Alriiiiight — hit the play button on “Shiftless en Nkawkaw,” our first glimpse of the upcoming self-titled Sungod LP on Holodeck Records, and let yourself drift into the band’s live neo-kraut explorations. I say “live” not only because the session begins with a cough into a room mic, but because the band’s sprawling rock-meets-noise-improv approach could have only been captured in such detail by way of a live take. I say “neo-kraut” because the band’s churning walls of synth, kinetic forward motion, and flute-abetted melodic leads channel classic kosmiche fare like Ash Ra Tempel, Guru Guru, or The Cosmic Jokers. I say “explorations” because this posse really lets it all hang out, jettisoning the track’s loping groove halfway through in favor of a mire of arrhythmic synth static possessed of enough power to spike your speakers into the red at the right volume. The band’s vocal harmonies, cutting through the mix in a yearning, almost gospel-like mantra, provide the track’s most unexpected vestiges of humanity, as if to balance the session’s dedicated commitment to abstraction.
If Sungod feel out of place on the Holodeck catalog in the context of their roster of John Carpenter-worshipping industrial synth acolytes like SSLEEPERHOLD, Troller, Marie Davidson, and S U R V I V E, I bid you to dig a little deeper for the cache of prog-friendly gems hidden a few columns deeper in the Bandcamp index. Projects like Holodeck mainstay Thousand Foot Whale Claw and recent affiliates This Will Destroy You have both feet planted firmly in the sandbox of “rock music,” though they augment the idiom with strategies of structural disfiguration and irregular instrumentation — while Sungod’s cassette debut in the catalog, last year’s Contackt, set the stage for the label’s interest in extended rock experimentation. With the forthcoming Sungod LP, due on November 11, the band pushes their inclination toward the otherworldly to new heights of psych shred — and we, with heads bobbing, reap all the benefits.
• Sungod: https://ssssssungoddddd.bandcamp.com
• Holodeck Records: http://holodeckrecords.com
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