Beginnings are always so fragile… We are in the year 10 018. The universe we know is ruled by Emperor Padishah Sabbath IV. In this day and age, the most valued ressource in the universe is Spice, or Blend. Spice increases longevity, it enhances mind spectrum. Spice is essential to space travel. It has turnt space guild sailors into mutants, for it gives the power to fold up space and get transported anywhere in the universe without moving…
Among these sailors, Poland’s SPACESLUG invite you to join their third odyssey to the infinite – “Eye The Tide” – after they barely returned from prior explorations “Time Travel Dilemma” and “Mountains & Reminiscence”, in the year of our Lord 10 017.
This new trek goes across arid lands by the borders of immensity, where screams disappear and land on the ground for no one can hear them. This scheme may not sound joyful, yet you are in good hands with the Polish crew: from fragile beginnings on “Obsolith”, SPACESLUG weave intertwined, intoxicating vocals – your celestial cocoon – and astral pads that will lift you up in zero-gravity.
To travel towards these unknown lands, our space slug uses the riff as wave mechanics. Lulled by a cosmic fuzz swell, Shai-Hulud moves slowly, perfecting its itinerary through regular, repetitive patterns. Jan Rutka’s bass lines ripple and slide to set a bouncy pace.
The path may feel monotonous and redondant at times, inasmuch as the time seems to be stretching on board. If it weren’t for the control of Spice by the Polish sailors. Notion of time is ultimately relative and SPACESLUG distort Space, stretch its sonic frame as if to intensify already storming waves (“Words Like Stones”), like meticulous spatio-temporal ellipses made of an indefinable power and abyssal darkness. They even exploit it, faking breaks (the fake end on “Spaced by One”) and huge dizzying falls (“I, The Tide”), or playing with contrasts and tones (“Vialys Part I, Part II”) and going from acoustic slackening to dark climaxes with an off-putting ease.
Oh, I forgot to tell you something. One can only find Spice on one planet as we speak: the one that gave rise to Weedpecker, Sunnata… and new virtuoso pretenders SPACESLUG. Through the coda of their trilogy from outer space, they rise to the top among their peers, offering a rather lengthy work that also appears to be brilliant, dense and matured – each song being a passageway to a unique world on the edge of doom, psych and drone. Godspeed.
ARTIST: SPACESLUG
ALBUM: “Eye The Tide”
RELEASE DATE: 20th July 2018
LABEL: Oak Island Records
GENRE: Psych doom
MORE: Facebook / Bandcamp
Last modified: 28 September 2018
