KING NINE WILL NOT RETURN – Here Not There (2023, LP Owl Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Owl Records

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Red Vinyl, Gatefold Cover

Release Date: 24 May 2023

King Nine Will Not Return is a Seattle, Washington-based power new trio describing their music as Experimental psych-wildling music. Their previous release was a 4-track EP cassette called “Eggoreye” released in January 2022. The band consists of Justin McCormick, Andris Balins, and Nicholas Wilbur. Their Bandcamp page states:

“Here Not There is a full-length record put together over the past 3 years across a constellation of collaborations. This is an album inspired by rhythm, the forest, the edge, and reaching. Created at a time and place with many changes, personal and in the world. Proving to be full of challenges and loss as spark and clearing. Tracking half of this body of
work at The Unknown a church turned recording sanctuary in Anacortes, WA with Nicholas Wilbur (Black Belt Eagle Scout, Mount Eerie) recently
highlighted by Bandcamp Daily and then at Dryhill Studios in Oneonta, NY with Andris Balins (Sean Lennon). The music is co-produced with Justin and Andris at the helm. Justin and Andris co-writing the final track, Fire and Motion”…

So, “Here Not There” is King Nine Will Not Return debut LP album, released through Owl Records, and contains 10 tracks, 5 on each side of the LP. The opener is called “Heavy Under”, a ritualistic kind of Spacious Psychedelia that blends early Hawkwind and late 60s experimental Floyd with slices of The Psychedelic Stooges, wow! On “Silver Leaves” the trio creates a ‘psychotic’ dark Drone-a-listic soundscape, reverberated and echoed, flirting with electro-goth and Psych, a quite experimental track… “Vilderbeast” uses an abstract cold dark psychotic (yes, again!) and very Avant-Garde-ish background, this is an experimental piece of Psych instrumental music with eerie orchestration that flirts with Occult Psych… “Entertainers” has a cold dark Goth-like Psych soundscape with liturgy-like vocals, flirting with New Age, Avant-Garde, and Experimental Psych, a Drone-y ritualistic scenery that all of a sudden changes to a Neo-Kraut Psych-Goth environment bringing to mind some perfect Joy Division dark moments from the late 70s, mixing it with a slow Sister Of Mercy atmos! What will happen if you try to mix Kraut with Garage is exactly what is happening inside “Believe”, with an addictive rhythm, this is a track that manages to blend Can, Sonic Youth, and 13^th Floor Elevators!!! Side ‘B’ opens with “Body & The Source” and the band introduces a new member to the club, let’s welcome Neu! Yes, this is a Neo-Kraut amazing song that while listening to you can trace bands like Neu! (of course), Can, and the mystical Kalacakra! “It Is All” starts with music coming from multiple Musical Boxes, slowly the band unfolds a pastoral PSYCH acoustic motive becoming cinematically epic emerging an intense ceremonial feel… There’s a deep tribalistic Psychedelic Beat-able environment on “Disco Sex Ballad”, a track that flirts with Goth but is inspired from Dark Wave, under a hallucinogenic haunted-like synth melody, a track that shamelessly but gloriously flirts with the minimalistic side of Acid Psych! “Chard Elder” is a Krauty and Kosmische wild Psych tune with a distorted Punk-a-delic attitude while the album comes to an end with “Fire & Motion”, a dark psychotic electronically flavored soundscape with an experimental touch, Kraut influenced that is transformed into a Shaman-like electro trippy futuristic amalgam of PSYCH music… Genius! So, in conclusion, King Nine Will Not Return delivered to the Underground World a good Psych album though their musical opinion about Psych is very different than many other bands (and this is quite exciting), King Nine Will Not Return chose the less luminous and short path of PSYCH, the one that surely needs “imagination” and “experience”, and the band got plenty of both! Dig it! TimeLord Michalis  

Tracklist

Links

Listen / Buy through KING NINE WILL NOT RETURN Bandcamp