I am often amazed at how labels, and especially small labels, are able to put out consistently high quality releases; often from musicians that I have never heard of before. One such label is Drone Rock Records who, with their eleventh release, have put out an album that is so wonderfully chilled and nuanced that it is astonishing to learn that this is a set of improvised jams. Even more so that Domboshawa is the name used by Swedish multi-instrumentalist Anders Brostrom. It is one of those albums, like those by JuJu and Megaritual, that are surprisingly the work of one person.
This is an album that feels complex and intense and, recorded as it is during the Scandinavian Winter, one redolent of long dark nights. The music here is fluid and trippy, perhaps the result of some very chilled out nights indeed in A.S.B Studios In Hägersten, Stockholm; where this album was recorded.
The album consists of six tracks all weighing in between the five and ten minute mark, and all possessing that psychedelic element of music that takes you somewhere else completely. These are amazing cuts of space rock that, despite their relatively short length for the genre, do appear to stretch out endlessly as they take you on journeys of the mind. In doing so they inspire the sort of cognition that somehow sets you apart from the rest of the world and releases you into some sort of nether-worldly bliss.
The key element for me, and for once I don’t have to single out one musician, is the guitar which just soars around the tracks in a manner that seems to be totally effortless. It’s the thing that you grab on to as you close your eyes and let it guide you though the seemingly endless inner journey. In this sense the tracks all feel like fragments or partial transmissions of ideas that are great and could be strung out much further. As such these feel strangely intense like powerful sonic hits that seem to have an impact for much longer that their duration.
This then is a superb album of psychedelic space rock that is much more intense than many albums of that genre. A set of songs that have had a really big impact on me. This in many ways is like a sampler album of ideas that could easily be stretched into a triple album of longer improvisations without much impact on quality. As it is though, despite it’s intensity, it is a strangely chilled out experience that you can just totally lose yourself in. Space rock that seems to defy temporal rules.
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‘Minds Electrix’ is still available from Drone Rock Records on very limited transparent green vinyl here.
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