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Föllakzoid

II

Written by: BV on 06/07/2013 20:32:36

Föllakzoid is one of those bands that I have heard so much word of mouth chatter about while never actually bothering to go online and check out their music. It wasn’t until recently that I found myself in a renewed phase of space-rock obsession where I, naturally, had to scour the world for new albums – ironically enough, I found the exact album that I hadn’t really bothered to look up until then. Well, these cosmically inclined Chilean guys are renowned for their abilities within the realm of space rock and it really isn’t a surprise to me as this, their second album, has so many tasty and hypnotic grooves on it that I found it hard to snap out of again once I got really into them.

Album opener “9” is a drone piece with a simplistic, hypnotic and most of all funky bass line that keeps the development going – or holds it back when necessary, as the cascades of fuzzy, echoing and reverberating guitars lush up the soundscape of the track. The straight-to-the-point focused drumming, along with the bass lines helps ground the track and keep the development in check – thus ensuring that even though these sounds are far out, they never really lose touch with planet earth and thereby never really lose their accessibility.

A slightly different approach is used on the track called “Trees”, wherein there is an up-tempo driving drumbeat leading the way for the rest of the obscurities, cascades of sounds, occasional blues-riffs(?!) and the repetitive electronic sounds reminiscent of malfunctioning gear on a long-lost space shuttle unable to find its way back. The track maintains the hypnotic aura of space rock while becoming so vastly upbeat that, if one is into that kind of stuff, one would actually be able to do some wicked cool dancing to a track like this – not ballroom dancing though, I guess there are limits after all.

Despite the album only spanning five tracks, the album contains an array of vastly diverse sounds, crazy soundscapes and an unusual, for space rock that is, level of accessibility. Granted, there are slow moments where you would like for things to pick up and get move on – like on several passages of “Pulsar”, for instance. Nonetheless this album seems to have something that many space rock albums don’t have – a sound that isn’t directly nicked from Hawkwind, which is a rare feat in this day and age, by the way. Instead they seem to have amassed the greatest qualities of Hawkwind and have coupled these with contemporaries like Pyramidal, Electric Moon and perhaps even a bit of Acid Mothers Temple if I’m not entirely mistaken. Oddly enough the space rock scene has never really been my main interest but if this is what’s being released at the moment, I might want to expand my vinyl collection a bit.

Download: 9, Trees, Rio
For The Fans Of: Pyramidal, Acid Mothers Temple, Hawkwind
Listen: facebook.com

Release Date 22.01.2013
Sacred Bones Records