Release June 20th, 2012
This is a fun write up regarding some of the high strangeness involved in the creation of this album, as well as the acid ritual I performed in 2012 to celebrate it's completion (from my new book Shine on You Crazy Daemon, out now):
At one point, my friend just randomly gave me some mushrooms backstage at a Moon Duo show and the entire band Black Science semi ritualistically ingested them and listened to the Cosmodemonic & Beyond album in its entirety. The ‘shrooms weren’t that strong so we ended up sort of replicating the experiment I did with Sorcery years prior but with multiple participants this time. None of us were really feeling the effects a whole lot at all until we played the album, then we were in a trance. I had a particularly profound encounter while the sounds invaded my spirit with who I’d later learn to be Enlil. It showed me how it was not only the creator of the insect world, but also responsible for fun alternate dimensions such as crustaceans and sea spiders. No really, that happened.
The most interesting aspect of all this has to do with what happened after we listened to that album though. Well, for one thing we put on Revolver by the Beatles at one point and were like, well, that’s pretty fucking tame. I love that album but music has gotten so very much more out there since. More importantly though, unlike during the Sorcery experiment my visuals just kept going after we stopped listening. Didn’t seem to work that way for the other band members and I know my brother at least took a few more caps.
Buuuut, something rather fascinating did go down that didn’t seem super significant until a few years down the line. While we were chilling out on the balcony smoking pot, I was still having some pretty substantial visuals, even though the other guys had pulled out of it a bit. Gradually I just started hearing this mellow major key guitar noise jam inside of me emanating from a psychoactive radio station hitherto unknown. I even mentioned it to a few of the other guys. Mellower major key guitar noise jam. We had zero intentions of playing or doing anything other than weirding the fuck out that day, but since the psilocybin wasn’t that strong, we eventually decided to get some food and mosey over to our practice space.
We ended up jamming for like an hour and recording a great deal of it. I was writing 95% of the material in that project and had sort of dismissed it as just a fun way to pass the time, but Adam and Gael became obsessed and started listening to the recording continually, sending us e-mail updates about what parts were good and what we needed to bang out in practice. For some reason I could never actually listen to these files. They all came through corrupted and I couldn’t find the ones that were supposed to be the right ones.
Hilariously, neither could our bassist Ryk and we rode to practice together as the other two lived right by the space on Capitol Hill. So for quite some time the other band mates were continually piecing together bits of this jam and Ryk and I were just like, I haven’t even listened to this thing really. But they were passionate and had worked out certain aspects so I was like, sure, what the fuck? As it turned out, this song ended up being the band’s final and best track in that incarnation of the project as I’ll get to in a minute. Truthfully, I still sat down and wrote the majority of the piece as far as how all the changes progress and what not, but in another way it was sort of channeled after a psilocybin experiment as it is largely based off a major key mellow jam, and that wasn’t what I was planning on writing to close out that album consciously at all. The mushrooms intervened.
(continued a few pages later)
...an unexpected thing had gone down with my primary pursuit at the time, Black Science. The album was coming out fantastic. All of us agreed it we’d one upped Cosmodemonic (our first studio album) which truthfully we didn’t think was going to be easy to do. You know that psilocybin jam based track I was mentioning? Again, the best thing we’d ever done. What I didn’t realize is that it was going to be our last (as that lineup of the band anyway). What happened is this, first of all, for those not in the know, the band name Black Science is actually a reference to a plotline in Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles and it wasn’t personally my first choice at all to name the project. When we’d first started getting together and working on music, my brother and I had tossed around the name The Power Cosmic, but six or so months later when we were ready to make that official we realized that someone in the UK had just taken it on MySpace (still a big thing at the time, especially for musicians). So I wrote down a bunch of other names, none of which I currently remember. Out of all of them, Adam liked Black Science the best. I wasn’t super sold on it because it seemed fairly obvious, and there was in fact already a band called Black Science Orchestra and a Geezer Butler album named Black Science, but no other band as far as I could tell from basic internet searching.
Then I had one of those super synchronous experiences where while I was contemplating all this, I at complete random ended up in some mall Barnes & Noble with time to kill so I started browsing through some music magazines. The Mars Volta had just done an interview about their The Bedlam in Goliath album (in my opinion their best) and Cedric mentioned his Invisibles fandom and how it influenced the album. That sealed it. I also liked the context as in the Black Science plotline of the series the “heroes” do end up coming to Seattle and encountering the men in black who blow their minds with their, well, black science. Also, Grant Morrison did intend The Invisibles to be a hyper sigil, so you know, maybe by using that reference we could tap into the psychic energy emanating from the whole exercise. And that’s where it got strange. As we were in Dean’s studio we realized he had the book Our Sentence is Up lying around (which is an in depth exploration of The Invisibles for those not in the know). So I was like, hey, this album’s going to come out in 2012, let’s go ahead and call that unnamed closing track Our Sentence is Up. Seemed to fit.
