy.

A similar contrast between different musical outlets also characterizes the work of Sietse van Erve who’s best known under the moniker of his ambient/drone solo project Orphax. Van Erve is also a member of one of the most promising bands in the Netherlands at the moment called Zonderland whose debut album released last year was a terrific tour de force of dark and hypnotizing grooves powered by drums, guitar and electronics. Featured in the playlist below is a 27 minute track that keeps you chained to your loudspeakers as if time didn’t exist. As Vital Weekly wrote in their review: “taken with all the right substances you could easily be lost in this trip.” Yet another similarity lies in the fact that you can also stream their album in its entirety on their website.

But we start off this small (yet 60+ minute long) playlist with a track from my favourite 2008 release so far, the insanely awesome collaboration between Bardo Pond, LSD March and Kawaguchi Masami’s New Rock Syndicate. Now I know what you’re thinking, this can’t be real, usually collaborations like this can only be dreamed of. But let me tell you that is indeed the real deal and it more than lives up to its potential. There’s no better way of introducing them to you than with the stunning (and improvised) opening track called We are LSD Pond. Archive has done it again!

1. LSD Pond - We are LSD Pond
   LSD Pond (Disc 1) (Archive, 2008)
2. Zonderland - Bad Habits-Massproduced
   Oidipus: Motherfucker (Self released, 2007)
3. Skullflower - Can You Feel It?
   IIIrd Gatekeeper (Crucial Blast, 2007/Headdirt, 1992)
4. Nadja - Stays Demons
   Touched (Alien8, 2007/Deserted Factory, 2003)

Stream playlist

Previous instalments:
Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky pt.1
Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky pt.2
Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky pt.3
Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky pt.4
Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky pt.5
Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky pt.6

All of these should still be online so make sure to check them out before it’s too late.