HeavyPink
Flower and Song b/w There is a Light 7″
The Maple Forum

When Mos Generator split in 2009, they were working on an album that was going to be called HeavyPink. Well, Mr. Mos himself and friend of the Beard, Tony Dallas Reed, has taken that album’s concept and name off of the shelf on which it’s sat these last few years, dusted it off, and recorded an experimental solo project. The result is this two-song EP of mystic heaviness, and we find Reed (who sang, played all the instruments, and recorded it in his own HeavyHead studios) reaching back into the foggy past yet again, only where his current band Stone Axe channels the almighty rock, HeavyPink lays down a tremulous psych-doom that sleeps in graveyards and plays in opium dens. “Flower and Song,” then, is the moonlight-bathed A-side while “There is a Light” is the red light-dusted B-side, but both contain well-fused avant-garde and goth metal elements. Reed himself explains HeavyPink’s sounds as, ‘Master of Reality, Pet Sounds, and Into the Pandemonium all in one and produced by Phil Spector,’ so let THAT permeate your brain, but to me it’s a wonderfully unexpected noir punch from a certified cosmic rock master.

Listen to “Flower and Song” from Flower and Song b/w There is a Light 7″!

Dwellers
Peace, and Other Horrors
Self-Released

It seems that Dwellers, the Salt Lake City trio featuring former Iota singer/guitarist Joey Toscano, thinks that, even though their debut full-length is set to be released sometime this summer on Small Stone, we ought to hear something right now, and so we get the experimental 4-song digital EP Peace, and Other Horrors, which was made during their current recording sessions. Now, I’m not sure how indicative of the upcoming album this EP is (labelling it experimental makes me think it’s going to differ quite a bit), but hopefully they end up towing a similar line because the folksy, Americana Gothic, with its slide guitar, cymbal bows, and faucet drips, makes for some ominous tones and spooky spaghetti ambiance, and calls to mind Earth’s last handful of albums and Dege Legg’s swampy ghost songs. If the goal of releasing this EP was to get me excited for the forthcoming album, then consider the mission accomplished.

Head over to Dwellers’ Bandcamp page where you can download this EP for free!

Ulver
Wars of the Roses
Kscope

Ulver have always delivered dark music in one form or another. Many forms, actually. From black metal to experimental to electronic to progressive to ambient to avant-garde, they’ve permeated every conceivable pretentious genre throughout their 17-year career with profound passion and demonstrative secrecy. Their art, while ever changing, is always high, and now these Norwegian artists, four years removed from their last album, have embraced a whole new expression of accessibility. Having thrived as an independent band for years, Ulver now find themselves with management and backing from a big label, and have taken to doing something in the last few years they never have before: playing live. Wars of the Roses, then, ought to be considered carefully, its structure plastered with new clay, its window treatments pulled back at last. Opener “February MMX” comes on like a vacuous gothic pop rock song, leading us to believe the house of Ulver is stale and empty, but, once inside, the beating heart beneath the floor ignites the madness and renews all hope . Much like Shadows of the Sun, the remaining six songs on Wars of the Roses rely on breathless emptiness to achieve their haunting efficacy, a well-conceived mix of percussion, bowed guitar, strings, wind instruments, piano, electronics, and, in the case of “Providence,” a female vocalist (Siri Stranger). It remains, by large, a sleepy effort, but that’s not to say it’s boring, because Ulver’s ability to transcend mere ritualistic potency is mesmerizing. They finish it off with the 15:00 minute “Stone Angels,” whose lyrics are a text written by American poet Keith Waldrop and read by guitarist, and newest member of the band, Daniel O’Sullivan, a final statement on the band’s thematic vision, one that’s less concerned with mainstream malfeasance and more intent on doing what they’ve always done — divinely flexing their learned, classical, and philosophical muscles.

Listen to “England” from Wars of the Roses!