Whether this was a good idea or not is debatable, because from there things got hyper curious really quick. Right after we named it that we were tinkering with it in the studio and I had the idea to throw this channeled transmission from Jeff Ritzmann (who used to be half of the Paratopia podcast, highly recommended if you can even find it on the internet anymore) on the end of it. It’s a rather awesome educational statement to mankind about the complicated nature of the universe of consciousness. Absolutely worth checking out. Anyway, we just start it at the part I had envisioned in my head where I thought it would work in the song and when we put it there, on the exact second the music ends, the reading of the transmission also conveniently ends with him saying “and that’s where it ends”. Super peculiar and this is how the album was going to now end as well. But that wasn’t the end of the high strangeness at all. Roughly 2 weeks after we decided to name that freaking song Our Sentence is Up, Gael and Adam both told me they were going to have to quit the band in the studio…on the exact same day. Gael was having a kid and Adam’s fiancée had gotten a good job in Edmonton after struggling to find one in Seattle for over a year. Our “sentence” of being wedded to that particular creative routine that we’d been locked in for the last 4 years was certainly up.
And so these were the circumstances I found myself in while planning this inaugural acid ritual. Having worked on a project I was incredibly proud of just to have it mysteriously blow up in my face. The album was finished and again, I thought turned it out unbelievably excellent. Once it was finally mixed and mastered it was around late January of 2012 if I’m remembering correctly. I had a new sonic sacrament to offer to the gods so the timing for such an undertaking seemed to be right. As a matter of fact, I actually had 3 new offerings as I’d had those other 2 Thanaton compilations mastered as well. With this in mind I set aside a particular day I knew my wife was working and took it off. Again, set and setting. I wanted to be able to get into a separate galaxy entirely. I figured if I woke up early and took the stuff right as she was leaving, by the end of the day I’d probably be back into normal enough territory that I could at least manage a decent conversation and not be super fucking annoying.
As far as the ritual, I didn’t make it too complicated. I figured I’d keep it simple enough. I’d have an orgasm while envisioning a sigil image I’d assigned as the cover to each album, then continue to visualize the image to the best of the ability as I listened to the music ritualistically. There were three albums which I figured was perfect. Each one represented one aspect of the Holy Trinity, the concept that had been explained to me by my Holy Guardian Entity in 2010. So the point was to harness the power of these forces to mold reality in my favor for the benefit of humanity. Simple shit, have an orgasm while visualizing an image and continue to do so afterward while ritualistically listening to the album. Repeat process 3 times for all 3 albums representing 3rd, 4th, and 5th dimensional states of timespace perception.
First Black Science’s An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever was to represent the father or mother. The more ambient compilation disc (Externalize the Eternal Volume I) represented the son or daughter. And the final relentless beats album (Externalize the Eternal Volume II) represented the holy spirit (all of these are up at dmioccult.bandcamp.com). As for the intent, well it was really designed to help elevate the consciousness of the species first and foremost, but secondarily to that, I mean, I’d been playing music for nearly a decade in Seattle and hadn’t gotten super far. I made the best album I ever had just to then have my band blow up on me. I’d been writing for quite a while as well, and it’s not like that was racking up hits on the internet either. I’d just finished the writing end of the first volume of this series as well. I suppose I just wanted to get some sort of recognition for these pursuits far beyond where I was currently at, under the bargain that their success would help inspire the collective whole of our conjoined plotline on an upward trajectory.
And so I waited for my wife to leave one morning and I got to it. It was a thoroughly mind expanding endeavor all around and I’m sure by this point in the series you’re probably a bit sick of me talking about how consciousness shattering orgasms can be on LSD in colorful linguistic flourishes, so I’ll edit that out. What’s significant here is that at one point I had this vision where I resolutely saw what I looked like from “their” perspective and it was hilarious. I was a chimpanzee with my arms sort of shrugged and up in the air looking at these higher forms like “what the fuck do you people want from me?” I wrote a fucking book, made a new album. God, I’ve been at this forever. Seriously, what else do I need to do for you weirdoes to get this shit moving along here? I’d been at sorcery for roughly 5 years at this point as well and these were the results? Just them cutting me down to size yet again. Oh, you little monkey.
