Goddamn I'm a Countryman Rec. Rad Kjetil & The Loving Eye of God (S,2006)**°
Rad Kjtetil is supposed to be a winterproject inspired on some visiting lady, fictive or not, and by a duo called The Loving Eye of God who used the Spacious Mind studio for two months. Like each The Spacious Mind album (which I guess are partly involved or at least delivered similar inspirations), the album is like a musical concept with start, evolution and a certain circular finish. It starts beautifully, with perhaps early Ashra Temple in their heads, building up keyboards notes, as vibrating harmonizing cosmic energies, adding lots of various improvised acoustic and electric guitars, evolving to a very much The Spacious Mind! sound. From adding layers on top of each other, the whole album quickly turns into turning everything into backward sounds. “I Dauflom”’s electronic sounds sound like birds and insects, while the backward voices seemed to withdraw themselves from the existing world in turmoil to disappear into a black hole. The track almost IS black hole music, but with a focus on disappearing with no turning back. It takes really a long time and a stretched landscape before the world turns back to normal, on the fourth track, “Dal-Jani Välta” where sounds are again flowing in a right direction and consciousness comes back with a normal improvisation with guitars, percussion, bass, heading rhythmically once more to freaking guitar delays driven stonedness. Last track turns back to the acoustic guitar and the firstly beemed underlying drone.
Goddamn I'm a Countryman Rec. Rad Kjetil & The Loving Eye of God :
Mattmar / Mountain Songs (S,2006)****
From some more experimental albums I think it is interesting to check them out twice, and write each time the experience down, on two completely different moments and so much separated, you forgot about the first imaginations, and then to compare results.
* Last time when I heard it this album sounded to me like a perfect musical soundtrack with a life on its own. While starting in a distance, with thunders, drones as if something is preparing for something to happen, this leads from a rather balancing changing nature, to more acoustic drones, with child voices, dulcimer improvisations, drones on guitar strings, and guitars, to a slightly meditative and spacey troubadour trip for the new ages to come. Then spacey bass drones take it over again, mumble to a kind of dreamland state where appears a different improvisation, with something that sounds like a sitar-guitar, guitars, glockenspiel, first raga-esque, stretching and moody, but adding energy until it’s more rocking, until it really is psychedelic, with additions of freaky but moody guitars, and bits of tambourine. This thoroughly calms down once more, leaving some acoustic guitar and some echoing energy. Various guitars create a new and moody landscapes, as well as keyboards taking their share, with their own overtones. Last part, in a ritual way, with handclaps, and a droning bass rhythm takes the listener a last time to an increased rhythmically uplifting energy until it once more can releases a more heavy and hypnotic psychedelic energy. This whole soundtrack sounds almost like a creative life energy transformed into a musical form.
* The first time when I heard it I wrote that this album sounded more interesting than the previous album, and that it has also more acoustic foundations. Through a mistake on the CD I could only hear three tracks. My first perception on the album was much more fragmented so with this first listen, I only tended to describe the few elements I noticed in the music. Besides being more acoustic, I also noticed that some drones were here and there coming back on the background (for the part that I did hear). I described that the album started with a collection of sound on harmonizing pulses with manipulated extremely slowed down sounds, dark and spatial, with some percussion, and with small worms of waves of electric guitar delay loops, and with a few high space sound sequences. Then I also noticed the loops of reverb child voice which become like shamanic sounds, the dulcimer stringed pickings, and the long sounds of backwards guitars. At a certain point, these dulcimer stringed pickings become like loops, which in combination with harmonies of guitars gets a child voice improvising along. The next elements playing a part are acoustic guitars, glockenspiel and percussion. The improvisation evolves further until everything becomes like slow waves of rather meditative harmony looped drones, with acoustic psychedelic improvisations on top…. While I only had heard a fragment of the album, my perception had stayed fragmentary as well. It is however very clear all these evolutions were successfully interwoven in different sections (the various tracks), and together formed a really interesting soundtrack with sound-conscious preparations, and with psychedelic highlights. Very good !
