Brighton’s Wax Machine pick up the yoke on a specific strain of psychedelia that seems to have gone into hibernation over the last couple of decades. With their sun-dappled, earthen approach they lock into the kind of Aquarian psych that’s doused in a permanent humidity — cut through with a quotient of languid jazz, a touch of limber lounge, and a heavy dose of lysergic headspace. The band leans into a microcosm of flute-psych that’s sprung up and, in my own personal opinion needs to dominate the next few years. As much as I appreciate a resurgence of liquid fire sax barreling into psychedelia, the flute feels like the right path to soothe the souls of the stricken in recent times. The band’s nearest tangential acquaintances come from Canada, and this pairs well with the last album and EP from the inimitable Badge Époque Ensemble.
Like their Toronto compatriots, the band finds solace in the experimental seance workshops of The United States of America and their brethren, San Francisco’s poet-pharmacists The Serpent Power. While a lot of publications have grasped at the tendrils of Broadcast in relation to this record, there’s only a bit of Keenan’s inimitable pallor in the vocals but, of course, their exists the same sort of dedication to the cosmic spirit. However, this whole record smacks of an older breed of psychedelic vision. It’s built on the seeds that Broadcast grew their vision quest from in the first place. The songs have a vibration to them that’s natural and beholden to a time of utopian ideals. It’s not a naive record, but it’s hopeful in its absorption of the most verdant valleys of the bygone days of the love, peace, and poetry.
There are flecks of Fifty Foot Hose, Harumi, Silver Apples (minus the triumphant march of technology), and Ultimate Spinach under their skin, and the band funnels their fluid psychedelics into a new dawning of Earthsong solstice rituals. While the band finds a few hooks among the ethers, they’re more about feel than anything else. The record feels fluid, fermented, and fragrant. It’s an ecosystem of psych that launches spores out into the atmosphere and infects everything around it with a feeling of warmth, whimsy, and contentment. This is an vortex of vibe, and you should lock in and sink deep.
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