Grey greetings from Southern Finland! Here we’ve been stuck to a colourlessness that feels like forever but the spring is surely coming (right?) and while we wait for the fairest of seasons, allow us to round up all the fantastic psychedelic music we’ve been adding to our Spotify playlists during the last half a year or so.
You know the drill: listen to these fantastic bands, follow them or buy their records, and subscribe to our playlists. In that order.
With love //Mertsi & Leo
FRESH PSYCHEDELIA (100 picks of new interesting psych): Thomas Greenwood, RF Shannon, Soft Power, Max Von Sydow, Holy Wave, Allah-Las, Night Beats, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Vinyl Williams, Bike & Minami Deutsch, HYG, Astral Magic, Vanishing Twin, Centre El Muusa, Kula Shaker, Slowdive, White Canyon & The 5th Dimension, Verstärker, Hieronymus Harry, Altin Gün, Saccades & The KVB, Sounds Of New Soma, Acid Rooster, Hooveriii, Mildlife, Common Dream, Föllakzoid, Lorelle Meets The Obsolete & Immersion, Ozric Tentacles, Sonic Jesus, Causa Syi, Goat, MITYA, Travo, Birds, Wax Machine, Orchestra Gold, VED, Dion Lunadon, Mystic Braves, Fomies, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Snakes Don’t Belong in Alaska, Jaakko Eino Kalevi, The Telescopes, Dumbo Gets Mad, Fomies, Tinyhawk & Bizzarro, Olimpia Splendid, Savarit, Kacimi, Yin Yin, Melody Fields, Öresund Space Collective, Black Market Karma & Stanley Belton, Porcelain Heights, Gong, Elephant Stone, Jane Weaver, Pink Chameleons, Winter McQuinn, Melts, Routine Death, Dina Ögön, levitation room, Ludalloy, Kaksipäinen Koira, Alber Jupiter, The Cyclist Conspiracy, VIRTA, MaidaVale.
COSMIC CREATIVE (instrumental psychedelia for deep focus): Kaukolampi, Transient Waves, Föllakzoid, dreamweapon, Charlie Roscoe & Ozric Tentacles.
LATE NIGHT RITUALS (music for nocturnal atmosphere): Allah-Las, Kuusumun Profeetta, One Unique Signal, Centre El Muusa, Transient Waves, Acid Rooster, Mazzy Star, Vanishing Twin, Gong, The Telescopes, Bardo Pond.
PSYCHEDELIC TIME TRAVEL (psych and prog classics from 60’s and 70’s): Grateful Dead, Morgen, Circus, Ananda Shankar, Jukka Tolonen, Los Sonambulos, Günter Shickert.
Make sure to subscribe to our playlists to hear the the music while they are still hot from traveling through atmosphere!
Hi all, it’s time to wrap up the year with KOLMAS KORVA’s traditional music picks of 2023 roundup. Enjoy your holidays in company of some of our favourites and have a great new year! With love // Mertsi and Leo Article image: Krypta
Leo’s picks
Maya Ongaku – Approach to Anima
Warm and mellow trip to a tropical island, or a mirage from one. Maya Ongaku combines delightfully soothing instrumentation and vocals to recordings of nature, like bird sounds and water flowing. Musical styles vary from spiritual jazz to psychedelic folk and ambient, but the overall atmosphere stays cohesive throughout, and field recordings are well mixed into the music. Approach to Anima is a pleasant debut album from the Japanese trio and is released by Guru Guru Brain, a label by members of Kikagaku Moyo. If you like Kikagaku Moyo’s softer tunes, you should have a go at this.
Olimpia Splendid – 2
Don’t let the opening song’s title Pupuliini (little bunny in Finnish) fool you. This album is not lightweight pop but heavy and distorted from the first drum hit. The Finnish trio’s second LP is sometimes challenging and noisy, but always appealing. With their catchy riffs played with untuned guitars, raw whispering vocals, muddy machine drums and delay sounds they make often groovy stoner and electric-smelling combination. Music magazine Soundi expressed well that by default the band sounds like more or less a broken home appliance.