Also, in the midst of this thing I had a profound realization, wait, this is going to have psychic repercussions that I’m not remotely comprehending and yeah, I wasn’t truthfully considering that going in at all. When I put on the final album, something fun happened as well. I realized that it was maybe the only “dancey” album I’d ever made and so I HAD to dance to this thing like a crazy person. I decided that if I didn’t keep moving for the album’s duration, the ritual would be a failure and I could not half ass it. And so I danced, getting quite a bit of exercise in the process. In the midst of this I remembered the passage in The Invisibles where they dance to impress some sort of higher dimensional super sentient beings. That’s precisely the way it felt. I was doing it to amuse them and in retrospect the whole “dance monkey dance” metaphor is meta-comedic and leads me to believe the idea wasn’t entirely coming from me when you get right down to brass tacks.
After I got through the ritualistic portion of the trip I watched Midday Veil’s video for Moon Temple which is one of my favorite psychedelic films ever. I projected it huge on my wall which was amazing and something I’d certainly recommend to everyone who’s a fan of weirding out. After that I put on a few episodes of Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy and it was so fucking insane I almost couldn’t handle it in that state. Seriously, but in a great way. From there the drugs were really starting to fade and so for the first time ever I actually did a bit of a banishing ritual. Okay, time to get back to semi-normal reality here. Not long after my wife got home from her Friday shift and we went out to eat and grab a few drinks at one of our favorite local haunts. The place plays all kinds of music but of course on this particular night it was all acid tinged hits from the 60’s and 70’s. Perfect. You can ride those LSD vibes pretty much until you fall asleep and closing out the day with an acid enhanced fuck certainly put a nice cap on things.
But remember when I said that during the trip I realized there’d be odd psychic repercussions I wasn’t at all consciously anticipating going in? Yeah, there were. Less than a week after that, a dark mist like entity showed up in my sleep states and conjoined itself to my spirit, presenting itself as my naked wife and caressing the energetic essence of my soul. After doing this for a second it then moved away and hovered just behind me for a minute, projecting a message directly into my mind telepathically. “Communion with your Holy Guardian Angel” and with that it tried to pull me out of my corporeal structure with a jolt. Unfortunately, it was too much of a jolt and the whole experience of being tugged out of my body was so odd that my fear response jerked me right back in. There it was, the next step in my spiritual development and one I hadn’t really heard a whole lot about in Occult circles. I’d established the Knowledge and Conversation, the next step was apparently to move on to Communion. Full on abduction shit.
If you’ve read Transmissions from Outside of Time you know that this kept happening and I never did manage to get the instinctual fear response under control. In the next couple of weeks they showed up as my wife repeatedly and on a few occasions as other women I knew that I often had sexual fantasies about at the time. Particularly humorous because I was like, yes, if you want to get this to work, more of that please. Of course I never have fully gotten this to happen, and in all honesty, the attempts to make it come to fruition on their part just sort of stopped. In reviewing my journals as it turns out, I did get at least one explanation for why this is, which is honestly something I’d totally forgotten consciously. Which is why it’s really helpful to write this shit down. According to them, whatever entities were pulling me out of my body were just as scared of me as I was of them, which had a lot to do with this exercise’s lack of success. I, uhhh? Sure.
Some of the other things I do remember about 2012 though are that there were other consequences to this ritual that I also wasn’t at all anticipating. After careful consideration I’d decided to end Black Science. It was down to just Ryk and I, and Ryk didn’t have any money for practice space rent at the time. Because of that, to keep things running until we could find 2 long term replacements would have cost me a fortune. As much as I wanted to, I just had to concede defeat. One sort of embarrassing but simultaneously compelling story on that front had to do with me sort of fucking up by getting so wrapped up in finishing the album that I spaced on booking (like I had in the past, you’d think I’d learn). To my credit, I knew the current incarnation of the band was dying and didn’t really know what to do, but I figured we should play one last show at least. There wasn’t much time to accommodate my brother’s schedule as he had a bunch of shit going down before he left and would be busy with moving. I scrounged to get a final show and the best I could get was a Monday at the Comet. I had like 8 bands we’d played with in the past in mind and literally none of them could do it. I was so annoyed I was just like fuck it, I can save a month’s practice space rent by just closing the fucking thing down. I wasn’t happy about it, but what the hell was I going to do, I’d tried to book us a final show and failed.
