Ancienne Belgique

Hard, sluggish stonegaze revelation from Texas. Practice a little: ‘As High As the Highest Heavens and From the Center to the Circumference of the Earth’. This tough tongue-twister is the ...

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Hard, sluggish stonegaze revelation from Texas.

Practice a little: ‘As High As the Highest Heavens and From the Center to the Circumference of the Earth’. This tough tongue-twister is the title of the second album by trio True Widow from Denton, Texas. They take the best elements of doom, sludge, shoegaze, slowcore and post-rock and evade with style the pitfalls of the previously mentioned genres. A knockout album and that didn't go unnoticed by the press: ‘Guitars on a testosterone diet. An excellent new album’ (HUMO) and Focus Vif threw stars at it too: ‘Il y a du Autolux, du My Bloody Valentine, du Sonic Youth derrière tout ça. Veuve peut-être mais avec un bel héritage’.

‘Two-Way Mirror’ is the latest load of psychedelica by Crystal Antlers from Long Beach, California. Recorded 1 EP and 1 album on Touch & Go before the label decided to slim down. HUMO licked its fingers from the debut EP: ‘The real surprise comes from Crystal Antlers, a Californian fivesome that solders scraps of Comets on Fire, MC5, hard-rock, psychedelica, garage-punk and prog-rock into the most uncompromising, intense and ambitious beautiful mess to trouble our tympanic membrane in recent months’. Their latest album has been released on the Recreation label and influential website Pitchfork already wrote: ‘(Crystal Antlers) are still a band of volcanic force maintaining the long-haired spirit of 1968 on their second LP’. During their upcoming European tour, which has them land in the ABClub on the bill with True Widow, the keyboards will be played by producer Ikey Owens – best known from Mars Volta.