31 May 2022

THE LIVING SKY – Enter the Sky (2022, Cassette Home & Garden)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Home & Garden

Format: Cassette, Limited Edition, 50 copies (Real-time duplicated to hi-bias Type II Chrome, clear shell cassette with printed b/w labels and stamped ink details. Featuring artwork by Levi Haga, each copy is individually hand-stamped in bright sky blue ink to acid-free Bristol board. Includes blue art paper insert with duotone band photo and info)

Release Date: 29 April 2022

The Living Sky is one of these bands that you need to dig deep, to search a lot, in order to cross paths… If it wasn’t for Matthew Himes, I admit that I could have never found/discover this band. Matthew is responsible for M.H.H. (read my review here) and with the company of Jason Millard, they both became The Living Sky… A strange duet, using not compatible musical forms to dress their creations… And you can completely understand this, just by taking a look at the text written on their Bandcamp…

“Seven new sunset rides through morphing mirage, fading fast into forever. First-round from the new high mileage vapor trail unit THE LIVING SKY, delivering cosmic rock & roll knowledge from the lesser-known highways.

We’re pleased to finally unleash the debut album from the new duo project of Jason Millard and Matthew Himes. The boys have worked together closely in various capacities for years, and THE LIVING SKY is the latest strange form, a blasted blend of smeared astral boogie, garage fuzz drift, and bleary-eyed groove from the frozen Midwest.

“The world is a cylinder inside me,
on these unleaded wings I’ve learned to fly.
Two globes spinning in feline eyes.
On beams I ride, till freedom fried.”

With elements of whispy commune rock, deep-fried drone, and an almost tropical left-field funk, the tunes are guitar-heavy, quasi-rural, with accents of Farfisa, hand drums, flute, wailing feedback, and mystery ocean tone.

Horizons expanding slowly, new music for today’s tomorrow”…

“Enter The Sky” contains 7 tracks, all songs conceived and performed by Jason Millard and Matthew Himes, recorded in 2021 in Sky Studios, Minneapolis, MN. All 7 songs of “Enter The Sky” have a general improvisational mood, the opener “Cooling It Down” has an Impro-Jam start, acoustic with a soft ‘tribal-kind’ of drumming, let-loose vocals, and a psychedelically far-out trippy atmosphere… “Running Lights” is an instrumental tune, still improvised, with a jammy attitude and a darker sounding, way too close to the Psychedelic 60s’ Jam bands of San Francisco, while the lysergic haunted organ sound can make your senses being paralyzed! “Wishing Well” is a let-loose Psychedelic ‘Native’ kind of tune that acts like a Psychedelic prayer by a Shaman in the desert, trippy and psychedelic! “Blurred Horizons” is a distortically acoustic track, with blurry atmos, a slow and very sad tune, a psychedelic mourning… “Cylinder” is drenched in some sweet 60s Psychedelia, imagine you’re listening to the band inside a rehearsal room and you look outside the window and you see the Haight & Ashbury sign across the street… Yes, right, this one gives you such a strong feeling! The self-titled “Enter The Sky” follows, with an experimental feel, a hazy electric guitar sounding, very darkish and low-fi atmos, there’s a distinct acoustic guitar sound on the front while at the back the electric one is creating a Psychedelic chaos! The album comes to an end with “Evening Wheels”, a hallucinogenic, trippy, and kind of tribalistic atmosphere, it’s only 1 minute and 52 seconds, but I can imagine it played live for a couple of hours, giving the audience multiple psychedelic mind-orgasms! Get the cassette RIGHT NOW and you can thank me later… TimeLord Michalis