10 September 2024

WHITE CANYON & THE 5th DIMENSION – The Golden Key To The Kingdom Of No Return (2024, Digital/Bandcamp)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Self Released

Format: Digital/Bandcamp

Release Date: 21 June 2024

In August 2023, the Brazilian Psych-Rock duo of Gabriela Zaith and Leo Gudan – White Canyon & The 5th Dimension – released their 3rd album “Gardeners Of The Earth”, which had a huge impact/effect on me that I put it in the No1 position of the best albums of 2023! (read my review here) So, in less than a year White Canyon & The 5th Dimension released their next album called “The Golden Key To The Kingdom Of No Return” but for now only in digital format through their Bandcamp. On their Bandcamp, we read: “Looped experiments, drones, synths, and tribal percussion overflow in this new instrumental work by White Canyon & The 5th Dimension. Recorded in various sessions over the past year, we’ve been experimenting with rhythms and sound textures that we’d like to introduce into our music. Here’s a partial result of all that. An album made up of five instrumental pieces that wander between calm moments and cathartic space journeys. The title “The Golden Key To The Kingdom Of No Return” alludes to the work “Romance d’A Pedra do Reino e o Príncipe do Sangue do Vai-e-Volta” by the Brazilian writer Ariano Suassuna, published in 1971”…

“The Golden Key To The Kingdom Of No Return” consists of 5 pieces of instrumental Psych-related music…The opener “Under The Reddish Sky” is a full mystagogy track with a drone-y intro, kind of dark and let-loose, slowly and progressively the pounding drums take the lead, a trippy psychedelic guitar shows the way while the track dives deeply into a mind-bending psychedelic scenery, and it’s really amazing how drums and guitar work together to create this mind-expanding atmosphere, lysergically trippy and definitely PSYCHEDELIC, it acts as a long psychedelic jam thing… The helicopter sound effects in the middle of this instrumental piece of magic are literally exploding the track into a colorful psychedelic ‘alternative’ universe, getting even deeper into the dark corridors of the Mynd, trying to ”explore” any “unexplored” territories, this is Enchanted Psychedelia of the 21st century! But, there’s more… Slowly, the rhythm changes and the guitar becomes Heavy while the whole track is transformed into a sonic electric heavy psychedelic experimental Jam… The band uses the same Psychedelic improvisational mode on the next one called “Golden Key”, the track is based on a powerful trippy electric guitar and led by wandering adventurous dynamic drums, the music becomes Acidly Heavy, this is another self-exploration trip for the mind… “Mystery Bird” is a spacey experimental improvised short track that acts as an intro to the follow-up “No Return”, the atmosphere has by now become creep-a-delic and full of mystery, a mind-blowing electric trippy guitar transforms the track into a hallucinogenic powerful Psychedelic Journey, a little bit of Middle Eastern flirting, and a little bit of Heavy Space flirting, becoming finally, a Heavy Improvised Spacey Sonic Guitar Experiment… An electric psychedelic guitar intro introduces the improvisational last track of the album “Stone Of The Kingdom”, a track that feels like trying to explore new electric guitar soundscapes while the once-more pounding drums make the whole thing here sound like a far-out ‘stoned’ jam session, there’s a Heavy pounding Beat leading the track to a Mind-Expanding atmosphere, transforming it into a sonic intergalactic SPACE Trip while a wandering electric guitar sound shines all over spreading Heavy vibes everywhere… I hope and pray for a physical vinyl release sooner or later… TimeLord Michalis