Bremen - Eclipsed (2015)

Bremen return with a new double-LP of glacial electronics, strung-out drone-punk and smouldering space-rock minimalism.

Following the release of their self-titled debut on Skrammel in 2013, the Swedish duo of Jonas Tiljander (Brainbombs) and Lanchy Orre (Brainbombs, Totalitär) joined the Blackest Ever Black fold with last year's Second Launch. If the mood of that record was brooding and stygian, its monochord intensity unfaltering, then Eclipsed, their equally sprawling new set, could be construed as a warmer, more dynamic and variegated offering. Perhaps. There are still passages that are heavier than a death in the family. Still a staunch obsession with the consciousness-altering power of repetition.

The band's points of departure are specific: a particular organ sound from J.A. Seazer 1970s recordings, the squalid alien guitar tone of Chrome, the cranked, psychic roar-out riffage of Hawkwind, the melancholic mode of Swedish jazz pianist Jan Johansson, minimalism from La Monte Young to Eleh, “cold eighties electronic sound”, and sloppy, lo-fi psychedelic rock from the likes of Pärson Sound and Träd Gräs och Stenar. Tiljander's icily poised synth/organ drones and the grieving cosmic howl of Lanchy's guitar dominate the landscape, but their instrumental palette has also expanded to include various percussion treatments, saxophone, strings, dissolved vocal fragments. Their exploratory jamming, overdubbing and dub-savvy mixing yields a music of unbelievable eloquence and physicality.

Eclipsed is another masterpiece of black hole psychedelia from one of the greatest underground rock'n'roll units on the planet. No serious void-worshipper's collection is right without it.