TRANSMISSIONS FROM TELOS: VOL. IV

"Groovy man! I like really dig your stylo brother - it's like totally far out and cosmic, y'know? I was like tripping all the way through the album...."

Short passage between a left over hippie who just got out of the ground with the help from a small archaeology crew who were digging for dinosaur bones in the foothills of old Cisco, - and this new act called Lumerians who sound like a time machine on steroids.

All the signs are here: the band plays in an old abandoned church with the add on of colourful light- shows terrorising your eyeballs with laser beams and bubbling oil secretions. The music is heavily influenced by the Germanic way of playing psychedelic music - taking its cue from whatever feel and jam that happens to be prevailing at the time. This is instant composition right here, and just like Swedish star fighters My Brother the Wind, you too sense a musical freedom with Lumerians that seeks to enhance the untethered and improvisational character of what psychedelic music once was.

Retro? Yes, absolutely - but not in a derivative manner. Sure you are most likely going to spot the obvious nods to several of the head honchos inside Krautrock, but to these ears this venture only borrows small fragments of a once tried and tested formula. The thing is, how is music that relies on improvised atmospheres and jams ever going to be derivative? Still, there's a motorik drive to the proceedings here that sound so tight and groovy, that you can't help but think of CAN - even if the music hiding underneath the rather exotic bird art work sounds nothing like the old masters. Over this tightly played rhythm section, you get tons of quaking and croaking synthesisers, brooding organs and fiery guitar patterns that swirl around in the music like wasted gold fish dancing an upside down waltz in a coffee-maker. This is genuine psychedelic music right here!

Thankfully we've seen a lot of modern bands that've taken it upon themselves to resurrect the Krautrock of old, and in many of these cases the music sounds passable and close to it's opening intentions, but a lot of the times it falls shy of being really great. It remains a jam based psychedelic music that never leaves the comfort of the individual performers - amounting to something rather nice but without any real grunt to it. This album feels different. From the opening cut, the music builds itself up into a self suspending structure that lives only to be destroyed. What I mean by such a silly remark is, that when you decide to revolve around music that basically is jamming, you need to approach it with the intent of killing it whilst performing it - transforming it whilst executing it, - it's still the same thing. If every band member just stays the course - within this little reverberating field of echoes and repetitions without any need for a small death in the music, the impression of it all then more than often is non-existent. Dough and sauce..... The music needs death to live - just like those species of grass down in Africa that are designed by nature itself to end their lives in fire and flames. It kills one form of expression only to make way for several new sprouting sonic free-ways.

The production of the album is what really makes it flow though. Every musician here is deeply democratic in his approach, and you won't find much in the way of solos and instrumental gymnastics. Feeling like a live album recorded directly in the "studio", which it also is, the music develops and plays itself with every band member ornamenting an expression of warmth and rhythm. Small but highly effective touches of synths, percussion, - an incessant grooving herd of sound monstrously utilising every little bit of imagination. Everything is audible - it feels warm and fluid just like many of our most beloved 70s productions, and speaking personally here, I just love the fact that music like this, unrehearsed and structurally neglected, still is being made.

If you are sitting around out there with a strong penchant for honey sticking rib sauce psychedelics that sound like the 60s and 70s returning back into your living room by way of speakers, then you should take a chance on this wonderful resurrecting Frankenstein of an album, that proudly and very beautifully takes what went before it and unleashes it as something fresh and vibrant. I haven't come across any new psych music this good in a while, but I sure am planning on getting more of the stuff!

LUMERIANS are a contemporary group from the States, founded in 2006. Their music sometimes is labeled as retrospective, however - although surely referrring to the inspired 1960/70s - this sounds quite modern on this occasion. I have taken enough time in the meanwhile in order to sink into their approach, and now I can say that they are another big discovery for me in 2012. Thematically referring to the Star Wars space opera, 'Transmissions From Telos Vol IV' appears to be the newest and most delightful effort deriving from their recording collections. This album clocks around 34 minutes - which obviously is rather short - but holds four challenging transmissions from extraterrestrial messages anyhow, where they - for whatever reason - have failed to provide them with distinct titles.

Nevermind, not really a surprise on the other hand, a proper trademark so much the more considering this music genre, one can say. Well, what strikes here ... although listed I honestly have problems to detect electric guitars when listening, which normally are very effective and virtuoso instruments on psych/space productions. This time the songs certainly live from the multiple keyboard/synth work first and foremost. And a trippy mood is recognizable right from the start, paired with a strong Krautrock touch à la Can, NEU! and similiar, speaking of hypnotic bass lines and the stoic drum/percussion appeal.

The synths are another attraction, playfully appointed, the extended closing track is the best reference here. But first of all let me praise their self-evident interaction to the highest degree. So overall this album keeps a fantastic trance mood coupled with an (industrial) kraut touch which appeals to me extraordinarily. Man! ... would like to know how this works delivered live from a stage. I strongly recommend to give them a try.