Neptunian Maximalism: Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu
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Neptunian Maximalism launch a monumental new album of heavy, transformative psychedelia. Andy Brown evaluations Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu for Louder Than Battle.
On the ultimate night time of a four-day residency for The Judgment Corridor Pageant in London, Neptunian Maximalism recorded their newest opus. Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu isn’t your common stay album; it’s a fully colossal sonic doc brimful of transformative psychedelia and mesmeric musicianship. Crushing guitar, thunderous drums and trumpet make up simply a few of what you’ll hear. The Brussels-based band don’t do issues by halves and this 96-minute-long instrumental album is an experimental and thrillingly elemental epic.
Taking inspiration from the ragas in Indian classical music, the album is split into three sizable sections: At Nightfall, Arcana XX and At Daybreak. The person tracks that make up these actions are definitely lengthy but this appears nearly inconsequential as the entire album is maybe greatest seen as one monumental piece. Put merely, it’s a recording that places you firmly on the centre of an intense and spectacular efficiency: your eyes tightly closed because the partitions shake and also you absorb each majestic second. Blissful oblivion awaits.
At Nightfall begins with near-silence as a drone steadily creeps into the room after which – at across the 3-and-a-half-minute mark – a suitably dramatic gong heralds the bands arrival with a sheer 50ft wave of brass and doom-laden distortion. This isn’t simply loud: that is the sort of heaviness that rearranges your DNA. Discordant tones seep by means of the sluggish, purposeful wall of sound earlier than a guitar line begins to snake up the Jap scales to some unknowable nirvana. At different factors, it’s the sonic equal of a Ray Harryhausen-devised colossus slowly trampling entire villages underfoot. A dense and formidable sound.
Whereas the drone-metal tag definitely is smart at sure junctures, it’s woefully insufficient when attempting to explain the breadth and scale of the bands sound. The Arcana XX raga begins with the sound of the surbahar and is the one part of the album – alongside just a few post-gig preparations – that isn’t lifted from the Judgement Corridor efficiency. After the ominous drone and wordless groans that got here earlier than, the surbahar – generally referred to as a bass sitar – supplies a shimmering oasis of calm. It’s like some gigantic celestial curtain has been pulled again and we’ve entered a complete different world.
The Arcana XX raga proceeds to take us from this calm, mediative area right into a whirlwind of psychedelic rock. Followers of Acid Moms Temple will gleefully lap up the onslaught of screeching guitars, heart-racing crescendos and free jazz fury. By no means has the time period ‘drive of nature’ been so totally apt. Undoubtedly, it should have been fairly particular to have been within the viewers that night time but listening to the album is a very spine-tingling expertise in and of itself. I went for a stroll with some headphones to attempt to take up/ course of the album’s probably unwieldy dimension and it made a leisurely stroll by means of the woods really feel like some unimaginable quest.
At Daybreak introduces yet one more sonic panorama, a brand new terrain to discover. Languid guitar and sparse, desert plain atmospherics make it really feel like a terrific, long-lost soundtrack to some psychedelic western. In the event you love bands like Earth and Om then it’s definitely going to hit the candy spot. Nevertheless, it is a musically wealthy album and simplistic comparisons actually don’t do it justice. There’s a hair-raising prog-metal solo one minute and the evocative wail of a zurna – a double reed wind instrument – the following. The truth that all of it flows collectively so superbly is testomony to the bands expansive imaginative and prescient. Completely phenomenal.
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You could find Neptunian Maximalism on Fb, Instagram and Bandcamp.
All phrases by Andy Brown. You’ll be able to go to his creator profile and skim extra of his evaluations for Louder Than Battle HERE.
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