After I decided this I got an e-mail out of nowhere asking us if we wanted to open for a band featuring current members of Monster Magnet at the Funhouse. Anyone that knows me knows that I’m about the biggest Monster Magnet fan in the universe, in fact, the first time I ever did LSD a high school friend was playing the Dopes to Infinity album on repeat (I’ve since even interviewed Dave Wyndorf which you can catch on YouTube). So I rallied the troops for this thing mainly because of the Magnet connection and then right after we agreed, that band dropped out and we were headlining because of course we were. In a trance state I was told this all happened because “they” thought us not playing a final show was a shitty ending to that chapter of the story and so “they” fixed it. I did end up being a fun show and we got a decent turn out. Some people were even dancing to our shit, which after playing angry metal for years in The Nemesis Theory I always find flat out awesome. We’d gotten like one practice in before the show and ended up playing great. Oh, and the Funhouse most unfortunately closed not long after that and I’d played there in various projects probably more than anywhere else over the years. Really glad I got to play one more gig there. They had an outdoor basketball court with a view of the Space Needle and no one ever gave a fuck if you smoked pot on the back porch even when it was illegal. Just a tragic loss to the city, but it did reopen eventually as part of El Corazon (people who don’t live in Seattle have zero clue what I’m talking about there so apologies).
Right around that time I was told that I absolutely had to clean up my drinking, which is something I just covered. The oddest thing about this process is that for a while I kept getting these vibes that there were daemonic spirits working for me and as well as angelick ones, but that the daemonic ones seemed to be doing the grunt work. I can’t say this necessarily happened right after I’d done the ritual or anything, it’d actually been going on for quite a while when I think about it. To tell you the truth it just felt like there was a spectral writing team working behind the scenes of my very existence. They didn’t like the “story” of Black Science not playing a final show and so they re-wrote it. See how freaky this sorcery stuff is? But it wasn’t just that. Much like my brother, my wife was about to graduate from Information School and her getting a librarian position in Seattle wasn’t necessarily a lock because that shit’s so competitive. I wanted to stay and designed a sigil. They seemed to think this would be a pain in the ass but made it happen eventually, much to my satisfaction.
Again, I got the vibe the writing team seemed to be torn on the matter. I didn’t have to move out of the city I’d been living for over a decade like my brother and the angelick forces seemed to really push that through. Not the easiest path in the short term, but it totally works. What’s insane is that at this point I had zero clue how much Seattle real estate prices were about to explode, or why me staying here might be potentially problematic because of that. To further this writing team metaphor though, at one point a daemonic spirit form presented a vision to me as if I was a pampered actor in a film making drama queen demands. Quite funny, but that’s the metaphor they used. Lord, this guy is a fucking prima donna but the film won’t make a dime if he’s not on the marquee so just do what he says.
In fact, as the spring rolled around, I wasn’t playing music in any regular capacity and I realized that the majority of my sorcery had involved this aspect of my art up to this point, which is unsurprising as that had been the primary focus of my life. Now that this had shifted it became more apparent that I’d just finished writing a book so you know, maybe I should make some sigils designed to further that as well. So I did. Not long after doing so I had one of these daemonic assistant conversations where the thing told me I was going to get some sort of break in June and apologized to me profusely for this taking so long. As it just so turned out, because of the new Black Science album, I did in fact manage to line up an interview with a psychedelic music website I really dug called Revolt of the Apes. It was honestly the first interview I’d been asked to do in years, since The Nemesis Theory days. Since I got the questions in June, I put a bunch of effort into it and sent him the responses pretty quick, making sure it was still in June. And while not technically in June, the piece did end up running in mid-July and through quite circuitous circumstances, ended up getting re-blogged on Disinfo.com, which I’d of course been a fan of for years. There’s actually even a Nemesis Theory press photo where I’m wearing one of their old school trade mark “You Are Being Lied To” t-shirts.
Once that happened I had a vision telling me that Matt Staggs, who was running the site at the time, wanted to have me on the new Disinfocast he was doing. Then the next night they’d changed their mind and mentioned something about Christmas. Sure enough, there was a programming lull on the site right around the Holidays and I reached out to Matt and got my Psychoactive Soundscapes best albums list re-blogged, a week after December 21st I might point out. A few weeks later he started letting me post whatever I wanted and if that hadn’t happened, who knows if this book would even exist. On an even more convenient note, I now just so happened to have nothing to do and was used to spending hours of my week at band practice, so I simply took that time and wrote an absolutely insane amount for them in the year 2013. I just didn’t have much else to do with my life and I figured it’d build interest for my book…that still hadn’t been edited properly.
But let’s take a sec to crop circle back to all of that for a moment, shall we? I went out of my way to perform a self-designed auditory acid sorcery ritual early in the year 2012. The design of that ritual was to get my art out to a larger audience, and then this exact thing ended up happening…a week after December 21, 2012. Oh, and spirit entities also pretty much immediately started their unsuccessful campaign to alien abduct me into the higher astral realms. Nothing weird about any of that, nothing weird at all.
