Lizards Exist - Lizards Exist (2014)

I've mentioned before, though it was appropriately been a while since, that my musical listening goes through cyclical phases. I'll be real into garage rock for example, maybe for weeks, then suddenly it'll lose its appeal and I'll be all about folk or post-rock or whatever I stumble into next. All this to eventually find my way back to listening to a bunch of garage rock. This helps and hurts writing up albums, for if the submitted material aligns with my listening preferences at the moment it is a blissful experience for all. However, if it isn't what I'm jazzed about at the time I sometimes have to sit on the album until I know I can give a fair shake. So here's an well overdue but hopefully better for it write up on the Croatian outfit, Lizard's Exist.

Lizards Exist have an identifiable era they've associated themselves with, namely the period of psychedelia that began at the very end of the 60s and blossomed in the 70s that displayed the characteristics that would create progressive rock. To explain better, I mean they're long, instrumental songs that have either improvisation or what is to appear as such done within a psychedelic style. Therefore the sound of this album is purposefully vintage, and they've executed this fantastically, particularly with the keyboard and snyth playing. Also, despite my fears that this was going to be prog rock that I found distasteful such as Yes, my enjoyment of the spacey psychedelic theme won out. I genuinely found myself riveted to my computer chair, wanting to hear where they went with these elongated tracks next. Finally, the space music aspects of Lizards Exist make me want to compare it to Cosmique and Travancore, though all three of these bands have very different approaches.

To be had here:
Lizards Exist - Lizards Exist

P.S. They're looking for a label for a vinyl LP.

COSMIQUE - Les Lundis de l'Espace (2014)

It wasn't very long ago I wrote about my rediscovery of the French independent label, Cocktail Pueblo, when I shared Les Princes du Rock. It wasn't the only thing that caught my attention however. Les Lundis de l'Espace came across immediately as a release worthy of some attention, if for nothing but the very neat retro design of the cover art. 

Not surprisingly there's not much online about COSMIQUE save what goggle can translate on on the label's website regarding this album. From which I've pieced together is that the band is a duo and that is Les Lundis de l'Espace (Mondays in Space) this is a concept album, masquerading as a soundtrack to an astronomical television show. How can you not be on board already?

The tracks themselves a quite short, some last only a few seconds, so even with 31 of them the whole playtime is merely 22 minutes. What's heard on these brief "songs" is enthralling. It might be hard to imagine them as a soundtrack to anything that wasn't about space. The absolutely otherworldliness is so powerfully present that should I ever catch a rocket to beyond the sky I would be disappoint not to hear these tonal, ethereal numbers chiming in my ears. It's weird, in the best ways.

To be had here:
COSMIQUE -  Les Lundis de l'Espace

Travancore - Travancore (2014)

Electronic music can get pretty wild, and while I am not the sort of person who'd ever like to be a club or even a bar that would blast electronic music in the midst of flashing lights and crowds of people, I do listen to it. Perhaps it's the wrong way, but I usually consume my crazy beats over a cup of coffee in the morning, sometimes reading the news or a short story from some long dead Italian motherfucker. The more experimental the better, I want it to make sounds that make me pause, lean back and think, "Now that was neat."

Tranvancore is an outfit that has been capable of provoking this desired effect. They've tagged the album "space music" and those two words might best get at the atmosphere of the tracks (if that isn't too oxymoronic to say). I felt like I was in one of those NASA capsules floating to God-only-knows while some friendly aliens thought to beam me a radio signal. The trio that makes up this band seems to know how to bend sound, or at least create the illusion of it through a stunning array of soundscapes, effects and utilizing stereophonic recording for all its worth. To be honest, it is only for several interludes that the album reaches a pitch that is like club music. Most of it having a more artful, ambient-like but it's never truly of the sort of slow, building sort. Too much is going on for that. It bounces, pings, shimmers and even has bursts of static that are like a robot with a broken vocalizer reciting a poem (check out "Starfield South" for that). Finally, this self-titled release is being issued by Hidden Waves, a label run by one of the band members. 

To be had here:
Travancore - Travancore