#proto doom

The sillys

Mack of Fuzztlán takes a look at NEON ACIDO, the new album from Chilean occult stoner doom band Arteaga, released August 31st on Interstellar Smoke Records.

It’s a masterful work in six tracks, a unique journey in each one of them that makes It impossible not to be transported back to the seventies with the style that they have managed to achieve in such a magnificent way; a classic, vintage sound, riffs and a seventies rhythm to the max, all as if it were recorded in a still life thanks to this effect of reverberation and remoteness that is acquired, it even has a phantasmagoric air, a sound from beyond the physical.

Es un trabajo magistral en seis temas, un viaje único en cada uno de ellos que hace imposible no transportarse a los setenta con el estilo que han conseguido de forma tan magnífica; un sonido clásico, vintage, riffs y un ritmo setentero a tope, todo como si estuviera grabado en un bodegón gracias a ese efecto de reverberación y lejanía que se adquiere, incluso tiene un aire fantasmagórico, un sonido de más allá de lo físico.

Read Mack's full review in both English and Español and listen to and order the album at the link below:

Having just visited the musical world of the mysterious Prince Ozay, I’d like to now turn my attention to another project celebrating secretive identities and transportive balearica known as Steady Income Band, who’ve just released an untitled 7” on Pond Life. As in my Prince Ozay review, I won’t spoil the secret, though here it is less well kept and the inclusion of the letters “MG” and “GA” on the artwork alongside even a cursory search will reveal the project’s origins. But regardless of the source, the sounds are what matter, and across two spiritual sonics immersions, Steady Income Band carry the mind to seaside jungle paradises and forbidden temple rituals, wherein minimalist machine rhythms, island hand percussions, and slap bass funk romantics sit beneath pan-pipe mysticisms; stoner riffs anchor molten glam-psych climaxes while fuzz leads set the air flame; mallet instruments fall like rain against a drunken tom-tom ritual; and layers of free jazz esoterica are manipulated via outer-dimensional dub transformations.

Steady Income Band - Untitled (Pond Life, 2020) The A-side beings with cosmic crystals generating soothing currents of resonance while waves of some intergalactic ocean crash far in the distance. New age melodies colored in hues of teal and sapphire are buried in the ethereal murk, drones waver like a mirage as cymbals and tambourines work into the mix, and eventually, a rainforest groove develops around these sexual slap bass licks...the vibe slow, low, and methodical…like tropical funk reduced to its skeletal essence. Congas and bongos induce further body hypnosis and mystical pan-pipe melodies cycle through the sky as warming waves of synthesis billow in, hover in place, then mysteriously fade away. There are subdued instrumental choruses wherein quivering pads bathe the mix in hues of a noir sunset and ambient chord stabs push through the tropical fog…as if dream house pianos are being rendered through a balearic blur. The mix eventually reduces to exotica percussion accents, birdsong lasers, and cymbal taps, which then sets up a molten climax of psychedelic power, as proto-doom riffing crunches beneath anthemic fuzz shred sorcery. After this riffadelic freak out, we settle into lounge jazz smolder, with the guitar still shredding...only now the tones are clean, liquid, and buried under layers of smoke. And as the track ends, the slip slappy basslines slowly fade away, leaving behind a Floyd-ian rhythm pulse, heavenly string orchestrations, and spiraling blues leads.

On the flip, marimbas splash and splatter through a spring reverb haze while tribal tom-toms flub and flob into a drunken processional. The fall of idiophonic rain is crazed and asymmetrical, with tones pitch-shifting and bending in ways that defy logic, and rainforest whistles commune with sci fi laser zaps, swooshes of resonant feedback, and insectoid oscillations. The robot-tribal ceremonial never relents, though it sometimes seems to malfunction, with beats clattering over themselves and sounding as if they might fall apart, only to snap back to the ritualistic temple groove. Tapped cymbal accents break free from the rhythmic flow only to disperse into a fractal glow and abstracted feedback melodies evoke the songs of some sickly bird while pools of primordial liquid bubble and boil. Subtle dub fx add an additional layer of alien psychedelia and as the track continues to lurch and lumber, my mind drifts to the earliest free jazz vision quest of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, though here everything’s been chained to a cyborg pulse and slowed to the speed of a delirium dream.