Yes, as you can see, we took some new band pics last night with our light show behind us. All the pretty lights have kind of grown around the band since 1997 when Lori “Surfer” Varga was doing her light show for us or even before that when Shaun Kelly did films for us back around 2000. This year we finally moved away from 16mm films and into the digital age and we even have a specialized heavy duty stand to hold the 100 pounds of junk it takes to make the stage look cool. Hey, we’re a Heavy Texas Psych band by nature so what do you expect?
That kind of brings up a point of discussion about the new album and how it may be seen by newcomers. The new album, to be sure, is most definitely in the “stoner rock” category and we’ve been making similar music since before it had a label to be sure but, as many of you guys know, we tend to oscillate between the heavy, guitar-centric albums and the more psych, melodic, or improvisational stuff. So for those expecting only Stoner Rock from our upcoming greatest hits collection (not that there isn’t a lot of that in there), I figured it would be good form to let you know that we tend to cover a lot more ground than just heavy riffs.
A good example of this is when we hit on a space jam for a good 30 minutes last night without playing a single Sabbathy riff. The night started off with me and Larry going into some riff that echoed Rat-At-Rat-R that left the kit sprinkled in Larry’s blood. (In hindsight, I should have taken a shot of his crash with little dots of red all over it.) That was pretty cool but after that we all went into this jam that lasted for about 30 minutes where I would occasionally play some arpeggiation of E or Emin but for the most part stuck to the Sandy Ewen territory of guitar as a sound and texture generator. It was a lot of fun and it sounded great. I only wish we’d had the mics up to record it so we could have dropped it for people on-line to download. Clearly we’ll need to do that in the future.
If you are new to what we do this may seem at odds with the music we’ve been slowly leaking from the new album but to be sure while we have no issues with being labeled “Stoner Rock” and admire many of the bands in that category, we still identify and consider ourselves as part of the Terrastock Nation. There is a closeness that is akin to family and you need look no further than the recent Lee Jackson Tribute, For Lee Jackson In Space, or the recent outpouring of support for Tom Carter to see that it is more than just a musical category. As you can imagine, a review from The Ptolemaic Terrascope means much more to us than most because of that connection. So, we were very happy to see Jeff Penczak’s review our newest album on their website where he says “[the title is] about as subtle as a lead zeppelin and the music within is thrice as heavy” and urges you to “…fire up the righteous boo, and prepare to get ‘hammered‘” You can read the full review here: http://www.terrascope.co.uk/Reviews/Reviews_September_12.htm
Coincidentally, the newest Terrascopaedia (Vol. 2) arrived at my doorstep yesterday and this handcrafted by the great Phil McMullen, pocket-sized zine is gorgeous (see pic below). It’s the kind of artifact that you just can’t get with the internet where you can feel and see the love that goes into each copy. Its brevity is heartbreaking; if only there was enough money and time for all the ideas that you know are bubbling under this publication to make it to the surface. It also reminds me that it’s been 4 years since the last issue of Ptolemaic Terrascope was issued and how sadder a world it is without it.
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