27 May 2025

MORE EXPERIENCE – Horizons of Events (2025, 2LP/CD Sound Effect Records/Old Hippie Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Sound Effect Records/Old Hippie Records

Format: 2LP, Album, Limited Edition

Format: CD, Album, Digipak, Limited Edition

Release Date (CD): 1 Mar 2025

More Experience is not a new band. Hailing from Poland, they formed back in the late 80s as a psychedelic project, “inspired by Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, Gong, Soft Machine and other bands from the 60s and 70s”. So far, they have released four albums, “From Acid Dreams” (CD/Cassette, 1997), “Piosenki Z Szuflady” (CDR, 2014), “Follow Me” (CDR, 2016), “Electric Laboratory Of High Space Experience” (CDR/LP, 2021) (check my review here), and one 7-inch single “In The Shadow Of The Sun / From Acid Dreams” (1993). Their last album was released as a vinyl LP by the Greek label Sound Effect Records, which is also releasing More Experience’s 5th album, “Horizons Of Events” on double vinyl format (the vinyl edition contains one more track, a full-side extra track that is unpublished anywhere else, while the CD version is released by Old Hippie Records). Today, More Experience is a studio project realized by Piotr Dudzikowski and his brothers and sisters in music. This time, More Experience is: Eryk Paluch (vocals, voices, and khumei), Marcin Grabowski (basses and voices), Filip Gomela (drums, cymbals, tabla, and voices), Janek Dudzikowski (drums, percussions, tabla, jaw harp, and voices), Piotr Dudzikowski (strings, keys, and voices). “Horizons Of Events” is a concept album that continues the story that started at their previous “Electric Laboratory of High Space Experience”. Their label says, “Four extended tracks let you travel through an unusual story, straight from the world of psychedelic miracles, vibes, and spaces. Their acid-rock, progressive, and jazz-rock canon serves as the guide to a unique and highly transcendental experience, on the verge of what the title suggests! Enjoy the trip!”…

At this very time (mid-May), the vinyl edition is not out yet, so I’m going to write a few thoughts about the four tracks of the CD edition. Under a sitar-laced, beautifully orchestrated Proggy background, “Deep Cosmic Kisses” opens the album. At the same time, the quintet slowly unfolds all of their personal psychedelic & progressive rock influences, creating a rather inspiring soundscape, becoming let-loose, jammy and a bit jazzy, slightly Eastern influenced, slowly as the track evolves, everything turns into Cosmic Energy, the atmosphere becomes serene, abstract, cosmically trippy, flirting with the most ambient side of Kozmique music, ending in an unbelievable amazing PROG way, leaving you with the taste of a lost Canterbury-sounded experimental track! Wow! “Death” employs an acoustic, almost Folkie scenery, with a few spacey effects here and there, heavenly-like vocals, and a mood that invites experimentation (blame the backward guitar sound for that). Slowly, the track transforms into a kind of soft n mellow progressive-folk balladesque experimental track… wow! (Again!) “Wait A Minute” is a Proogy track charged with numerous amounts of Cosmic Energy, the mood is slow and jazzy at the least at the beginning, sporadic sitar sounds and sample voices are turning the scenery into an improvisational Prog one with Middle-Eastern influences, there’s Sitar (or maybe it’s that one called Khumei), steady and progressively the soundscape becomes more Space-Prog oriented but without loosing it’s Eastern hue, starts to flirt with “Ethnic” or “World music” in a point that I begin to think all these “world worries” that this big persona had during the 80s through his recordings, yes, at times the whole thing here reminds me David Byrne.. The last one, “Lunatic Space Diary” is a more Rock-oriented track, blending Space Rock with Progressive Rock, but not for long because soon the track falls into weirdness, a trippy improvisational environment with an obscure Psychedelic Jazzy jam-a-like edge, and after a while, there’s a huge “diving” (or maybe “floating”) into SPACE simultaneously flirting with Prog, Kraut & Kozmique music! Wow! (again and again and again!!!) So… More Experience with their album “Horizons Of Events” not only made a huge “impact”, not only made their “presence” noticeable, but they put Poland on the European Neo-Psychedelic map (along with other trippy people from there such as Lastryko, A.J. Kaufmann, The Great Duck Enigma, Alien Lizard…) And that’s an achievement! Needless to say, we’re talking about one of the BEST albums of 2025! TimeLord Michalis