Ayahuasca Dark Trip – Mind Journey

Much suitable for the phrase “Dark Trip”… AYAHUASCA DARK TRIP can be the conductor into dark / stoner trips.

A multi-national (Peru – Brazil – Netherlands) rock project AYAHUASCA DARK TRIP may have been inspired and saturated by multi-national music essence… Southern rock beats, Western heavy / metal / stoner style, and mysteriously Eastern- or Indo-oriented psychedelic fuzz. Lots of elements now mentioned can be seen here and there, in such a simple (but deeply-matured) structure of their songs. I’m sure the first bullet “Astral Sunset”, pouring bulky loud stoner psychedelic riffs continually, can absorb lots of stoner rock freaks all over the world (including me)… Let me say, as a Japanese, their Oriental flavour is not assertive at all but their soundscape can be seasoned with this mysterious flavour. Furthermore, infernal sound effects created mainly (maybe) by Pedro and Brayan is beyond expression, making us achy-breaky indeed. Magical chorus with kaleidoscopic noises in “Mind Journey” should push us listeners off into hallucinogenic state of mind (cannot realize what the words mean but croon beyond ourselves surely). Under a magnificent rainstorm of their dreadful but comfortable sounds, we cannot be confused but go ahead into another meditative square. Bizarre electronic experiments and dry-fruity synthesizer or keyboard solos under their stone-based psychedelia can remind us something of Krautrock like Brast Burn. Another novel texture can be heard in the last “To The Holy Mountain”. An improvised guitar solo by Brayan, Buddy’s rumbling bass-quake, and Pedro’s steady, keen, scooping drumming. All are encouraged and well-furmented, matured together, like a great whisky.

The third “Space Raga” is the most challenging improvisation journey of all in this album. And yes, for me it’s the real mind journey. Mellow and plaintive guitar-based creation, with a bunch of music characters popping up one by one, definitely can veil us with its safe, watery sounds, and terrific intervals between one phrase and another. Suggest we can consider them as not a simple stoner psychedelic progressive but exact Mind Journey?

A splendid and very promising work.

Tracklist:

1. Astral Sunset (8:51)
2. Mind Journey (15:41)
3. Space Raga (8:18)
4. To The Holy Mountain (10:28)

Line-up:

* Brayan Buckt – guitar, effects
* Buddy Van Nieuwenhoven – bass, guitar
* Pedro Ivo Araujo – organ, drums, voices

Links:

http://ayahuascadarktrip.bandcamp.com/

Consecration & Temple of the Smoke Big Band – Consecration in the Temple of the Smoke EP (2011, PSDR01)

The story behind this live EP comes from two directions. How come? These two songs actually originated from a live session of two Belgrade bands. You guess right, Consecration and Temple of the Smoke. Coming from two different but still connected genres, members of Consecration at the time (Danilo Nikodinovski, Nemanja Trećaković and David Lazar Galić) joined forces with the Temple of the Smoke trio (Dušan Žica, Dragan Mirković and Predrag Vranić) and in Belgrade’s SKC Livingroom, on April 2^nd 2008 recorded what we call here now Consecration in the Temple of the Smoke.

The second part occurred a month ago when I made a suggestion to the two bands to join forces. At the time I was unaware that they already had. Thus we discussed the possibility of a digital download release through Prog Sphere, which I was very happy to do. So we may say that Consecration in the Temple of the Smoke is the first official release from Prog Sphere Records. Before I get focused on the actual songs presented onto this EP, I would love to mention that the sleeves for this release were done at no cost by Mr. Påhl Sundström, graphic designer and guitarist of Swedish progressive rock band Klotet.

Consecration, a band whose roots lie in sludge/drone mixes up with Temple of the Smoke’s kosmische rock, with the addition of ambient passages reached through Galić’s saxwork and Trećaković’s FX’s. Doom beats from the beginning of the first track, helped by psychedelic guitar and saxophones develop this 6 ½ minutes piece into a real fuzzy jam, losing itself somewhere between psychedelic rock, doom and noise. At some point, the saxophone takes a bit of control over the other instruments.

Consecration in the Temple of the Smoke 2 opens with ambient sound walls in a post-rock manner, which keep on that way throughout the track, and those who know how Temple of the Smoke sounds can easily notice that space rock with kind of spiritual touches which lead to another space/psyche explosion in the second half of the song. Spooky saxwork, with frenzy and intense guitars, twisted synths and effects bring this 20 minutes long EP to an end.

There are plans to repeat such a performance later this year with a possible physical release, but we will see how things go. Enjoy!

Tracklist:

01. Consecration in the Temple of the Smoke 1 (06:38)
02. Consecration in the Temple of the Smoke 2 (13:32)

Line-up:

* Nemanja Trećaković – laptop, synths
* Dušan Žica – guitar, effects, sampler, Chaos Pad
* David Lazar Galić – saxophone
* Dragan Mirković – drums
* Danilo Nikodinovski – guitar, effects
* Predrag Vranić – bass
* Jovan Jocić – soundman