06 December 2024

ACID ROOSTER – Hall Of Mirrors (2024, LP Cardinal Fuzz/Tonzonen/Little Cloud Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Cardinal Fuzz/Tonzonen/Little Cloud Records

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Coke Bottle Green Vinyl, 500 copies

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, 180gram, White/Purple Marbled Vinyl w/ silver mirror foil print on backsleeve (Includes two-colored risograph print, sticker insert and label flyer/bandcamp download card), 300 copies

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Crystal Clear Vinyl, 300 copies

Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition (Packaged in a six-panel digipack sleeve with sticker)

Release Date: 25 Oct 2024

Acid Rooster is an instrumental psych/kraut/space Rock band, hailing from Leipzig, Germany, and “Hall Of Mirrors” is their 5th album release. For some unexplained reason their previous LP album “Flowers & Dead Souls” skipped my radar, but I did review their 2022 LP “Ad Astra” (check my review here)… Anyhow, three record labels (Cardinal Fuzz, Tonzonen, Little Cloud Records) collaborated on this album, and let’s have a look at the press release:

“Acid Rooster’s new Album, ‘Hall Of Mirrors’’, is the follow up to this Leipzig-based band’s critically acclaimed LP, ‘Flowers & Dead Souls’ which was at the top of so many end of year polls and continues the elevation of this mesmerizing trio.

While touring the UK Acid Rooster the cosmic stars aligned as they got to record and work with Jason Shaw at his renowned Dystopia Recording Studio.

Acid Rooster’s ever-evolving template is tapping into the same transcendental minimalism but delivered with a new-found urgency as they add additional layers to their intoxicating after-midnight grooves. The magic begins as the music unfolds, driven by the taut, propulsive rhythm whilst melodic bass lines propel the music in a perpetual forward motion, guitars flicker and cascade from angular and razor-sharp to shimmering and forlorn, peppered by the ambient whirr of synths that oscillate subtly in the background throughout.

With ‘Hall Of Mirrors’ Acid Rooster presents a work made up of four individual parts of immersive and psychedelic music.

Released in three different vinyl colors, all pressed on 180g vinyl with a beautiful mirror effect on the back cover. Each order includes a risograph poster and a sticker

Recorded in Glasgow at Dystopia Glasgow by Jason Shaw in July 2022. Mixed at Fuzzface Studio by Jason Shaw. Mastered at Crystal Mastering by Joe Carra. Artwork by Marko Heinzmann aka Super Quiet”…

“Hall Of Mirrors” contains just 4 tracks, equally divided into the 2 sides of the vinyl LP album. The opener “Automat” is based on a daemonic mutated lost Pink Floyd (from their mid-80s period) riff, shimmering wah-wah guitar sounds, some groovy basslines, and rather powerful drumming under a huge krauty prism, creating a supersonic Space Rock sounding capable enough to launch the Spaceship into the… future! “Chandelier Arp” is spacey, futuristic, and deeply electronically flavored, covered by a huge Krauty monotone cloak, this is trippy Space Rock with dreamy and floating atmos and a mysterious kind-of Psych aura all over, but slowly and progressively the Spacey soundscape is filled with pure ACID while the Spaceship males a stop somewhere in the year 2525 before safely landing into its initial state (of mind)! Surely, my personal highlight! Side ‘B’ opens in a slow, hazy, deeply spacey, and lysergically dark way with “Confidence Of Ignorance”, slowly the atmosphere becomes Heavy releasing vast amounts of Heavy Psych into Space, an improvised and slightly experimental instro! The album comes to an end with the slow “When Clouds Part”, there’s a dreamy sequence of sounds, the scenery is almost balladesque while the band flirts with ambient-space music, a quite trippy track! So, if you have never heard of Acid Rooster, give them a try, they will not disappoint you, and as far as the rest of you “diggers” out there, satisfaction and pleasure are guaranteed! TimeLord Michalis