PEOPLE OF THE NORTH

Space rock in general has had a major revival during the past couple of years, and though we're dealing with music that bubbles and writhes and sounds like something that was made from the insides of a pink bubblegum sphere, you can certainly pick up the tiny shifts in styles that's been happening lately. Somehow the music has retraced its footsteps - gone back to where it once started, and then put a modern spin on it. One could easily say the same for much of the modern prog scene actually, and whether one chooses to look at this second/third/fourth coming of retro-music as something stale - uninteresting as a dinosaur turd - or simply as music from the heart conjured up by old trusted instruments that still sound far better than your average computer-program, -that is in itself a matter of taste and opinion, which I leave entirely up to you out there beyond the screens.

People of the North are a side-project of psych entrepreneurs Oneida - that clearly draw their inspiration from the good old 70s - and perhaps more precisely Germany. That's at least what I hear in this their debut Deep Tissue. The muddy - yet distinctive sound, together with wobbly guitars and oscillating synthesizers propel this act forward like a mixture of several Krautrock bands from the heyday of Kosmische music. I hear Amon Düül ll in the crunchy and wildly distorted guitars - as well as a little modern edge akin to Ozric Tentacles yet more muddled and gooey. I hear Faust in the borrowing snuffling and gritty electronics as well as in the synthesizers. Then you have the motorik tendencies of the drums that feel infinitely hypnotic and engaging - lulling you into a blinking rhythmic ecstasy that just goes and goes and goes. This is mostly an instrumental release, but on occasion we get low brow unfathomable vocalizations that more than anything sound like throated instruments - which get absorbed by the surrounding instruments like a small myriad of starfighters getting swallowed up by a huge mothership.

Overall this release is all about the voyage. I guess most of it must be freeform - nobody writes down chords like this, I simply don't believe that! It feels larval much credited to that Faust like vibe emanating from the keys. Consider these the floor of the events on which you constantly are bombarded with screeching guitar howls, small snippets of soloing going off on some peripheral tangent that throw you into a distorted and highly surrealistic world of musical goo. I'll say this: If you like structured well- arranged music with sheets and codas, boy you're barking up the wrong tree here. If you however are looking for music that flows along like an electronic current of musical candyfloss - going a hundred miles an hour with its mouth full of honey and sand, then you've come to the right place.

This is essentially jams in a bottle - yellow submarine coloured musical goo sliding down your stereo rack. Substance attained purely through shamanistic hypnotising rhythms stuttering their way into your brain - other than that you are treated to something that's wild and unhinged - flapping about out there on the horizon like a disorientated flock of ducks quaking, squealing, diving, soaring - swooping from side to side with no intentions of a future landing. That is essentially People of the North. Disorientated ducks - but my oh my how they sound.

According to my personal tastes, I should award Deep Tissue with a 3 star rating, but on account of the somewhat predictable nature of these jams - the lethargic nature of the developments, I hold my horses and opt for 2.5, but man do these guys cook up a mean psychedelic sauce!! Highly recommended to space rock fans, as well as old time Krautrock fetishists with a penchant for goo.