Here are a couple of newish releases from TranslinguisticOther Recordings, a relatively fresh Seattle-based imprint started by Midday
Veil members Emily Pothast and David Golightly. In terms of packaging and
overall presentation, these folks don’t cut any corners: sleek professionally
printed j-cards, digital download cards, editions of 250, and even
color-printed promotional one-sheets. This may not sound earth shattering by
any means, but it’s also not what you typically encounter within cassette
culture. The music contained on both of these releases sounds pretty impressive
as well.
The “improvised sound rituals” featured on Midday Veil’s “Subterranean
Ritual II” shimmer and sway in a slow motion psychedelic breeze. With droning
analog synth, reverberant baritone guitar, and gentle tom strokes leading the
way, Emily Pothast’s treated wordless vocals fill in the spaces between,
creating a spectral ambience that recedes and crests to the group’s own highly
attuned sense of time and (s)pace. Even at the most outright rockist moments
(the end of “Moon Temple”), the sound is more ‘ceremonial’ than ‘space’ rock.
But you can call it whatever you want, group catharsis seems to be the main
objective here.
Fungal Abyss, an alter ego of the bizzaro metal outfit
Lesbian, operate along similar long form improvisational lines. This quartet,
however, plays within a more classic psychedelic rock set-up: guitars, bass,
drums. That’s not to say that “Bardo Abgrund Temple” sounds dated or re-hashed
in any way, quite the contrary in fact. At roughly 70 minutes in length, Fungal
Abyss head out on a truely psychedelic journey. I say that both because it was
noted that the group recorded these improvisations under the influence of psilocybin
mushrooms (as if the group name didn’t tip us off to their interests) and
because the music itself moves in and out of various passages, from peaceful,
droning drift to epic, gurgling guitar shred, pushing towards something grand
and unknown. This is first-rate modern psych rock by a group that knows how to walk
the walk.
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