Electric Moon

Mind Explosion

Written by: BV on 12/04/2014 15:10:24

In recent years, Electric Moon seem to have established themselves as the prime source of explorative, doom-laden psychedelic instrumental music. Constantly bordering on the verge of outer space with their massive sounding instrumental grooves, each Electric Moon release offers something completely different and vastly unique when set in comparison with the former release. Luckily, the newly released “Mind Explosion” does not differ a bit from this formula. What seems peculiar about “Mind Explosion”, however, is that it bridges the gap in-between live albums and studio albums. Having been recorded entirely live in performance, one could argue that it is essentially a live album. However, the engineering and recording of the album is so reminiscent of a studio album that it, seeing as it consists of four new jams, effectively works like one as well. – Explaining why I am reviewing it in the first place, as we usually don’t review live releases.

Carried by what could essentially be described as a great flow, Electric Moon works their way through tracks like “Trip to the Moon” which, during its 20+ minutes evolves from a haunting ambient soundscape into an eerie, synth-laden drone that is mostly reminiscent of a sci-fi soundtrack that would be played just as an alien aircraft enters orbit above Earth – it’s ominous, foreboding and enthralling at the same time and although the runtime is excessive to most people it just doesn’t seem like such a drawn-out trip after all.

Bridging the gaps between these lengthy jams seems to be a simple task for the trio, as the aforementioned groove never really seems to end. Naturally, the tracks end but in doing so they smoothly progress into the forthcoming jam – effectively creating a strangely coherent, albeit not flawless album experience. And yes, the album is indeed far from perfect – recorded in the live setting, it has all the flaws one might expect of such a release. However, those are to be expected and strangely enough, they do seem to add a certain charm to the proceedings as they give off an organic, raw and peculiarly honest appeal which some studio releases often seem to lack.

On “The Picture” this is perhaps at its most clearest. Yes, there is some crowd noise (mostly applause) – but why wouldn’t you include that in the recording? For me, at least, it creates a sense of space – a setting I can relate it too. It gives off the strange sense of unity found at an Electric Moon gig when the jams are on fire and the crowd is just really into it. In other words, it adds just the right amount of ambience to Electric Moon’s mind-bending improvisations. As the title track comes to its inevitable end and the flow dies out, it is quite reminiscent of an explosion to be honest. The band gradually builds towards the peak, ‘exploding’ in a quite grandiose manner only to let the dust settle and let the album reach its ending. Like I said, every Electric Moon album is a new experience and this certainly doesn’t add anything bad to their growing reputation. A full-on studio release sometime soon would be very nice to hear though.

Download: Mind Explosion, Trip to the Moon
For The Fans Of: The Spacelords, Krautzone, Papir, Zone Six
Listen: facebook.com

Release date 07.03.2014
Sulatron Records


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