Secret Machines - 'Now Here Is Nowhere' (679)
4/5
By: Clara Burtenshaw
Imagine that the foraging spirits of the legendary psychedelic bands of the seventies were catapulted to the far side of a distant moon, journeying through interminable expanses of time and light. The soundtrack to this voyage would be best expressed with 'Now Here is Nowhere', a work in equal parts ambitious, unusual and timeless.
Opener 'First Wave Intact' is an epic of hydraulic bass and grinding drum solo, a mechanical thrusting that engages all, leading us from the comfort of the stereo to a fearful terrain explored only fleetingly since the decade where Led Zep, The Who and Pink Floyd took music to a deeper, all-consuming level.
The instrumental build-ups and power percussion that characterise their sound is measured and reticent in the face of the machine's grandiose vision; it isn't all brave new discovery and soaring dynamics, as the soothing, cryptic ice-scape of 'The Leaves Are Gone' demonstrates. Brandon Garza's wearied, worn-in voice, an echo of Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips, serves as a soothing, ebbing reminder preventing the sound from rising and exploding into a shattered prism of pretension, spatial concept and intangibility.
One-part Spiritualized and two-parts Mercury Rev, but wholly courageous, creative and unique. There can be no doubt that wherever the Secret Machines' path leads,
it will be somewhere, everywhere, and out of this world.
Artists in this article: Secret Machines
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