Showing posts with label PALM DESERT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PALM DESERT. Show all posts

Saturday, November 16, 2013

... PALM DESERT "Adayoff" (EP review)

Just some months ago Palm Desert from Wroclaw/Poland sparked me with their album Rotten Village Sessions and now they come up with a new release, an EP called Adayoff. Running the risk of spoiling the bottom line, I say this release is something special. It belongs into this category of music I actually don’t want to write or talk about, but I’d rather just say: “Listen to it”, because the essential points about it can’t be described by words appropriately. It’s a case of either you get what’s going on here, or you don’t.

I could, of course, tell you that the EP comprises six songs of exquisite stoner rock and its overall runtime is just short of 30 minutes.
I could tell you that the opener Leave me alone begins with a lot of blues feel put into warm fuzzy guitar sounds, heads into a heavy, stormy rock jam to find its way back to the blues again.
The second track End of the certain is a folky acoustic instrumental, demonstrating how beautiful simplicity can be, with a strong melody and an unboastful but effective  instrumentation. This is the only song that is not drenched in fuzz, but don’t worry, the fuzz comes back immediately with the next song Among the stones, together with a driving rhythm ploughing its groove through fuzzy thickness.
The strong groove continues in the following track Final scream, accompanied by a hypnotic krautrock vibe with lots of drumming goodness and guitar jam.
Dusty brings on some psychedelic moments, slow and mellow, like a daydream in soft warm summer rain. With echoing vocals, extremely relaxed and almost fading out after two-thirds through, it suddenly breaks into a hard driving groove to its end.
The closing track Overload brings yet another facet into the album, female vocals to perfect the spacey entrancing bass driven repetitive rhythms with a beautiful melody.

I could tell you all this and more, but in fact all you need to know is:
This band spends one day in the studio and comes out with this album that sounds breathtakingly soulful. It proves that brilliant musicianship doesn’t necessarily need overly intricate constructions and yet is able to create  exciting music that contains a variety of moods and facets. A kind of laid-back unobtrusive attitude and tons of heartfelt tunes is all these four guys need to create something special.

“Listen to it”

words by Ulla Roschat






Thursday, January 17, 2013

... PALM DESERT "Rotten Village Sessions"


I took a walk in the forest the other day. It was nice with all the newly fallen snow, but it was damn cold too. Then I remembered I had the new Palm Desert album Rotten Village Sessions, which I was supposed to review anyway, on my mp3 player and I decided to give it a first listen and hoped it would infuse some hot desert sun through my ears into my body.

It did more than that. It sent me on a journey through the desert – a journey in three stages with two short instrumental tracks to mark the transition into the respective next stage.


With Down The Odyssey and Till The Sun Goes Down the journey starts on some heavy but powerful machine that takes some time till it’s rolling down the road gaining smokey and psychedelic atmosphere. The first instrumental Ghulassa Saloon is a drum/percussion tribal rhythm that sounds like the welcoming tune of the desert and its creatures. The next song Mani picks up this tribal rhythm and weaves a thicker texture around it with stomping and driving guitar and bass sounds . With Shades In Black the desert unfolds its psychedelic forces on my mind with a somewhat dark atmosphere driving fast into a psychedelic freak-out. Orbitean then, the next instrumental track marks the beginning of the last stage – again the percussive tribal sounds – time to go back home. Acid Phantom is still psyched and stoned from the deserts flimmery smokey heat, a bluesy progressive “hendrixy” jam with a heavenly driving bass and drum work (does it show that this is my favorite track?). White Wolf now takes me home again, a long way to go, with 12:55 minutes it’s the longest track of the album, the right length to remember and re-live the trip that ends with a nice, peaceful fuzz-free and sober acoustic guitar part.


Rotten Village Sessions (2013) is the 4th release of the 4 piece stoner rock band Palm Desert from Wroclaw/Poland. It consists of 9 tracks with a playing time of short of 48 minutes.


Well written songs, all with a dynamic structure a lot of rocking and rolling, going psychedelic, progressive, fuzzy and smokey - everything’s here what a good stoner rock album should have. And there are some details that make it an excellent one – well skilled musicians that are able to play off each other, each song is unique and diverse, the fact that it’s able to induce images and stories in my mind … and hey it works as a one finger salute to the freezing cold.

words by Ulla Roschat



http://palmdesert.bandcamp.com/album/rotten-village-sessions-2
https://www.facebook.com/palmdesertband