Select Reviews:
*Black Science, An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever (out now, DMI, blacksciencemusic.bandcamp.com):
Seventies-flavored psych-rock with more pop sensibility than your average nostalgic Seattle quartet. Studio tricks and Jane's Addiction/Stereophonics vocal stylings make this album a definite win.
- The Seattle Weekly – July 2012
Mr. Atavist – 8/24/2012
“Science is magic we understand.”
Black Science channeling An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever from Seattle, apparently take that, and the inverse, to their black heart. Magic and science, by their very existence, take the past very seriously. So do Black Science. Injecting their psych/space rock with an alchemy that conjures up the 70s through the 90s (call me the one who misunderstands, but some of the vocals remind me the criminally under appreciated 90s birthed Local H), Black Science also keep at least one of the three eyes on the future…at least one of them winking. For all the references to the occult and magic, Black Science are very well aware of the other legitimate use of those calling cards: the creamy layer of whacked frosting that puts on things. Listen, if you don’t buy into it, it’s not going to be…here you go, one of the most misunderstood and maligned words on the planet… fun. Black Science are fun; if they weren’t clued into that, and its usefulness, I doubt they’d list brewmastery, tomfoolery and badassery alongside sorcery and gadgets in a member breakdown. They’re also serious about what they’re doing and how they wield their badassery. An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever doesn’t forget the simple, and potent, release of the rock. Captain Thad points out in a lengthy interview at Revolt of the Apes that Monster Magnet was a big influence on where they were coming from. Now, if you don’t think Monster Magnet understand badassery, the pure power of flat-out diversion and the effectiveness of painting flames on things, then you’ll be living at home for a long time. If that kind of mix leads you to the conclusion that this is all silly, then you forgot why your parents were a drag.
Thad and Co. didn’t forget: “In a way I think what I was trying to do was take everything that I think sounds cool when I’m high and cram it into one band. Stoner metal, shoegaze, noise rock, and weird electronic stuff.” So it makes perfect sense, and sound science, that underneath the knob twiddling, stereo washes, non-stop guitar wall of sounds and effects, and fairly lengthy running times, An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever is surprisingly accessible and has a keen pop sensibility, made especially clear on Easy Prey and their take on GBV’s Hardcore UFOs. Other cuts layer some more progressive leanings with the stoner bent, like the 15 minute closer Our Sentence Is Up. It all makes for an effective mix of hooks and heft. Magic and science aren’t mutually exclusive, and in the hands of Black Science, neither are tomfoolery and badassery.
Terrascope August 2012
If you like noisy, dirty, scuzzy space-rock with lots of riffing guitars, wailing vocals and clashing drums then "An Echo Through The Eyes Of Forever" by Seattle's Black Science may be for you. Opening with a chunk of very heavy occult-inspired space-rock, the album then heads off into psych pop territory on 'Easy Prey,' which, though heavy, is a little lighter than the opener; great trippy ending too, with a Brock-esque guitar sound and a nice bass line. 'Anywhere' is dubby-trippy, with jangly percussion and lots of spaced out guitar stabs - very nice. 'The State Of The Art' sounds like a nightmare presented by Primal Scream, while 'Hardcore UFOs' is a snarling, thrashy cut that heads off into hyperspace and doesn't come back - great metal overload ending. 'Exegesis' is another trippy track, before the sixteen minute closing cut 'Our Sentence Is Up,' which is psych punk, I'd say, with healthy doses of riff-tastic Hawkwind and ott metal thrown in, but which also heads off into jam/festival territory before returning to tripped out metal. Great stuff for space-rockers, an accomplished sound, recording and production. Nice one!
October 11, 2012 Aural Innovations Uncategorized
It’s always a welcome thing to hear new, modern, refreshingly original, balls to the wall psychedelic space rock. An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever is the third album from Seattle’s Black Science, and as far as that description in the previous sentence goes, it delivers in spades. It follow’s 2008′s A New Mastery of Lightand 2010′s Cosmodemonic & Beyond, expanding on the ideas and sounds on those albums by pushing the envelope even further with some truly scorching music that takes the listener into the far flung realms of another dimension.
