ROADBURN FESTIVAL 2024 • THE SPARK: Wednesday, April 17th

- Laser Jaguar Sex Vampire Rebellion! -

feat. FINAL GASP, SONJA and RIOT CITY

You get up early in Northern Germany, put an USB stick with new-ish music in your car, listen to one album each of Aksel Røed's Other Aspects, Alessandro Parisi, Alice Coltrane, Asagraum, Atonia - and uuuuüüaaaäärrgghh with Autopsy you're suddenly already in the Netherlands.

Still a third of the way to go, refuel before passing Tilburg, learn too late that fuel is much cheaper on the other side of the border, enjoy the ugly houses of rural Belgium, return to the Netherlands on a slippery muddy sand track through a national preservation, arrive at your destination and begin your new life in a former monastery.
Well, at least during the coming five nights and mornings, since the most important part of the day is of course reserved for the state of musical and spiritual exception which is the Roadburn Festival, starting with a free entry warm-up show on the Next Stage in the smaller room of the 013 venue.


CLASHBURN:

What? Clashes already on Wednesday? There's just one stage with three bands. However, it's worth mentioning that Bell Witch, whose festival shows have all been legendary, played a show not too far from Tilburg in Eindhoven, which surely was a tempting alternatice for many fans. If for some reason I had missed their transcendent performance of last year I surely would have considered going there.

But as it was I was very happy to put on my imaginary spandex pants and Metalkutte to start my Roadburn experience with the surely not too typical package awaiting us at "The Spark":

Aaaaaaaaaahhh! Metal gymnastics with Jordan Jacobs, excercise one: Step onto the monitor speaker with one foot, bend your knee as well, spin sideways and... screeeeaaaaaam!!!

Manowar and Van Halen shirts could be seen on stage, and if they had brought copies with them, we could also have seen the cover artwork of their latest album "Electric Elite", which shows a cyborg jaguar shooting a laser beam from its eye, at the merch table. Yes, all signs were on fist-raising fucking Heavy Metal!

And boy, especially with that ridiculously sharp and high vocal delivery of their frontman Riot City  immediately set the room on fire. Their show was an amazing tribute to Iron Maiden here, Ronnie James Dio there, but most of all and most over the top "Painkiller" style Judas Priest.
If you want your Metal to be pure and true, these Canadian electri-cats know how to give it to you in the most smashing way.

I already felt strongly reminded of that Speed Metal package with Bütcher and Speed Queen in 2018, when the warm-up was still in the Cul de Sac. Banger!

The only downside of starting the night with Riot City was that any singer would have had a hard time leaving an impression after them. It didn't help either that Melissa Moore's voice needed a while to warm up and felt a bit off in the beginning.
However the singer / guitarist of Sonja eventually got there, so that not only their own brand of NWoBHM with a touch of Goth Rock worked excellently, but also the two cover versions in their set succesfully transferred Danzig's "Devil's Plaything" and Iron Maiden's "Deja-Vu" into their lumbar regional aesthetic.

All in all a great catchy Hard Rock show which knew exactly what elements of the genre to cherry-pick.

Keeping the night pretty consistent - at least for Roadburn standards -, but with enough variety not to bore anyone the third band also blended raw Metal with (a sizably bigger) Goth influence and also added some Hardcore and various other elements. Ultimately this led to a sound which could in one moment could sound like a Black Metal version of Danzig, in others like Killing Joke or sometimes even like D.R.I. with eyeliner. So yeah, this was another cool banger, which only missed the audience wearing sunglasses at night.

Even though Riot City still remained my personal winner, this whole package was a great Spark to lit the festival wildfire, which would of course burn through much wider multidtude of genres within and far beyond the boundaries of Metal... 

Reviews of the following festival days coming soon!

If you want to take a [spoiler alert] sneek peak of what I'll be writing about, you can already see almost every show I attended on the Instagram feed of Veil of Sound, where I posted pictures on all five days:

Sieh dir diesen Beitrag auf Instagram an

Ein Beitrag geteilt von Veil of Sound (@veil_of_sound)

WV Soul Sorcery with DOPE PURPLE & BERSERK, 李劍鴻 LI JIANHONG and ZAÄAR

Last triple review before the annual Roadburn pilgrimage? Probably, unless something extremely spontanous comes up before Wednesday morning. And as always when I have received a package from the French-Chinese quality Avantgarde label WV Sorcerer Productions you can bet it's some stuff far from any norms!

