A wash of sound swirls right at you, possibly distorted voices, birds, maybe a choir heard through a wanton fug of adrenochrome and coffee. You grope for something to hold onto, the low rumblings of a riff starting far below you just in time, rising inexorably to the surface carrying you with it as you rise, rise far above petty troubles, mere mortal concerns; stranding you alone on your mountain top as the voice churns and the cold air scours your lungs. It hurts to be here, immaculate and glazed, but where else could you be? it’s an ecstatic vision, baby.
Welcome to ‘Journey’ the perfectly named opening track of Ecstatic Vision Sonic Praise; the #6 LP in the 1537 2015 Top 9. It’s an excellent opening taster for an album that is long of song and smooth of groove. The fact that I snagged a very limited silver vinyl version to celebrate Relapse Records 25th anniversary can only add to the sheer joy I take in this record.
Philadelphia’s Ecstatic Vision are a welcome wormhole back in time to the Patchoulirassic era, when men were men, all bells were bottomed, gargantuan chemical intake could be lightly justified as ‘neural exploration‘ and there was an appetite for just the kind of thrumming tripped-out sonic infinity jam that gets me all hot under the collar. It’s an alternative timeline where Lemmy never left Hawkwind, Amon Düül II play vast packed-out arena tours, we all have those globe thingys that we were promised in Woody Allen’s The Sleeper and husband’s are left in peace to listen to music on their headphones in the dark. A better place people, a better place.
Ecstatic Vision, enigmatic to the core*, manage the not-as-easy-as-it-looks trick of hitting just the right groove between cosmic-stasis-on-and-on-to-the-end-of-all-things and avoiding tedium. Jams like, the perfectly titled, ‘Don’t Kill The Vibe’ walk that line perfectly, dead-eyed drumming supporting a great, mean, spacy riff; very early Monster Magnet in fact. Time plays tricks here man, five minutes pass simultaneously in both a flicker and an aeon.
Where Sonic Praise floats away from all those illustrious forebears is in exercising a real sense of restraint, this is not just a casual retreading of past glories – no slightly misheard ‘I’ve got a silver tureen’ choruses for this lot. Not a single one of the 5 tracks here ever quite explodes into the super nova that the build-ups portend. There are no easy ways out of the trip and it really is all about the head-tightening, mind-expanding journey.
Take the quasi tranced-out title track as Exhibit A, all urgent dervish drumming, which after a few minutes resolves itself into a groove that peak power Jane’s Addiction would have been proud to have called their own, all that and vocals that sound like they’ve been sung by a man wearing a full spacesuit.
The fullest flowering bud of Ecstatic Vision’s particular art has to be ‘Astral Plane’**. Just hit play below on a great, rockier version than the one on Sonic Praise:
As a truly great writer once wrote:
This LP is precisely what the world has needed since Lemmy left Hawkwind, a groovy, strung-out electric coda that sounds eerily like the effects of Martian drugs on the human nervous system. Whether you’re cruising the galaxy, flashing through uninhabited systems at light speed, or merely orbiting your parent’s basement approaching terminal velocity then, my little stoner, this is right up your third eye.
Who am I to disagree?
The cover of Sonic Praise is a bit of a nondescript disappointment for me, especially when you consider how expansive and stellar the music is. When I bought the album I emailed Relapse Records to see if my copy was missing an insert, I received a curt ‘no’. The fact that the band reissued the LP in 2019 with a better cover made sense to me. The vinyl is nice though and the reproduction of the Vertigo label spiral is a good, stoner touch too.
1026 Down.
*no names, no details, no nothing on the sleeve other than track names.
**I must own at least 4 tracks called ‘Astral Plane’ and I’ve never been let down by one yet.
I’m back. And I’m grateful. You’ve charged my chakras up to 11 dude.
And I’m grateful. I still sing your name to the tune of ‘Big Spender’ occasionally. True story.
Well, if you could see me you could tell that I’m a man of distinction.
A kick in the ear.
Hey, the lead dude in the photo in the clip actually looks a bit like Lemmy.
There does indeed seem to be a subtle Hawkwind influence (grin).
Hey #2, Joe. Who is the tentacley dude?
Hawk who? the tentacley chap is Yogoth N’yarlothotepth – lurker beyond the gates of darkness and that-which-should-not-be-seen. He works in insurance.
Thanks for this one. A kick in the rear.