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Rating: It may be musical provincialism, but it's quite pleasing when an Italian band, after a twenty-year career, manages to record for an interesting foreign label like the London-based Rocket Recordings (in recent years a reference point in the psychedelic realm).
The Reggio Emilia-based Julie's Haircut have been active since the late '90s, but their exploration of psychedelic landscapes began to become evident with “After Dark, My Sweet”, and developed in their subsequent albums, gradually shifting the lens towards a very Teutonic and free idea of the psychedelic concept. This latest album stands halfway between “Our Secret Ceremony” and its blend of motorik sound, cross-sectional rock, and psychedelia, and “Ashram Equinox” from 2013, characterized by a composition architecture that favored cyclic and meditative loops, with the vocals intentionally hidden in the recesses of objectively very beautiful tracks. "Invocation..." puts a foot back into song form, while keeping the third eye wide open, always towards Dusseldorf and Cologne. It starts with the autobahn sound of “Zukunft”, enhanced by a saxophone that keeps our mental machine on track, similar to what happens in the more percussive “The Fire Sermon.”
A dual soul that emerges in the sonic assault of “Deluge”, which starts wild like the Stooges' “L.A. Blues”, then grounds on ambient and meditative shores, only to take off wilder than before. A shot of adrenaline that was needed and was missing from previous records.
So more a step to the side than forward compared to the past, with the addition of ecstatic folk moments (“Cycles”) and almost devotional ones (the minimalism of “Koan” and the trance of “Salting Traces”) adding spices to a recipe that becomes more refined and complex, elevating Julie’s among the best psychedelic bands in Italy (but hopefully not only).
Tracklist
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