李劍鴻 LI JIANHONG - 魂​靈​獨​居​者 Soul Solitary (Pale Coral Pink vinyl LP) (2024)

However, if the sheer prospect of one guy playing two twenty-two minute improvisations of seemingly erratic experimental Noise / Drone / Feeback pieces on his guitar, occasionally accompanied by barks, shouts and traditionally inspired Chinese singing, throws you off... then you should probably skip this new live album of Li Jianhong.

However again... if you appreciate his work on "Mountain Fog" or his phenomenal collaboration with Wen Zhiyong and Deng Boyu, then "Soul Solitary" should almost be a no-brainer, especially considering its awesome artwork, even though it's not presented on a gatefold sleeve, as it would deserve.

Undoubtly more aggressive and unsettling than the aforementioned works this really might either be a more or less accessible record, depending on where you're coming from. For sure this is rather suited to experience in an introspective deep listening session than as coversation backdrop music on a party. But that shouldn't come as a surprise, right?

Probably not the easiest entry into Li Jianhong's body of work, but maybe I'm completely wrong here, since I just love this stuff aynway.

DOPE PURPLE & BERSERK - This Is The Harsh Trip For The New Psyche (Bloodshot Eye vinyl LP) (2024)

Taiwanese Acid Mothers Temple worshippers Dope Purple are back with a new album quite different to its predecessor "Grateful End". This time their Space Rock seems to be less wild and chaotic, more controlled and... no wait, that's not the whole truth. For the most part this would probably be an indeed much more relaxed record - had they not added a new secret sauce to their recipe. Enter electronic Harsh Noise artist Berserk!

Sometimes he just blends in harmonically beside the band's own keyboard player and guitars, but once he's really let loose it becomes a miracle that this music still works.
On a rather short, wild and heavy overload of everything like "Highlander" it just resembles a raging war between elements. On longer tracks like "Norman on the Moon", "Never (Say) Die 星​期​天" or "Ashes of My Telepathic Love" on the other hand Dope Purple are seasoned sailers steadily piloting their ship through the most ridiculous storms completely unfazed by the winds and waves around them going completely berserk.

Mixing this confrontation must have been a challenge: preserve the maelstrom, but also don't lose the musicality! This "Harsh Trip For The New Psyche" masters this excercise. You're asking yourself WTF you're listening to, and in the same thought you can answer this question, because you still actually understand everything which is going on, no matter how fucking nuts it gets. Brilliant Psych Noise insanity!

This album is a collaborative release not only available from WV Sorcerer Productions, but also from Riot Season Records.

ZAÄAR - Musique Cryptique (Live in Liège) (CD) (2024)

And finally a group which builds a bridge to Roadburn for me, as they have not only played there in 2022, but several of their members will also be on stage with Neptunian Maximalism next Sunday.

The packaging of "Musique Cryptique" looks like a seven inch single, but there's actually a full live album on compact disc inside. Zaäar take their primal esoteric freeform music into a cave and oh boy, what a beast are they unleashing!
The tracklist reads ten titles, but you hardly even realize most of their transitions, as this is one big ecstasy of timeless expression. The most radical Coltrane spirit speaking through a modern quintet, which now switches the bass against an amplified santur (an Iranian variant of the hammered dulcimer) and further accompanies drums, percussions and saxophones with all kinds of electronic drones and textures, samples, throat singing, animal noises, flutes, trumpet, zurna and zither.

That sound like a lot? It for sure is! Zaäar don't play your grandfather's Free Jazz, but they might play Mitocondrial Eve's Free Jazz or the Free Jazz of a future post humanity. Whatever it is, it feels Spiritual, tribal, global, inimitably Avant-Garde, yet universal conscious. What a hammering meditation! What a monstrosity of freedom! What a wildfire of inspiration!

Piss off already, Jazz police! This slaps.