Beginning with the idea that modern chaos magick is akin to the science of consciousness manipulation, Black Science infuses their music with occult and cutting edge scientific references. Structured and often quite catchy songs are shrouded in layers of effects. At times it gets very disorienting, yet there’s always this solid song in the midst of it, always giving the listener something to hold onto. Opening cut First Contact Manual is reminiscent of something Earthling Society might do, although I only make this comparison as a point of reference, for Black Science do have their own unique sound. A shivering haze of noise runs through the twisty guitar passages while affected vocals harmonize, singing of making first contact with another galaxy’s hypnotic drug. The guitar solo at the end is a wild tripfest of sonic instrumentalism. Contrasting this is the bouncy pop nature of Easy Prey, which nonetheless still takes the listener into stranger territory with those disorienting effects, especially in the latter half, which dissolves into a liquid cosmic soundscape.
Third track Anywhere rocks harder, and piles the hallucinogenic layers on even deeper than before, but two of the most disorienting tracks on the album are the 8-minute mysterious and druggyThe State of the Art, a dreamy slow burner that builds to a crazed, chaotic conclusion, and the pulsing rocker, Hardcore UFO’s, which sounds a bit like Smashing Pumpkins meets Flying Saucer Attack in the Twilight Zone. The crunchy, beat-orientedExegisis leads us into the final nearly 16-minute voyage Our Sentence Is Up. This tour de force begins with a nearly metallic explosion of pounding rhythms and wailing, crazily riffing guitars, but eventually dives headfirst into a lengthy (supposedly psilocybin fuelled) jam that twists and turns upon itself as liquid synths bubble through it and John Ritzmann from the Paratopia podcast intones cosmic secrets into the ears of the listener. Terrific stuff!
An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever, released on the summer solstice of 2012, is supposedly “the first audio component of a ritual whose complete design will be revealed on the winter solstice” (which, incidentally, is the day that follows the end of the Mayan Long Count, supposedly the end of the world, or the beginning of a new age). What form that complete design will take, considering the band has apparently and sadly gone their separate ways, can only be speculated. In the meantime, we have this fantastic, freaky, tripped out album to rock to. And rock to it we will!
Highly recommended!
For more info, visit: http://blacksciencemusic.bandcamp.com and http://dmioccult.bandcamp.com
Reviewed by Jeff Fitzgerald
Vía el sello DMI, me llegó su más reciente lanzamiento, el álbum An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever de Black Science.
El conjunto con base en Seattle, gusta de experimentar en todos los sentidos. Un ejemplo claro de ellos es su más reciente lanzamiento en el que se conjugan las experiencias que los integrantes de la banda han tenido con todo tipo de drogas (Timothy Leary se encuentra entre sus personajes más venerados), su pasión por el fenómeno OVNI y su amor por el rock.
Como resultado de todo eso, crearon siete temas que inmediatamente remiten a bandas como Acid Mothers Temple, Hawkwind, Spaceman 3000 e inclusive a los mexicanos deJesus On Dope.
Como ejemplo se pueden citar los temas "Anywhere" y "The State of the Art", ambos son unas muestras perfectas del space rock que maneja la banda.
Aquí no hay lugar para temas cortos o convencionales, así que prepárense para escuchar canciones de al menos 7 minutos de duración. Mención aparte merece "Our Sentence Is Up", canción con la que cierra el disco y que ronda los 15 minutos. Se trata de un ácido viaje cósmico que al menos, por simple curiosidad, cualquier persona debería darse el tiempo de escuchar.
Para acompañar un material de este tipo, no podían tener una portada más psicodélica.
Como muestra, se puede escuchar todo el álbum a través del Bandcamp de la banda y ahí mismo se puede ordenar:
Black Science from Seattle is an experimental, psychedelic and occult space rock band that I know very little about. To my understanding, An Echo through the Eyes of Forever that is available on CD and as a download is their third album and their two previous albums Cosmodemonic & Beyond and A New Mastery of Light are at least available as a download. It’s also obvious that mind expansion and connecting with the creatures from other dimensions is important to this group… Musically I’m often reminded of Sun Dial and many other British indie/psych bands from the 90’s as well as a little bit also Primal Scream and The Smashing Pumpkins, for example. The stuff is very guitar oriented but they have plenty of hallucinatory, lysergic effects in use. Although the going is highly psychedelic the tracks on the album are still well written, melodic, catchy and at times even pop-like, but there’s also lots of room left for experimentation. The vocals work out very well too.
