The Cosmic Dead – Cozmik Tape I
Tell me, who else is releasing the music on cassettes anymore? Not that I am rejecting this format, on the contrary I am the fan of those “dead formats“. Anyway, this is the medium on which these Scottish psych rockers put Cozmik Tape I, released by Who Can You Trust? Records.
What we’ve got here is an 80 minute long journey through the darkest dimensions of spacey psychedelic sounds. The Side A comes up with three songs which together give forty minutes of psychedelic wanderings through space, while the Side B is one extra massive slab, totalling almost forty minutes. It’s quite dazzling that the guys keep their senses about them during the full playing time. It’s to be expected that in some parts they sound pushy, but it ain’t the case.
The raw guitar sound of James T McKay is suppressed by the usage of synths and deepend by the basswork of Omar Aborida (Infinite Death of the Godhead and Father Sky, Mother Earth) and Josh Longton (The Black Rabbit and Space Melange Spectrum). Kicking off with The Black Rabbit, followed by space gleams, The Cosmic Dead breaks the starting synth-noodling with the wah effect and loud drumming of Julian Dicken. Having a vast expanse in front of them, they are heading out to explore and experiment with jams, making them extended when the opportunity arises, but carefully enough to not fall into the field of fatigue. Now, to put it simply – The Black Rabbit is sort of a track whose questions you will you keep walking the same path on this multidimensional pilgrimage.
Spice Melange Spectrum is the shortest track on the album and comes up as the most straight ahead piece, although they manage to experiment further, dropping the time factor aside. With Infinite Death of the Godhead (which we included on Progstravaganza 7), the band gets close to Can’s approach, especially when it comes to drums. From the beginning the song has a crescendoing nature, culminating somewhere on 4’30” with the effects of space winds coming and going. This is the only track on the album which employs some vocals, which actually come as sort of a preaching (mumbling) mantra that seem a bit hypnotizing, so guess that the comparison with Can is now justified.
It’s time for the Side B and its 40 minutes allocated in a single goddamn piece. Meandering through the cosmic landscape of the starting eight minutes of Father Sky, Mother Earth brings to mind Color Haze and not a small amount of space echoing. You expect some heavy psychedelia to develop out of this introduction, but the boys keep it rather within normal limits, keeping their pace around the aforementioned heaviness. I can’t avoid comparing these Scots with their colleagues of similar genre orientation, Tia Carrera. While The Cosmic Dead relies more on a space rock sound, Tia constructs their own walls around classic riff-led/experimetal heavy jam elements, but the point where these two bands get close to each other is the same sense for improvisation. The extensiveness of this segment specifically is their main characteristic and I can’t hide my enhusiasm of how fabulous it would be to put these two outfits on the same stage.
Anyway, to stop dreaming… The Cosmic Dead with Cozmik Tape I shows clearly to which target audience their music is intended. If you recognized yourself, don’t hesitate to give them a try, nothing bad can happen. I promise you.
Tracklist:
01. The Black Rabbit
02. Spice Melange Spectrum
03. Infinite Death of the Godhead
04. Father Sky, Mother Earth
Line-up:
* James T McKay – Guitar
* Omar Aborida – Bass
* Julian Dicken – Drums
* Euan Meikle – Synths
* Lewis Cook – Synths
Links:
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