Hoodoo Ritual- Hoodoo Ritual (Ozium Records OZIUM023)

Hoodoo Ritual is a new Swedish band from Malmö, Sweden.  The CD features 5 long tracks. Great album artwork by a local tattoo artist.  Anyway, this band plays some pretty cool stony music with influences from Mars Red Sky and Colour Haze to mention a few.  The CD starts off with Before I Go. Slow, heavy and stoney with some cool guitar and nice delays on the vocal to give it this psychedelic feel. The melodic guitar line, and texture is very much like Mars Red Sky!  In my time of Killing is more doomy and stoned. Lokomotion is a shorter track but a great groove, a bit like Goatess, if they were more psychedelic. 

Herbs, reminds me a bit of Colourhaze to start but then goes in another direction.  There is a long pause and then the best part of the CD takes off. Wow.. Cool stuff. Beta Ride (demo) is a track that you can find on their bandcamp site and the first music the band recorded in the rehearsal room.  A more raw production sound but the doomy stoned sound is intact!

You can hear the entire album at the link below. 

http://hoodooritual.bandcamp.com

Handpan Solo- Hearth, Rain and Birds (Self Released)

Handpan solo is a project by a Porto street musician named Sergio. I saw him playing in the streets of Porto when I visited recently.  He has two of these handpans, which are a bit like a mix of a drum and a single tuned gong or harp.  They are limited in the sense they are tuned to one key so you really have to be creative. He was amazing. Wow..  I bought his CD_R for 5€.  IT features 9 tracks between 4 and 12 mins in length.  Some have this almost mystic, eastern, Moroccan feeling of sorts. Beautiful music. At the end of the CD are a couple of other tracks with acts that Sergio has played, one called Adducantur. Check him out. I wouldn't mind have him playing on some of my next solo material or to learn how to play one of these myself! 

sergiohandpan@gmail.com

http://adducantur.bandcamp.com

A2 (Self Released)

A2 is a new side project from Nicklas and Christian (Guitar and bass) from the band Papir. It is dreamy ambient music just made with guitars, bass and loads of pedals.  They have made a number of improvisations and simply labelled them by number and date.  Their first digital only release on bandcamp features 6 tracks from Sept 2018.  They range from a few minutes to over 20mins in length. Some are very dreamy and others there is a more of a bass line, groove, rather than just slow build of notes with some pedals.  It will for sure put you into a chilled out state. Check it out and donate 5€ (35kr) to help the guys out!

https://a2impro.bandcamp.com/album/20180908

Waste of Space Orchestra- Syntheosis (Svart 188)

This is a project featuring members of Dark Buddha Rising and Orannssi Pazuzu (both from Finland).  This work was commissioned for performance at Roadburn Festival in 2018 and performed on the main stage. I was there and it was amazing and powerful. This album is not that performance but was later recorded in the studio. It features 9 tracks spread over the 4 LP sides, with tracks seeming to get longer and longer. Side A is very powerful and horror film like music, a perfect fusion of the two bands. You can watch the video for Seekers Reflection, the last song on side A below. Side B is quite repetitive and meditative but with some darkness lurching in the background as it slowly builds up and gets more spaced out and heavy. It becomes very vocally intense at times but impossible to make out the words.

Side C starts off with Infinite Gate Opening, some intense drumming, synth drones and chanting as this one builds and builds and becomes very vocally intense, as the darkness envelopes you. Vacuum Head is a bit like Ministry at times with very intense drumming and layers for dark, heavy guitar, distortion and other spaced out sounds in the background.  The Universal Eye closes side C with a very spaced out feeling, after an intense middle track.

Side D is one long track (10min) called Syntheosis and starts with some organ before the heavy doomy guitars and bass kick in. It is slow and repetitive at the start before you become completely absorbed into the layers of madness and emotional gloom as you head to the climax of your experience… An intense hour long trip. A very successful collaboration and interesting album.

In addition, the vinyl record is an amazing package with two booklets, one with fotos from Roadburn and an introduction by Walter and the other with some spaced out pictures and the lyrics and credits of the band, which is 14 individuals (in the picture of the booklet, despite only 11 credited on the musician list on the gatefold) involved in this creation.  Impressive and recommended.

https://wasteofspaceorchestra.bandcamp.com/

Http://svart.com