16 January 2024

THE CYCLIST CONSPIRACY – Mashallah Plan (2023, LP Subsound Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Subsound Records

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Black Vinyl, 200 copies

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, White/Clear Blue Vinyl, 100 copies

Release Date: 13 Oct 2023

This is another interesting and super-fantastic Bandcamp discovery! The Cyclist Conspiracy are a Serbian band, based in Belgrade, and since 2015 they have released 4 digital Singles/EPs. “Mashallah Plan” is their debut album, released through Italian record label Subsound Records… The band’s Bandcamp states:

“The Cyclist Conspiracy, The (Anti) World Orchestra is the musical output of The Little Brothers dedicated to The Mysteries of The Last Age. Started as an informal project a couple of years ago within the Society For The Development Of Alchemical Studies “Vasko Popa”, nowadays it is a musical troupe consisting of 10 male and female souls”…

There are 4 tracks on the first side and 3 on the second side of the LP album. The opening track, “The Great Staurocycle” is a real music-cultural shock, at least to my ears, it starts in a neo-prog way, flirting with Psych-Rock, while the liturgy-like wordless female vocals add something Pompous to the whole imaginary wall-of-sound, a sound that is based on hot shimmering electric guitars, resulting a cool n’ strong Balkan-ethnic-like comprehensive soundscape… “Virility” is Psych-Rock with a modern touch and a Mediterranean-like atmos using the same abstract female vocals but the whole track is highlighted by the fancied electric guitar sound that is so “Tinariwen” flirting/inspired… “The Blood Of The Lamp” is an epic grandiose track with operatic-like female vocals (wordless of course), this is modern Balkan Psych Rock! There’s an interesting marriage of styles and attitudes under a huge PSYCH prism, should I call it Ethnic-Psych? I really don’t know… Side ‘A’ closes with the short “Bicyclism And Theology”, a strange outstanding noisy, and full of fuzzy guitars kind of instrumental interlude… Wow… The opener of side ‘B’ is called “Deneb”, a kind of an electric balladesque tune (at least at the start) slowly becoming psychedelically weird and sentimental, kind of post-rock flirting, while suddenly the guitar becomes extremely late 60s West Coast inspired, ending in a psychedelically abstract Middle Eastern-flavored way… Cool! “Holy Maps Of Axum” combines in a perfect PSYCH way, Balkan, Middle Eastern, and North African moods and styles, a stupendous monstrous colorful psychedelic Melting Pot of three Continents, well… sort of… A great mind-blowing track, for sure! The album comes to an end with “Simorgh”, a track that leans more to the East, and I’m daring to describe it as a piece of a psychedelic flavored Taxim, probably Arabic influenced, a track that can definitely be included on a record like “Hard Rock From The Middle East” (The Devil’s Anvil, 1967)… “Mashallah Plan” is an album full of excitement and energy, an album that acts as a crossroad, a crossroad where East meets West, Northern Africa meets Middle East… “Mashallah Plan” is a huge cultural melting pot, “Mashallah Plan” is rightfully one of the best albums of 2023, it reached No.22 on my list with the TOP50 albums of 2023 (check it here)… And I’ll be eagerly waiting for their next move… TimeLord Michalis

Tracklist

A1	The Great Staurocycle	4:06
A2	Virility	6:31
A3	The Blood Of The Lamb	8:40
A4	Bicyclism And Theology Excerpt #4	1:53
B1	Deneb	8:32
B2	Holy Maps Of Axum	5:30
B3	Simorgh	7:57