Others worth mentioning:
Tinyhawk & Bizzarro’s Nekorok came out of nowhere for me and feels fresh instrumental guitar music from Finland, especially its desert blues vibes.
Soft Power continues to make top-notch releases with their new album Raw Bites, which in my opinion is jazzier than its predecessors. It includes tasty bites all over, like sabbathian bassline of Doom, the crispy grooves of Kesam and Raw Bites, the swaying Archie, and so on. Props for the gorgeous Arsi Keva’s artwork printed on cardboard sleeve.
Jesse’sDescend, follow-up to Twotinos (2017), cleverly conjures surprising sounds (for example, a transcendental desert synth in Klong!) and weaves them together into songs that take their time. Sometimes driven by funky drums, sometimes more cinematic. Might take a listen or two to work but it’s rewarding.
Mertsi’s picks
Föllakzoid – V
Föllakzoid, a band that holds a special place in our hearts, has returned to its 2010-2013 roots with their captivating and techno-infused album V. Since its release in September, this album pretty much dominated my playlists. Its sincere, mesmerizing, and unyielding sounds captivate me time and time again. In my book, this uncompromising album ranks among contemporary cosmic music classics.
TRAVO
Fans of fuzzy, raw, garage-infused heavy psychedelia, heed TRAVO’s call! I haven’t had the chance to dive into their LP Astromorph God just yet (available on gig.ROCKS! & Spinda Records), but these two singles they dropped blow your mind and ears away. TRAVO is definitely a band to watch out for.
Night Beats – Rajan
One of the records I’m most excited to give a spin at our next DJ set, Rajan, truly captures Night Beats’ already trippy style as it delves deep into the heart of neo-psychedelic rock. Rajan pays homage to the original psych bands of the 1960s while fearlessly embracing the modern influences of the genre. And let’s not forget about the absolute psychedelic work of art is Hot Ghee.
Nice Biscuit – I Feel Love
The Australian band effortlessly adds their own touch to the timeless disco anthem originally performed by Donna Summer. In a mesmerizing and contemporary fashion, Nice Biscuit elongates and infuses the track with a psychedelic edge, while staying true to the essence of the original masterpiece. Get ready to be grooved to the core.
Krypta – Outo Laakso
Krypta’s charming debut album Outo Laakso (Strange Valley or Uncanny Valley), released by Finland’s renowned Svart Records in November, is a captivating fusion of occult rock and Finnish melancholia. I am particularly enthralled by the commanding yet vulnerable vocals of frontman Henri Seger. Krypta’s solid and coherent album has further solidified my love for Finnish as a singing language in occult rock (I’m looking at you too, Pääkallo).
Goat – Levitation Sessions
At this point psych lovers need no introductions to GOAT. The mystical Swedish group’s LEVITATION live session brilliantly showcase the trippy, groovy, vigorous and psychedelic power of this wonderful band.
Tenhi – Valkama
To finish of with something completely different, I wanted to highlight the latest album of TENHI, a Finnish band that invites comparisons with groups like Wardruna or Heilung. I can’t describe the band better than the band themselves: ”When night falls onto the sub-arctic landscapes of the Land of the Thousand Lakes, in the twilight of forest and swamps, the veils between our reality and the otherworld grow thin. It is at those times that stories such as ’the fairy tale that never was’ leak into the lyrics and music of TENHI.”
Hey all! We thought to sum up all the bands and artists we’ve been adding to our four Spotify Playlists during 2023. Enjoy the music, enjoy the sun. //Mertsi & Leo
FRESH PSYCHEDELIA (100 picks of new interesting psych): Maa Ilmasta & Timo Kämäräinen, Mirror Revelations, Bong Wish, Julie’s Haircut, Astral Magic, Minami Deutsch, DAIISTAR, Las Visiones, Polymoon, Vinyl Williams, Night Beats, Dommengang, Moonwalks, Nice Biscuit, The Black Delta Movement, Mount Hush, The Lazy Eyes, SQÜRL, Shadow Show, Albinö Rhino, GÅS, Throw Down Bones, Moonwalks, Heikki Hakkarainen, Gnoomes, Black Helium, Al Lover & The KVB, People Taking Pictures, Gnoomes, Pekka Laine, Helicon, Thomas Greenwood, Reverse Death, Golden Hours, Smote, White Canyon & The 5th Dimension, The Exorsist GBG.
