CD: Dreamweapon - SOL

Dreamweapon’s second album, SOL, is a spaced-out trip of oceanic psychedelia that calls on the listener to pay full attention and sink into their potent motoric vibes. Free of any hippy-dippy fluffiness, Dreamweapon may be experts in laying down the drone but they are also locked firmly into the groove.

Dreamweapon are a trio from Porto who have named themselves after the title of a Spacemen 3 bootleg – and it’s not some ironic joke. João Campos Costa, Edgar Moreira and 10.000 Russos’ bassist, Andre Couto have created SOL from four improvised compositions that are by turns thoughtful and Dionysian, disciplined yet free. With no tracks clocking in at much less than 10 minutes long, feedback and reverb colour oscillating synth drones as a driving and precise motorik groove forces its way into the depths of the subconscious.

Whoozy soundscapes evolve into pulsating grooves, drenched in reverb throughout. Opening track “Mashinne” is spaced-out but focused and is a perfect soundtrack to a summer sunrise with its half-heard samples and trippy synths. “Blauekirshe” has dashes of Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd while whispered vocals seep into an insidious groove that throbs gently but unrelentingly. “Qram” is a quarter of an hour of disorientating sounds that coalesce into hypnotic space rock. A multiplicity of pulsating sounds intertwines into an electronic miasma that grooves ever onward even as abstract sounds veer off on strange tangents. The somewhat livelier closer, “Monte da Virgem”, lurches straight into a motorik-trance stomp that hits the floor with sampled loops and reverb-powered grooves that even suggest something of the early 90s sound of the crusty techno-heads at Club Dog.

SOL is definitely a fine piece of psychedelia but, as the band’s name suggests, Dreamweapon have way more in common with the late 80s drones of the Midlands than anything that was birthed in Haight Ashbury during the Summer of Love.

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