Æthenor - Hazel (2016)

Amazing psych invocations from Revered shamen Stephen O’Malley, Daniel O’Sullivan, Kristoffer Rygg and Steve Noble, converging on a shimmering, phosphorescent 5th LP as psych/improv supergroup, Æthenor, arguably amounting to their most surprising and wide-reaching work to date.

Lysergic kosmiche, modal jazz and free improvisation form the foundations for five flights of fanciful notion rendered as tangibly electric thought in Hazel, with original Rip, Rig & Panic drummer Steve Noble spinning a spare, shimmering web of percussion which the other players thread with equally sparing yet diaphanous contrails of O’Malley’s guitar, Rygg’s haunting choral drifts and O’Sullivan’s plasmic Rhodes.

Considering the weight of the players’ input, the results are conversely light-headed and wonderfully expansive, infiltrating all integers of the frequency spectrum with a ghostly curiosity and effervescent spirit that’s hard-to-grasp but very easy to find yourself falling headlong for.

Stop us if you heard it before, but this record really does sound like little else out there. It’s at once incredibly refined, yet as loose and diffuse as you could imagine, swelling with emotive gestures but shy of cliche. Feels like a vitally fresh wind thru the bones and long hair of classic, communal psychedelia.

Highly recommended!