PSYCHEDELIC TIME TRAVEL (psych classics from the 1960’s & 70’s): The Open Mind, Kristian, Dakila, Kevin Ayers.
COSMIC CREATIVE (for enhancing your focus): NEU!, Stiletti-Ana, Datasal, Pye Corner Audio, Death Hawks, Autarkic, The Exorcist GBG, Gnoomes, Black Helium, GÅS, Throw Down Bones, Minami Deutsch.
LATE NIGHT RITUALS (psychedelia for dim-light atmosphere): Daisy Rickman, Cult of Dom Keller, Ultimate Spinach, Menk, Reverse Death, Uniting of Opposites, Gabrielle Roth & The Mirros, Throw Down Bones, GÅS, Julie’s Haircut,
Make sure to subscribe to our playlists to hear the the music while they are still hot from traveling through atmosphere!
Hi all, I collected some great psychedelic treasures I’ve enjoyed lately. Quite a lot, actually – I think this is a great bunch. Hope you do too. Stay safe & healthy. //Mertsi
Article image: Black Helium
Black Helium – UM (Riot Season Records)
The London-based psychedelic power trio is back with a bang. Compared to their previous two records Primitive Fuck (2018) and The Wholly Other (2020), Black Helium has gone more outer-space, more motorik, and even more robust. UM is a great record, highlighted by tracks such as the hypnotic Another Heaven and delightfully trippy Summer of Hair. Black Helium’s music keeps on giving, and by all accounts the trio seems like nice people as well.
GÅS – Vol.1. (Rocket Recordings)
I’ve been following GÅS, a psychedelic rock band from Gothenburg that, just like their compatriots GOAT, operates under anonymity, since their impressive self titled single in 2020. Their debut LP Vol.1. follows the single’s recipe in fuzzy, Black Sabbath-influenced heavy psych, but spices is up with folk-like flutes, percussions and elements of blues rock. With two over 13-minute tracks the band shows it masters longer kraut-influenced jams with confidence, further strengthening the trippy club of great Swedish outfits like Centrum, Lamagaia, Hills and Agusa.
My favorite song is the hypnotic finishing track 25öre, whose wonderfully menacing rhythm repeats over and over again until you realize there’s actually nothing menacing, it just gets a bit dark in space.
Albinö Rhino – Return to the Core (Space Rock Productions)
The heavy atmospheric downtuned psychedelia of Albinö Rhino has never sounded more intriguing than in their new opus, Return to the Core. The Helsinki-based trio’s previous EP nodded towards Black Sabbath, but this one pays the biggest respects to Pink Floyd. The album consists of one 35-minute song (on Spotify it’s also split to 9 tracks), and travels fluently from Kingston Wall influenced jams to heavier riffs. Good stuff.
Like what you hear? Make sure to follow Kolmas Korva on Instagram, Facebook and Spotify.
To keep some balance of all rattling garagepsychs, here’s collection of gentle psych videos that I have been enjoying lately. Styles differ from exotica and ambient to psych-pop and soft rock.
Main image is a frame from Reverse Death’s video.
Reverse Death – Teapot
Gentle electric piano and soft drums carry this nocturnal mist spiced with viola and properly echoed vocals. Seattle-based band published an album Stretching to Infinity in December that is definitely worth to listen. Teapot together with Sweet Flower Moon are the most accessible songs on the album among otherwise rather ambient material.
Bobbie Lovesong – Inner Sea
Written, performed and recorded solely by American Bobbie Lovesong aka Madelyn Strutz during covid lockdown in 2020. Very addictive melody and sounds right from the first hearing.
The Sweet Enoughs – Cerberus
The slowed-down beauty of crashing waves combined with synthetic, rhythmic, dreamy tropical music. In May 2020 released album Marshmallow is an interesting piece of lounge/exotica music.
Mac DeMarco – Five Easy Hot Dogs
Slacker star published his sixth album in January. The record was born in a trip (literally): songs are named by the places where they were created on the road. No vocals at all, which makes this good background soft rock.
Kolmas korva 