GAMELAN INTO THE MINK SUPERNATURAL

This album holds a very strong dose of archaic power, really ripping of the ears and brains of the listener. As the name of the release suggests, one can find here interesting gamelan polyrhythms, which have also been studied by post-1970 King Crimson line-ups, not however with such ferocity as this instrumental trio does. There are also some noise ambiences which enriches the surreal destructive force of the album. I really have to take hats off for the drummer of this group, who creates the most powerful punch to their sound. The compositions are quite primitive in structure, but the players manage to create immense tension from them, songs being cut violently and changed to another with a pace underlining the state of hysteria, and the concept of basic instrumental rock trio is used in the most efficient way, bringing lots to listen and much to experience. A must have for fans of oppressing heavy psych music, I would claim.

A Psychedelic Noise Rock band (literally!)

The Psychic Paramount may be just a trio, but man can they pack a punch! This guys play their music with the volume up to 11 and no less than 11. This can be slight of a problem for people with sensitive ears or don't want their speakers to be severely damaged by the sheer power of this band. You've been warned...

Now to their music. This is jam band often echoing Guru Guru circa UFO, but dirtier and rawer than them. The first song is the intro and it's pretty much made up of pure noise and nothing more. It may annoy you or you may enjoy it, but whatever it does to you it will keep your blood pumping and it will stay that way for the rest of the album. The album is pretty versatile in their own context of sound. From trippy noise passages to aggressive jamming from the three members. All of their sound is revolved around their over-distorted sound. This may put off many people at first, but after repeated listens their sound becomes more tolerable and enjoyable. Luckily, by the end of the album their sound isn't as harsh as the rest of the album. The last song, "Paramount", is probably the more trance inducing tune in the album with its repetitive theme echoing into nothingness for almost 7 minutes. It's a well needed brake for all of the slaughter your ears experienced in the previous songs.

So by the end of the album your ears will be ringing badly and you will probably need to buy some new speakers. This band is definitely not for everyone, but if you can tolerate high amounts of distortion and white noise this band will be greatly enjoyable. My only complaint is that the album is criminally short. Only 35 minutes! It leaves you wanting for more, but we'll have to wait for later this year for new material.

Not for the faint of heart.

3.7

I didn't know what to expect from this album; I bought it on a whim after being intrigued by the title (you know it's prog when there's a phrase like "Mink Supernatural" in the title). Well, needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.

When I think "space rock," I tend to think of compositions like Pink Floyd's "Shine on You Crazy Diamond," where the melodies float around in a sea of pleasant ambience. That is not what this is. This is space rock, alright, but these guys are not gently floating, they are hurtling through at light speed, crashing into asteroids.

Silly metaphors aside, this is really a great album. "Megatherion" and "Para5" are almost noise rock, with very little proper melody to speak of but a lot of really cool and crazy sounds coming from the band's instruments. "Echoh Air," is a bit more structured, but not much, and the jamming has a very sixties kind of feel, to my ears anyway. The best point of reference I can give would be some early Pink Floyd like "Careful With That Axe, Eugene," but that' an admittedly imperfect comparison. There's probably some Krautrock that would be a better reference point, but my range of knowledge in that genre is pretty limited so I can't give a perfect example. "X-Visitations" I would almost describe as a dark ambient track, with a lot of scary sounding noises and effects. "Gamelan," reminds me quite a bit of Can's "Halleluhwah," where a fairly consistent drum beat is held steady while the sounds around it get crazier and crazier. Again, that's an imperfect comparison, but it's a similar sort of song, and with this kind of music it's hard to find good comparisons.

Overall, this all-instrumental album is a very good one, but certainly not for the faint of heart. Personally I think I'm a bit lucky this wasn't the floaty space rock i was envisioning, because I can't imagine that would have been anywhere near as interesting to listen to.

4/5

This is quite likely the loudest album in my collection this side of some of Merzbow's mid-'90s output, when the man seemed to want to push the harshness of digital sound to its maximum feasible limit. Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Psychic Paramount is highly based in noise-rock. Their sound is unpleasant and distorted, but that's of course the whole point. It's supposed to be an unrelenting wall of noise.

If you can get past the production, this is highly energetic and surprisingly catchy stuff. I'd even go so far as to say it's melodic. The band actually has pretty credible prog credentials; their lengthy instrumental compositions stretch out at length, with all the twists and turns you'd expect from the best prog rock, and they use unorthodox time signatures and bizarre composition techniques you'd expect from the genre. It's probably best described as a mixture of noise-rock, prog, psychedelic/space rock, and post-rock. I don't really know of many other acts that sound like them, though to be fair, I haven't explored the genre too much. It's probably worth also mentioning the works of spiritual predecessor Laddio Bolocko, which contained two of the same members but was prone to stretching out even more than the Psychic Paramount do and was rooted somewhat more in avant-garde jazz. If you like TPP, you'll probably like LB as well.

This band's other works aren't mastered quite as loudly as this one, and II is probably every bit as fun as this one, so it's probably a better starting place. I was introduced here, though, and I find there to be something special about it. I have to knock off a star for the production, though. I get what they were going for, but there's a point where even something that's supposed to be loud is still too loud. If the production were a shade less harsh, this would get an enthusiastic five stars.