NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM

Solar Drone Ceremony is the second full-length studio release from this Belgian ensemble, and it contains just one 52-minute track. It's a creepy, occultic album wrapped in befittingly H.R. Giger-inspired artwork showing some sort of sexualized alien ritual.

The album takes its time to get going. A low synth drone slowly builds, with other atmospheric effects fading in and out, giving an ambiance akin to walking down a dark hallway in a horror film. Around seven minutes, the growl of saxophone starts to show up. These slow, breathy wheezes only add to the menacing atmosphere which has been building up to this point. Percussion finally joins the fray around nine minutes in, but it's distant, arrhythmic, and chaotic. It reminds of certain passages in "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" with its eerie mix of drums, sax, and keys.

Some hint of structure finally begins to arise around eleven minutes in. The drumming remains distant, but what was just rolling tom fills now has some weight and propulsion behind it. Heavily wahed guitar twists and slinks above the murkiness.

Wordless, chanted vocals?reminiscent of a muezzin?add to the obscure aesthetic as the noise grows ever more enveloping. By fifteen minutes in, this piece has become a lurching, cultic hymn. The drums are plodding, insistent, and unstoppable; and the morass surrounding this rhythmic backbone is constantly swirling and evolving as different instruments get their turn at the forefront.

The hazy, distorted atmosphere reminds me of early krautrock epics, a la Ash Ra Tempel or Achim Reichel. Much like those early '70s cuts, this record is variations on a theme, and the subtle, accruing shifts are what make this so engaging.

After over half an hour, the percussion drops out, and Solar Drone Ceremony is momentarily simply some lush synth pads. It's not long before the drums return, emphatic as ever, and sax lines weave and warble over the cosmic call to prayer. The vocals eventually become harsher, more typical of metal, but it all adds to the auditory maelstrom.

With about ten minutes left, this opus scraps its drone pretense, and a faster, metal-meets-motorik drumbeat propels the music in a more energetic?but no less demonic?direction. This movement feels truly climactic, and all the preceding build-up was a wonderfully-laid foundation. The faux-religious fervor is palpable in this final movement, with its echoing percussion, jittery synth lines, and general frenzy.

Solar Drone Ceremony is not an album for the faint of heart. It is long. It is challenging. It is dense. But if you're in the mood for it, and if you've got the patience, it is well worth it. This is a striking, arresting album that manages to do an impressive amount with surprisingly little.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2021/05/31/album-review-neptunian-maximalism-solar-drone-ceremony/

A fascinating genre salad, and one that initially struck me as total gimmickry but has opened up with subsequent revisiting. It's primarily a jazz fusion record - mostly instrumental, and almost all utterly chaotic. But beneath that are incredibly strong lines of drone metal a la Sunn O))) and manic avant-prog a la Magma. And somehow, this strange mix doesn't sound like a total mess. The drone sections are a welcome break from the furious dexterity of the prog and jazz parts, and the occasional vocals are a welcome break from the incessant instrumental noodling too. I'm still not sure how I feel about it as a whole, but it's certainly very creative, which is something that should be celebrated.

6.4 (3rd listen)

Part of my listening diary from my facebook music blog - www.facebook.com/TheExoskeletalJunction

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM comes from Brussels, Belgium and was created in 2018 by multi-instrumentalist Guillaume Cazalet (Czlt, Jenny Torse, Aksu), who brought together veteran saxophonist Jean Jacques Duerinckx (Ze Zorgs) and two drummers, Sebastien Schmit (K-Branding) and Pierre Arese (Aksu). In 2020, Stephane FDL and Lukas Bouchenot took the drums. Reshma Goolamy (bass), Romain Martini (guitar), Alice Thiel (synths, guitar), Joaquin Bermudez (saz, setar), Didié Nietzche (soundscapes) and Leslie V. (black magic scenography) joined in 2019, thus changing the band into a real drone orchestra.

ÉONS is the band's debut and to call this work ambitious would be an understatement. First of all these guys are serious about their music, so serious that for a debut they released a massive sprawling opus that runs over 128 minutes long which requires three CDs to capture. In the truest sense of the avant-garde and experimental, the album cover art gives away a bit of the transcendental soundscapes that lurk about on this one. Very much in the world of tribal and ritualistic trance, ÉONS is is based on a tribal ambient meets drone metal template and then precedes to add avant-jazz, psychedelic rock and post-metal over the rather linear martial rhythms.

While somewhat based on a steady stream of consciousness the 16 tracks that celebrate astro-mythologies deviate from the underlying musical procession by adding complex layers of saxophone based spiritual jazz, bouts of brutal prog workouts, vocal chanting and tribal drumming circles. Add some electronica, some tribal operatic vocals, a Magma-esque bass groove that evokes the otherworldliness of zeuhl martial rhythms and suffocating atmospheres and you know you're in for a wild ride with this one. Dedicating over two hours of you life for a debut album is a tall demand to be sure but somehow NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM have crafted an epic sounding array of soundscapes that reel you in with a steady rhythmic groove and then offer a seemingly inexhaustible mix of the aforementioned musical styles.

Perhaps a bit too weird and too demanding for many to sit through but for those seeking those classic escapist routes in the vein of the most spaced out jazz of Sun Ra, the most kosmische freakery of early Krautrock or the myriad drone metal bands a la Sunn O))) and a gazillion other bands in between then this will be right up your alley. Perfect for those time when you just want to zone out and take a transcendental journey into drifting soundscapes that follow logical processions but layer on countless variations of themes. While a triple discker may seem like too much of a commitment, there's no rules that say you have to experience this entire album in one sitting like i did. Overall a cool and worthy slice of avant-garde freakery here. Might be way too long for many but i like it!

Come to think of it, this would've been a great soundtrack for the Conan The Barbarian film from the 1980s! Or a darker more tripped out sequel to the flick Koyaanisqatsi!