Dire Wolves
Excursions To Cloudland

An album of psychedelia influenced by 1970s sounds and conceptually also drawing on a specific imagery typical of those years: an ideal and adventurous journey among the clouds that, in the case of this formation from San Francisco, United States of America, also translates into a journey back in time tracing vintage sounds and experiments, and even earlier, into a certain historical, folkloric, and musical heritage from the origins of time up to our days, in the same way that other psych bands have operated in recent years like Dead Skeletons, TAU, Phoenician Drive, Goat.

'Excursions to Cloudland' is an LP by the Dire Wolves, a neo-psychedelic formation from San Francisco, released last March 24 on Beyond Beyond Is Beyond Records label.

The album, as mentioned, inspired by certain progressive folk fascinations and the experimentalisms of David Grubbs or Jim 'O'Rourke, opens by proposing a certain kraut-rock obsessiveness in the style of Amon Duul (e.g., 'Enter Quietly') with a display of powerful bass lines and progressive nuances in the use of instruments such as the violin and flash guitars as in the new wave; thus, a certain experimental and avant-garde refinement in creating evocative expressionist and progressive folk dimensions makes its way in the double episode of 'Fogget Out', representations of what I would call expansive avant-garde and according to a conceptual vision already typical of ensembles from the last twenty years like Jackie-O Motherfucker, Sun City Girls, and Six Organs of Admittance. Finally, we have the concluding 'Cerebration Day', probably the best track on the album, and which takes up elements that can both refer to a certain kraut-rock tradition, this time I think of Can, and a certain typically American psych-folk songwriting typical of formations like Charalambides and Jessamine, the aforementioned Jackie-O Motherfucker, the less monolithic Bardo Pond, and digging back in time - obviously - Nico and the Velvet Underground.

Little regarded by critics, even due to the limited distribution and popularity of this new project, indeed 'Excursions To Cloudland' is an album that deserves all your attention even though, given its nature, it can also be listened to while you are - literally - with your head in the clouds.