MAGNOG

One of the more enigmatic and underappreciated bands in these Archives came and went too quickly at the end of the last millennium, and never had a chance to fulfill the enormous potential shown in their only studio album.

When it was released in March of 1996, this self-titled debut was compared in the music press to early Ash Ra Tempel, and not without reason. The group is classified here as Psychedelic/Space Rock, but this is Space Rock as the Germans used to play it, circa 1970: dense, unnerving explorations of infinity, the musical equivalent of dark matter. Imagine the drifting interstellar guitars of "Traummaschine", cranked up to occasional brain-melting volume.

And yet there are moments of unexpected beauty in the music, silver linings around all the churning guitar abstractions and overwhelming reverb effects. "Learning Forgetfulness" has a lovely, Eno-esque melody, with barely audible spoken poetry from an obvious teenage voice (the average age of the Magnog trio was around twenty, at the time). And in "A Moment's Seam" the band miraculously conjured a facsimile of an actual song, one of the more haunting ballads ever beamed down to Planet Earth from beyond the stars.

The longer tracks do tend to wander, like stray asteroids adrift between galaxies. But over its generous 77-minute length (actually longer, on vinyl), the album is able to sustain an awesome mood of cosmic introspection.

Ill health broke up the band before a second album could be realized. But in an instant of time almost too short for anyone to notice, Magnog flared like a supernova explosion: shining briefly and brilliantly before contracting to neutron ash.