recently repressed feat. CAUSA SUI, HILLS, CARPENTER BRUT and EMMA RUTH RUNDLE & THOU

Here's some stuff which I slept on or missed for other reasons last year (and in one case before), but which luckily got new pressings in 2021.

CAUSA SUI - Szabodelico (transparent red 2LP) (2020/2021) 

With a gatefold cover design looking like the detail of a 70's wallpaper with a lava lamp pattern in the colour scheme of my Ikea bed linen, last year's new Causa Sui double album set all signs on relaxation. The Danish instrumental psychedelic masters not only abstain from stoner rock heaviness, but for the most part also forego space trips and also their typical miles davis-infused jazziness.

Instead the main inspiration here is obvious from the song titles alone, which feature "Gabor's Path" and of course the title track "Szabodelico", both pointing towards the album being an homage to the Hungarian jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó, who mixed his European heritage with so much Latin feeling, that even Santana borrowed from him.
The dreamy levitating psych part Causa Sui still injects into these thirteen tracks is within their own discography probably most reminscent of their 2013 album "Euporie Tide".

"Szabodelico" definitely one my most chill contemporary purchases in recent memory. An album made for summer - or to invoke it. Wonderful stuff.
The 2021 repress comes in a slightly transparent red and with an obi strip. One more very beautiful El Paraiso Records release.

elparaisorecords · Causa Sui: "Szabodelico"

HILLS - Frid (blue vinyl LP) (2015/2021)

Of course this modern psych classic has been on my radar for a long time, since their spellbinding Roadburn appearance in... 2016 (already? Damn, how time flies.), which has also been captured on a live album.

Rocket Recordings keep repressing Hills' "Frid" in always new colours. And if you judge from what goes well with the gatefold artwork there are luckily endless variations still possible. The simple light blue one i got may not be the most spectacular version of all, but at least I got it without the usually quite high import shipping costs.

The music on "Frid" is repetive and hypnotic, very 60's/70's like, space, high, orientalisms and all. Honestly Hills have always been one of those psych bands, which I can barely write anything clever or insightful about. There's not much to explain about this record. It's just amazingly fucking good!

CARPENTER BRUT - Blood Machines OST (LP) (2020/2021)

I've already written a review for the digital version of this synthwave soundtrack over a year ago, yet somehow I totally missed the vinyl release, just as I still haven't seen the space opera movie itself yet. But then... where the hell can I even watch it? I'd really love to.

Carpenter Brut on vinyl is always an awesome, superbly produced experience, and this mixture of creeping horror score and Brut's typical danceable power sound is no exception from this rule. The repress is just black and doesn't come in a gatefold like the fancy first edition, but the artwork still slays.

Addictive!

EMMA RUTH RUNDLE & THOU - May Our Chambers Be Full (dark purple vinyl LP) (2020/2021)

So, this one... Yeah, I had ordered the first special edition and my retailer just didn't get enough copies. So I I waited for the next colour version and shortened the waiting time with the album's sister EP "The Helm Of Sorrow".

Since the EP was recorded during the same sessions - and all that stuff had been developed for the commissioned live premiere at Roadburn 2019, which I attended, the whole sound and most of the seven songs on "May Our Chambers Be Full" were already more or less familiar to me.

Most of the time this sounds like Emma Ruth Rundle is performing either solo just with her guitar (or with her own band), but a giant sludgy monstrosity is engulfing and trying to suffocate her, laying tons of riffs right on her licks and screeching pustules on her voice.

It almost seems like ERR and Thou are in an ongoing battle with shifting front lines, often oppressive and beautiful at the same time. The hands-down best moment of the album though is the nine minutes long finale "The Valley", in which Emma clearly prevails for most of the time, and even when Thou throw in all their doom and brutality, they do so fully at her will.

This album may not be the easiest listen - probably harder than the EP with it's more diverse song selection -, but it quickly grows on you, if you let it. A unique marriage of larger than life heaviness and haunting melancholic gloom.