LAVA

The Austrian Sulatron label, known for offering bands and albums of the psych and kraut world, now has put a (relatively) new swedish jam band on the prog stage with this release. First of all there is to say: it is not riskless to occupy the title LAVA. Several bands already existed identically named, more or less known and allocated all over the world. For example a german band which had produced 'Tears Are Goin' Home' - a praised album released in 1973. But this LAVA band started in 2003 though and jammed all around Sweden for some years before they decided to produce an album - six tracks which they never had played before - free form jams and mostly twin guitar driven. Besides some similarities to known swedish jam bands like ORESUND SPACE COLLECTIVE (OSC) or BLAND BLADEN they have worked out quite a unique style spiked with krautrock and jazzy elements.

Pa Trottoaren - nearly 10 minutes long - starts with a synthy overture and in the vein of a cosmic trip ala OSC reaping black tomatoes. The sound escalates more and more to a krautrocked way of expressing with a hypnotic punching bass and a weird guitar/synthesizer duel - a promising opener by all means. With Glenn the organ is on board this time and the instruments are meandering purposefully amongst the planets. T-Bone with excellent guitar contributions is my highlight and could have a place on every krautrock sampler so far. Trance pure - hypnotic and spacey - somewhat simple, but very very charming.

The short I Haäigheten is provided with weird guitar echoes and a saxophone interlude which brings a new jazzy touch fading into Det Lyckliga Mongot which follows this direction with a crazy uptempo interaction of all the instruments. The shining long track Lord Of Linne now finally is appointed with a special hypnotic mood - mainly caused by a repetitve organ, synthesizer and guitar theme additionally underlaid with a canterburiesque bass line in most parts. The song rises and falls undulatory provided with a dub feeling in between and some synthy sound effects like simulated storm for example.

A promising debut album as for the final conclusion and recommended to psych and krautrock fans - 3.5 stars.