Words by Justin Turford
Living through our current state of affairs with it’s endless lockdowns and with no dancefloors or venues to sweat in (well…except in Wuhan, New Zealand and the sporadic ‘plague raves’ dotted across the West), I have found myself slowing down and enjoying the too often overlooked ‘inner’ section of my record collection. I guess what i mean is the beatless, more contemplative even abstracted music that can get lost amongst our overly media bombarded lives. A holiday from the hype of busyness if you will.
Head honcho Marc from the always daring Hive Mind Records has been consistently knocking out exceptional releases and this psychedelic bad boy is right up there. Or OUT THERE to be more precise. A double vinyl release of drawn out cosmic post-rock soundscapes that manage to calm and agitate in equal measure, Oh Temple! is just what the shrink ordered.
Formed in The Netherlands in 2019, the trio have kosmische form. Made up of Ajay Saggar (Bhajan Bhoy/King Champion Sounds/Deutsche Ashram), Oli Heffernan (Ivan The Tolerable/King Champion Sounds/Year of Birds) and Kohhei Matsuda (Bo Ningen), they share a similar lysergic DNA. Pastoral whimsy sits alongside electronic experimentalism and modern classical motifs as though family. Starting out with intense live shows notable for their own lyrical home made film backdrops as much as the corporal power of the music, they moved into the studio to create this eight track opus of heavy ambiance. Mixed, produced and mastered by the band themselves, it is befitting to utilise the overused label ‘cinematic’ but for once it chimes true. What came first in the development, the self-made movies or the music? There is a deep responsiveness to the music, layers of repetition swerving away into emotional drones and daunting peaks that always seem to stay in the distance. The striking absence of drums could be perceived as a lacking but I see it as a positive. The band could obviously kick the crap out of these pieces with thunderous dynamic changes but then it wouldn’t be what it is, a majestic texture of melodies, dissonance and cosmic wonder.
Vintage synths, wrist thick bass lines, stratums of guitar lines and tumbling rushes, static, dust, vocal samples and illusory field recordings make up the ingredients. Manipulated tape sonics, dramatic pauses and bends deliver at times, a dark trip, at others a caress. Masterfully done.
The video promos for the songs are all available to watch on the Tube and those same self-made films add a new narration which we don’t necessarily get from the music alone. Does it matter? Not to me though I recommend the full audio-visual immersion perhaps in the company of your favourite smells, a bottle of red and a bong made from a coconut shell. I also recommend buying this on vinyl as it sounds sooo good at full frequency splendour. It’s a bit presumptuous for me to say this but I reckon the late great Andrew Weatherall would have been all over this on his legendary ‘Music Is Not For Everyone’ shows on NTS Radio and you don’t get a better compliment than that in my opinion.
OUT NOW ON HIVE MIND RECORDS!
BUY HERE! https://universitychallenged.bandcamp.com/album/oh-temple