The opening cut ”First Contact Manual” starts off in mid-tempo but they rock on hard in the chorus and the same style continues also on ”Easy Prey” and ”Anywhere”. The over eight-minute ”The State of the Art” cools down the game into peaceful, cosmic, inter-dimensional atmospheres. ”Hardcore U.F.O.’s” is post rock on strong hallucinogens and “Exegesis” brings to mind the works by Chrome or Helios Creed. The album is finished with the long (15:39) “Our Sentence Is Up” that begins with energetic riffs but soon turns into hazy, hypnotic jamming with space sounds. This one has some really great psych guitar stuff and later on also some spacey speech and by now the listener just can’t help floating somewhere in space. This is the kind of music that inevitably takes the listener into some other, weird world and I love it. An amazing new find!
Ever wonder what a midnight, drug infused jam session between Hawkwind, Cheap Trick, and Alice Cooper would sound like? Well, ok, me neither, but that's the first impression I got while listening to this fun slice of stoner & psychedelic rock by Seattle's Black Science called An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever. The band is comprised of John G (guitar, vox, gadgets, sorcery), Adam Draeger (guitar, vox, keyboards, tomfoolery), Reverend Ryk ( bass, keyboards, badassery), and g. eichler (beats & brewmastery), and they've created a collection of intriguing space rock tunes here that don't meander too much and do their best to keep the listener locked in and entertained.
I mention Alice Cooper and Cheap Trick here because the vocals are like a mix of Robin Zander and Alice, plus there are some pop hooks that creep up every so often (especially on opening cut "First Contact Manual") that remind of classic Cheap Trick. For the most part though, the music is very much in the style of vintage Hawkwind, combined with the psych element so prevalent on Cooper's Pretties for You and Love it to Death albums. Many of the tracks segue into each other as if one long suite, like "Anywhere" and "The State of the Art", complete with jangly guitar riffs and plenty of fluttering, spacey keyboard blips and bleeps. Lots of wah-wah laced acid rock licks on "Exegesis", and the lumbering near 16-minute closer "Our Sentence is Up" is a monstrous psych/stoner jam with some of the best instrumental freakouts on the CD. Sadly, the band was forced to disband just after completing the album, and according to the press sheet main songwriter/guitarist/singer John G already is hard at work on his next project. If it's anything along these lines it will certainly be worth looking out for.
Is it possible to draw heavily from Space Rock, which was more or less single-handedly etablished by Hawkwind, without sounding like the British flagship? Sure, there are many bands that do well in the shadow of the originators, but few throw in something distinctively their own. Enter Black Science from Seattle, whose second album turns out to be a delectable hotchpotch.
The opening "First Contact Manual" as well as the relatively short "Exegesis" show the whole gamut of colours the group applies to its music: less riffs (but if so, they hit hard), more noodling, approachable vocals plus actual lyrics that are worth hearing - however vague in meaning - and even understandable. The quartet does make use of samples and noises, but none of their compositions are just that and nothing more. First and foremost, there is a compelling idea that justifies each track to be what it is, and only then comes the use of leftovers, respectively a recourse to leftovers from a bygone musical age, for example syllables sung in the background that hark back to "The Four Horsemen" by Aphrodite's Child.
"Hardcore U.F.O.'s" is beyond good and evil due to, on the one hand, its enervating main motif, while on the other, Black Science don't sound as compact as here anywhere else on the album - and the sizzling keyboard plus ecstatic six-string solos are a real show. By means of reverse-taped voices, the stylistically similar "Easy Prey" leads into "Anywhere", which in return varies between dense, heavy passages (yet still with that airy character, all drenched in echoes and reverb without sounding wishy-washy) and psychedelic light-headedness. The hook is provided by one of the singers (both guitarists stand behind the microphones) and enhanced by drummer G. Eichler's cowbell. Here, the man swings where more often than not, he stoically plods along as we have become used to it ever since "Master Of The Universe".
"The State Of The Art", a call to meditation thanks to squelching guitar tones and mantric, evocative bass lines. The midsection is one veritable guitar freakout, while for a change, the singing fails to maintain a structure, but intentionally so, as one could argue. The final quarter of an hour named "Our Sentence Is Up" goes like a bull at the (interstellar?) gate with an infecting riff, but then drifts off into improvisation that verges on redundance, would it not be for the layered harmonies which are kept together by the rhythm section's expedient, but still nuanced playing. The closing minutes are reserved for a bass-driven, almost danceable (think Ozric Tentacles) rocket ride - accompanied by the men from ground control - towards a hypothetical sun that does not harm, but provides the ultimate orgasm ... or something like that.
So if you are looking for a different fare of space food that still comes in a tried-and-tested tube, forget the tongue-in-cheek hubbub Black Science's label concocts when describing the band ("Occult" sells these days ...) and check out " An Echo Through The Eyes Of Forever": It's mushy still, yet tasty and quite nutritious, even in the long run.
by Andreas Schiffmann
Black Science play space rock ......... as soon as you hear those
words, try as hard as you want, one word instantly comes into
your thoughts .......... Hawkwind. Like it or not, the revered
All-Fathers of all things spacey are the benchmark to which
all others are compared.
