PSYCHEDELIC PROG

Take a trip with ROB HUGHES as he seeks out the latest mind-expanding music.

Named after a rare psychological condition whereby someone hears unreal noises due to a ‘snapping of the brain’, Exploding Head Syndrome (Tapete) is the eleventh album from The Telescopes. A thing of understated wonder it is too, conceived almost entirely by Stephen Lawrie, who founded the band over 30 years ago. Steady pulses and buzzing drones serve as default positions, with Lawrie intoning gently over the top. Pick of the pack is Don’t Place Your Happiness In The Hands Of Another, which shifts pace into something otherworldly.

For a more animated treat, Masaki Batoh’s Nowhere

(Drag City) takes acoustic folk as its root and reaches into psychedelia, prog and the American primitive guitar style of John Fahey. Batoh has impressive credentials, of course, having formed Japanese avant-garde types Ghost in the early 80s. Mellotron, harp and percussion flesh out these impressionistic songs, which range from dream folk (Tower Of The Silence) to modernist slide blues (Devil Got Me) to deep meditations (the 15-minute Boi-Taüll).

California’s Al Lover, sometime collaborator with Goat and White Fence, defines his solo work as “music to be introspective in public to”. Existential Everything (Stolen Body) is a suitably thoughtful addition to his recorded canon, marked by rich atmospheric textures and a restless curiosity. It’s the kind of music you can happily get lost in, particularly the loping cosmic ambience of Heavy Rain In Visual Fields.

There should always be room for Italian space rock in your life. La Morte Viene Dallo Spazio (aka Death Comes From Outer Space) are the latest purveyors, offering up debut EP Sky Over Giza (Bloodrock/Debemur Morti). Taking their cue from vintage sci-fi and B-movie soundtracks, flautist La Morte and lead guitarist Lo Spazio, aided by two unnamed “female entities” on bass and moog, relay abstract visions of alien apocalypse using acid-rock grooves, samples and Vangelislike synth patterns. Zombies Of The Stratosphere is as good as the title suggests. It’s out now on blue vinyl.

Washington trio The Sky Giants are impressively heavy on second album The Shifting Of Phaseworld (Bandcamp), which distorts the prog metal influence of Voivod through a psychedelic prism. The title track is reassuringly spacey, though it’s the multifaceted Technicolour Kaleidoscope that showcases the breadth of their ambition.

Another threesome who deal in monstrous noise through new album Sun Rose (Mottow Soundz), are Belgium’s My Diligence. The psychedelic elements of their sound may be less overt, though they prove themselves masters of the space groove on the very tasty An Asteroidal Arrow.

And be sure to seek out Stay (Luxury), which finds Swedish quartet It’s For Us, led by Camilla Karlsson, taking reverb’d psych-punk into dark and moody terrain.