THE HOLY FAMILY – Go Zero (2023, LP/CD Rocket Recordings)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Rocket Recordings

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, ‘Fluro Yellow’ Vinyl, Diecut Sleeve

Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition, Digi Pack

Release Date: 21 July 2023

The Holy Family released their debut self-titled (double LP) in 2021 through Rocket Recordings, and I was so blown away by it that I included it on my TOP 50 albums of 2021, and for the record, it reached No 6! You can check my review here: The Holy Family (2LP, 2021)

Well, this alternative avant-Psych Experimental British group is back with their sophomore album entitled “Go Zero”. The information through their Bandcamp page explains it all, and I advise you to read carefully:

“The second album by underground rock-and-beyond shapeshifters The Holy Family comes complete with a heavy concept for the psychedelically inclined, and pairs this with music which does this justice and then some.
‘Go Zero’ follows up the British group’s widely praised self-titled debut from 2021 and – says foundational member David Jason Smith – “is based on a hypothetical theory that there is no such thing as ‘the future’. We are continually moving forward into our past until we arrive at our birth – creation – the Tree Of Knowledge… or ‘Going Zero’, as I’ve termed it.”
It figures, then, that over some 40 minutes, the five musicians conjure a sound that exhibits an affinity with great experimental totems down the ages, in a manner that’s avowedly forward-facing and stamped with their own identity. All involved boast a pre-Holy Family CV to turn clued-in heads: Kavus Torabi (guitars), Sam Warren (bass), and Emmett Elvin (piano and Rhodes), along with Smith himself, were all members of the mighty Guapo. Finnish studio wizard Antti Uusimaki, who co-sculpted the eight tracks on ‘Go Zero’ into their final form, is also a collaborator of Smith’s from the Guapo days. Drummer Joe Lazarus is new to the band – taking over that role from Smith, who largely concentrates on vocals and synths here – and his versatility is never in doubt, as his rhythms pull in myriad directions, blurring the lines between jazz, prog, and psych rock.
Work began on this album in the summer of 2021, effectively as soon as ‘The Holy Family’ was released, with Smith writing and recording the music for ‘Go Zero’ in his home studio. Torabi, Warren, Elvin, and Lazarus were gradually brought into the fold to add their parts, before being subject to alchemical post-production by Uusimaki.
Later, in the autumn of 2022, two pieces were laid down with the full band in each other’s company. One, ‘Hell Born Babel’, flies out of the traps with a sinewy post-hardcore bassline: people who know Sam Warren from Thumpermonkey, another band of his, will be forewarned of his way with a stout groove. The multi-layered freakout that follows might have a cattleprod effect for those listeners and others, nevertheless. The other, the second section of the three-part ‘Go Zero Suite’, tops ten minutes and is an improvised colossus with both Lazarus and Smith drumming. Rife with hypnotic repetition and circuit-frying Rhodes, if you dig anything from Can to Boredoms to Oneida to Guapo themselves, step this way.
Though The Holy Family’s musical inspirations are multitudinous, and rarely if ever obvious, the lyrics nod to a distinct literary source – namely ‘Vorrh’, the trilogy of fantasy novels by cult British author Brian Catling, who died in 2022 while ‘Go Zero’ was being assembled. This, says Smith, lent a deeper personal meaning to the album as its final touches were put in place. In these three books, the Vorrh is “an impenetrable sentient forest, older than mankind, believed to house all knowledge” – and in the same way that the name The Holy Family references an Angela Carter work, Smith explains, “the track titles ‘Chalky’s Eyes’ (had been eaten by flies) and ‘The Watcher’ are direct references to characters in the book.”
Catling was also a renowned visual artist, with his installation works acclaimed by the art establishment even as he rejected many of its trappings – often subverting traditional ideas of the gallery space. He saw art and literature as almost one and the same, sitting at his kitchen table switching from canvas to manuscript and back. Smith, similarly, has created artworks alongside his recorded output since the early days of Guapo (some ending up on album covers) and has presented audiovisual work in unconventional or ‘outsider’ locations. He cites his grounding in DIY music culture for this impulse, but shares with Brian Catling a strong individualist streak and desire to plough one’s own furrow. Explaining the similarities between the creation of music and art, he says: “At some point, the lightbulb moment occurs. I see what the musical direction has the potential to be, then shape the material in the same way I would conceive a sculptural installation.”
With the vocal delivery pitch-shifted and time-stretched, and the music occult-adjacent, doom-laden, dense and hazy – yet concealing outbursts of splendid melody – with ‘Go Zero’ The Holy Family have returned with an album that unfurls elegantly, even while big-time discombobulation is occurring”…
“Go Zero” contains 8 tracks in total, with a duration of 41:41min, 4 on each side of the LP album. If the listener had experienced their previous effort then the creepy isolated cold dark industrialized and kind of ambient-like subtractive soundscape of the opener “Crawling Out” will not be a surprise… The album moves on with the slow torturous “Bad Travelling” under a dark Psych environment with vocals coming straight from the bottom of the well/hell, becoming colder, darker, weirder, and creepier (of course), this is some serious Occult-Psych! The scenery remains dark and cold and eerie on “Chalky’s Eyes”, introducing a psychic repeated melody, progressively transformed into a post-modern Avant-Krauty-Psych anthem! Side “A” closes with “The Watcher”, a much different track, a 180-degree turn, with a nice warm piano melody and soft chanted-like vocals while the soundscape has by now become cinematic, ambient-like, serene emerging a ceremonial feel… Side “B” opens with “Hellborn Babel”, a killer distinctive bass line that leads the track back to Holy Family’s familiar lairs, dark, heavy, cold, and cosmically creepy, which makes you wonder “What these voices are doing inside my head?”… The album closes with the 3-part suite “Go Zero”, The Holy Family creates a remarkable outstanding soundscape that flirts with Kraut, Progressive Rock, Occult Rock, Avant-Garde, and Psych, an experimental improvisational anthem with a repetitive electro-kraut rhythm and a kind of a Jazzy attitude, mind-bending, capable enough to activate a chemical reaction inside your brain while the track is closing in a relaxing ambient-psych and avant-garde-ish way… Wow! So, fans of Occult Psych Rock will like “Go Zero”, personally speaking, I cannot resist its weird charm, and I will definitely include it among the Best albums of 2023… TimeLord Michalis

Tracklist