Rocket Recordings’ new Black Hole series is a place where the unorthodox, otherworldly and esoteric can flourish, and there could be no more fitting first release for it than the most powerful metaphysical travelogue yet from Moundabout. Journeying still further into and beyond the landscapes from which this duo have unearthed inspiration, ‘Goat Skull Table’ is a transmission to give flight to spectral visions and include trance-states in abundance.
The vibrations and manifestations of the duo of Paddy Shine (GNOD) and Phil Langero (Los Langeros, Damp Howl, Bisect) has always resonated within a very specific sense of place. This third release for Rocket Recordings sees them colluding with the landscape of their surroundings. transcending linear narratives and astral planes in a quest to unite timeless spirits with inner space.
The title track marks a focal point here; a shamanic rite on which Langero’s charismatically charged mantras collude with an audial landscape somewhere on the map between the abstract spell-casting of Nurse With Wound and the druidic gnosticism of Julian Cope. This is Moundabout at their darkest and most ritualistic. Elsewhere, the hypnotic repetition of the twin ten-minute extrapolations ‘Blood On My Blanket’ and ‘Wagon’, and the potent incantatory chants of ‘Am I Not’ and ‘Brave New World’ glow with a rugged and charged dynamism redolent of the Swedish psychedelia of Träd, Gräs and Stenar, uniting a minimal aesthetic with maximal impact.
Dauntless, feverish, and reaching new heights of primal intensity ’Goat Skull Table’ is a formidable field guide to the earthen and other.