SULA BASSANA - Dreamer

Ich mag nicht der größte Komplettist und Sammelfreak sein, doch inklusive der neulich vom Minerall-Konzert mitgenommenen 6-CD-Box ist meine Kollektion von Schmidtchen Bassanas Solomaterial inzwischen immerhin groß genug, um mich elf Stunden dauerbeschallen zu lassen.

Sein erstmals 2002 erschienenes Debüt hatte ich mir trotz mehrerer Reissues bisher allerdings noch nicht zu Gemüte geführt. Und ich muss sagen, es hat mich tatsächlich etwas überrascht!

SULA BASSANA - Dreamer (LP) (2002/2024)

Doch zunächst einal etwas Orientierung: "Dreamer" kam zunächst wie gesagt 2002 raus, und zwar über Nasoni Records, exklusiv auf Vinyl. Zwei Jahre später folgte dann die erste CD-Auflage mit neuem Coverartwork auf Sulatron Records, schnell gefolgt von einer zweiten Pressung 2005 auf Elektrohasch Records. Zum Zehnjährigen Jubiläum 2012 kam dann wieder auf Sulatron Records eine remasterte Version mit nochmals neuem Cover auf CD und LP... letztere noch einmal im Folgejahr nachgepresst.
Alles kapiert soweit? Jetzt gibt es das Ding nochmals auf Schallplatte (wie mittlerweile von Dave präferiert farbiges Recycling-Vinyl), aber mit dem Artwork der ersten beiden CD-Ausgaben. 

Nun packt Herr Schmidt ja allerhand unterschiedliches Zeug unter sein Sula Bassana-Banner. Klar, irgendeine Form von pilzentrücktem Psych ist es immer, aber manche Aufnahmen sind klar rockorientierter und klingen mehr nach Band, während andere eher den eigensinnigen Homestudiotüftler mit kauzigem Elektrokraut oder verträumtem Ambient in den Vordergrund stellen.

Die Überraschung bei "Dreamer" lag für mich insofern darin, dass ich angesichts des Titels doch stark mit einem Tangerine Dream der letzten Art gerechnet hatte. Tatsächlich aber hätte ich Sula Bassana hier ohne Hinweis wahrscheinlich nicht einmal wiedererkannt, so sehr hört sich die Musik nach einer perfekt aufeinander eingespielten Sechziger/Siebziger-Rockgruppe an. Es ist natürlich nicht so, dass es stören würde, aber fanatische Hardcore-Realisten müssen sich hier schon ständig daran erinnern, dass dieses Album von einer Nase alleine aufgenommen wurde, denn vor dem inneren Auge spielt hier unweigerlich eine fünfköpfige Band.

Nachdem "Dreamer", "Dealer McDope" und "My Blue Guitar" sich ausgejammt haben, ändert sich der Ton allerdings deutlich mit der düstereren superelektronischen "Nervenlähmung".
Mit "Ananda" bleibt es danach noch über zwölf weitere Minuten lang spooky atmosphärisch. Unter einem pochenden Puls und minimalitischen Keyboardakkorden soliert der Meister hier zunächst sehnsüchtig jaulend, später orientalisch in und über sich hinaus gehend auf den Saiten, sich viel Zeit nehmend, ehe das Stück schließlich doch noch stärker eruptiert.

Die letzten neuneinhalb Minuten pendeln sich dann klanglich irgendwo in der Mitte zwischen den beiden Albumhälften ein. Der "Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major" nutzt einen Drummaschinenbeat, balanciert darüber aber zu gleichen Anteilen Analogsynthies und Gitarren. Obwohl es sich um ein Pink Floyd-Cover handelt, hätte ich hier wohl am zielsichersten auf Sula Schmidt getippt.

Mal ganz davon abgesehen, dass das ganze Ding ohnehin super gealtert ist - also heute musikalisch genauso wertvoll wie vor zweiundzwanzig Jahren -, ist retrospektiv an diesem Debüt interessant, wie es eigentlich schon den Rahmen für das ganze Spektrum von Sula Bassana setzt. Fast alles, was auf späteren Album noch weiter und tiefer erforscht wurde, scheint hier zumindest in Ansätzen schon vorgedacht worden zu sein.

Die neue Edition ist auf dreihundert Stück limitiert und direkt bei Sulatron Records zu haben.