the submersible dirigible

Following the good example of his bandmate Daniel Higgs, Lungfish guitarist Asa Osbourne recently released his first solo album with the psych stalwarts at Holy Mountain.  Departing from the long, epic prog-scale psych behemoths so common in Holy Mountain’s catalog (namely, Wooden Shjips, La Otracina, The Shining Path, etc.), Zomes‘ sixteen tracks are each deletable snack-sized Fig Newtons of grainy krautrock, together sounding like a collection of lo-fidelity psychedelic sonnets.  At forty minutes, the album is brief, and its short, digestible tracks leave the album feeling even shorter.  With one or two exceptions, each track builds upon a single delectable electric guitar, drum or effects loop left on repeat. Zomes‘ looping, repetitive quality gives the album the endearing feel of a handcrafted, late-night attic composition.

‘Membranous Plane’ best exemplifies Osbourne’s reliance on simple looping melodies.  The track’s rubbery electric guitar melody pairs with a handful of lonely snare cracks, cycling together over and over again.  Slight changes in inflection liven up the loop, but these changes are nearly imperceptible.  At long last, as the body’s neurons begin to short-circuit in response to incessant repetition, an abrupt static interruption upsets the loop, and evolves into a brief decayed reprisal of the familiar arrangement.

‘Membranous Plane‘

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While imparting some urgency and a film-cut quality, Zomes‘ repetition does leave the album without any recognizable dramatic arc; the album’s sixteen tracks sound isolated from each other, each its own independent patchwork of colorful, snackpack loops.  Without cohesion, or long, focal tracks to establish theme, the album could pass for a compilation of film compositions.  Oddly enough, this kraut/psych hodgepodge not only works, it astounds.  The album’s layered attention-deficit disorder — each track isolated from the others, each track itself spun from tight internal loops –is it’s most endearing feature.  These soundtrack cuts evoke scenes ranging from the sideburns and tire smoke of Steve McQueen’s Bullitt (‘Crowning Orbs’) to the slow-motion contemplation of Jean Painleve’s underwater exploration films (‘Clear Shapes’, ‘Petroglyphs’) and the barren, post-apocalyptic tarmac of Mel Gibson’s Mad Max (‘Black Magic Band’).

‘Crowning Orbs‘

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‘Petroglyphs‘

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In the end, Osbourne’s Zomes amounts to a sort of cross between a Radiophonic Workshop collection and krautrock in the vein of Amon Duul II or Can.  The unique blend of the familiar Holy Mountain psych/kraut fare with the soundtrack aesthetic amounts to essential listening, an album begging for repeat listens.

Nearly finished with my breathtaking review of Lungfish guitarist Asa Osbourne’s solo album, but in the meantime, some more youtube filler is in order.

Included above is Lungfish vocalist Daniel Higgs performing at heliogàbal, a venue outside of Barcelona.  I saw Higgs myself last spring at the Knitting Factory.  The performance was nearly identical to the video above, except he was performing with a mouthharp and what looked like a dulcimer in place of his banjo.