There are comparisons but Black Science have decided to also
concentrate on the "Rock" part of the genre as well, throwing
in stoner and healthy doses of psych rock to give a new slant
to things.
Lots of wild guitar work is displayed and combining with nifty
keyboards means the electronic sounds and effects never
overpower the songs. The last track is a 15 minute kraut-rock
stomper finishes off this enjoyable album in style.
The twin vocals are clean and to my ears, draw comparisons with
Vedder when he was in Temple Of The Dog - there is a warmth
sometimes missing from this genre.
Black Science’s music is derived from three major sources: personal powers of the soul/mind/body (mesmerism, astral projection, thought-casting, etc.), powers gained by tapping this universe’s ambient magical energy and employing it for specific effects (teleportation, illusion-casting, energy projection), and finally, powers gained through the tapping of extra-dimensional energy by invoking entities or objects of power dwelling in mystical dimensions, tangential to our own. The latter means of power is usually gained by the recitation of spells; either ritualized ones found in various mystic texts or by original spells invoking extra-dimensional assistance. “Black Science sounds like Jane’s Addiction and Sleep teamed up circa 1992 and ran tape on a several day jam session fueled by mescaline and cocaine. It’s brighter than doom but doesn’t cross over into sissy territory. You’ve got low-ass, heavy riffs counterbalanced with clear vocals and flashy drums ran through the “lo-fi” machine and it sounds like a party in the sixth dimension. Dig that.” - Matt Abramson.
This hits the spot really psychedelic,spaced out rock with a Sonic Youth vibe. The guitars are trippy and oozing with feelings. Extremely well done psychedelic rock swirled on top of alternative sound. Don't pass this one up. -KG
From Phantasmagoria Greece:
Από το Seattle μας έρχονται οι ταλαντούχοι Black Science, οι οποίοι στους τρεις ως τώρα δίσκους τους έχουν μπλέξει με ιδιαίτερη επιτυχία διάφορα παρακλάδια της rock και metal μουσικής και το ίδιο ακριβώς κάνουν και στη νέα τους δουλειά, που φέρει τον τίτλο: An Echo Through The Eyes Of Forever, στην οποία συναντούμε στοιχεία ψυχεδελικού noise rock, αλλά και electro ψήγματα, που μαεστρικά συνδυάζονται με τις grunge αναφορές τους, δημιουργώντας έτσι ένα απολαυστικό υβρίδιο rock μουσικής. Ότι πρέπει για χαλαρές, αλκοολούχες ακροάσεις.
Chybucca Sounds – Number 11 album of the year.
11. Black Science – An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever [Self-Release]
The Seattle space-rock explorers have, in two short years, captured the exhilarating, my-god-its-full-stars psyche, by carefully layering sounds and atmospheres. An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever is Black Science’s best work to date.
Number 10 from Ryan at Revolt of the Apes top albums of 2012 – RVA magazine
10. TIE: "EXU" by VERMA / "An Echo Through the Eyes of Forever" by BLACK SCIENCE / "Drink the Sun" by EIDETIC SEEING
Call it the New Wave of American Space Rock. Or don't. The Black Science album was so good that the band had to break up, the Eidetic Seeing album was so good that the term "It's brick out" has entered a permanent place in our vocabulary, and the Verma album was so good that we're preemptively declaring it the best album of 2013, too. Get into time travel - it's the next big thing.
Easy Prey listed as top indie songs of the year on Rex Manning Day’s Blog
Black Science – “Easy Prey” {Psych Rock}
Here’s another awesome Black-named band to put in your music collection (which is fitting giving that they claim to be influenced by the Black Lips, The Black Angels, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Black Keys, Black Flag, and most importantly….Black Coffee). You can purchase this track for as little as $1 or their entire album for $7 here.
From the SODA SHOP:
I haven’t had a chance to listen to this album a whole lot. I did get a chance to stream this a few times while working on other things. It helped me keep off of Facebook and at the task at hand so I was a lot more productive. It did provide a nice little soundtrack for my work. What I did catch was a very nice and mellow psychedelic trip. At times it borders Hawkwind and even a bit of Pink Floyd. This album is mellow but does get busy from time to time. I wish I had some weed or mushrooms while listening to this as it would provide the perfect soundtrack for the trip. Actually, it would provide a good soundtrack for any trip, narcotic or not.