Headroom
Head In The Clouds
(buy from Trouble In Mind; download or stream on Bandcamp; ok Spotify fine)
You can play the guitar or you can wield it – Headroom lead conjurer Kryssi Battalene is certainly the latter. Head In The Clouds is defined by the lead guitar; may even be a vehicle for it; and Battalene alternately weaponizes the instrument, or transmutes it into a paintbrush, a guitar dervish shapeshifting for close to 40-minutes until ripping a paean to Neil & Crazy Horse is almost the least expected way to end the ceremony.
Opener "How To Grow Evil Flowers" establishes the modus operandi – lurching the listener into the tryyp. While a two-chord riff plods in the background, it takes a moment to recognize the blistering staccato frequency as...yes, yes I believe that's an electric guitar. The first half of the 10-minute run-time is dedicated to Battalene squeezing the life out of the strobing, phased feedback washing over the backing band. Two-minutes in, there's a distinguishable note, caustically-twisted and all, as a spiraling solo flies over the track, like a shorting-out radio frequency. It's nothing short of sprawling and atmospheric, the band plugging along, gradually growing and shaping their own brand of fuzz. When she switches to a continuous wall-of-sound, it's a temporary salve before returning to feedback histrionics, and closing out in a near-normal vibrato.
Most bands do much less with much more – it's to Headroom's credit that they can operate in near-instrumental psych forms, territory that's been near mined-to-death, but keep it fresh. "Miller's Pond" introduces gauzy vocals over a brittle, finger-picked melody. It's not-quite pastoral, Battalene's guitar glazing the sky above the song with irregular clouds of distortion and delay, a storm of feedback on the horizon that never quite breaks. It's beautiful and fragile – hypnotic, even.
A-side end "The Second Blazing Star" is more indebted to krautrock – there's a wobbly bass-line circa Holger Czukay and a more active, shuffling beat. Though where Can would edit out much of the simmer-and-boil, Headroom stay inside the locked-groove, bouncing off its walls. Battalene's guitar alternates between trebly, slapback-riffs and strangled chord clusters that act as a palate-cleanser before she steers back to higher octaves. If this is a rehearsal cut, whoa; it's molten, never accelerating nor messing with dynamics before fading tidily to a close.
On the B-side, the formula gets tweaked just as you're getting used to SYR-esque guitar heroics. "Head In The Clouds" is a scorched-earth, synthesizer-driven and drum-less instrumental. A heavy, organ-like drone weighs the bottom down, allowing frequencies to oscillate and buzz above, while a guitar (maybe?) ripples through it all, occasionally piercing the thick canopy of synths with a stab of light, but often glazing the background with gorgeous overtones. At first listen it's difficult – but after ten trips through this record, this became my favorite, dense with patterns and instrument interplay, near-unrecognizable guitar doled out in slo-mo, a collective, unrelenting sense of nirvana being the only order of business here.
Oh yeah, the Neil Young paean. "Flower Of Light" closes the record, it's near-10 minutes divided neatly in half, with the first half only rhythm guitar, walking bass-line, and Neil-summoning solo; the vocals and drums hit at once halfway in – it feels like a benediction, or maybe like shoegaze on cough syrup. It's beautiful and the solo here, the most melodic on the record, is perfect. Sure, it might dial down the fried form a bit, but it's still skronky and distorted and cloud-gazing and not for the faint of heart, even if they approach gentler vibes during the relaxed, couple-minute outro.
I'm not sure where the band goes from here – Head In The Clouds starts in the sky, and stays there for 40 focused, mind-expanding minutes. And that's enough for now – wanting more after encountering a force of nature is unnatural. Like the forest or the stars, sometimes you gotta stare at what you got, appreciating the details and endlessly fascinating molecules and moments all around.
Opener "How To Grow Evil Flowers" establishes the modus operandi – lurching the listener into the tryyp. While a two-chord riff plods in the background, it takes a moment to recognize the blistering staccato frequency as...yes, yes I believe that's an electric guitar. The first half of the 10-minute run-time is dedicated to Battalene squeezing the life out of the strobing, phased feedback washing over the backing band. Two-minutes in, there's a distinguishable note, caustically-twisted and all, as a spiraling solo flies over the track, like a shorting-out radio frequency. It's nothing short of sprawling and atmospheric, the band plugging along, gradually growing and shaping their own brand of fuzz. When she switches to a continuous wall-of-sound, it's a temporary salve before returning to feedback histrionics, and closing out in a near-normal vibrato.
Most bands do much less with much more – it's to Headroom's credit that they can operate in near-instrumental psych forms, territory that's been near mined-to-death, but keep it fresh. "Miller's Pond" introduces gauzy vocals over a brittle, finger-picked melody. It's not-quite pastoral, Battalene's guitar glazing the sky above the song with irregular clouds of distortion and delay, a storm of feedback on the horizon that never quite breaks. It's beautiful and fragile – hypnotic, even.
A-side end "The Second Blazing Star" is more indebted to krautrock – there's a wobbly bass-line circa Holger Czukay and a more active, shuffling beat. Though where Can would edit out much of the simmer-and-boil, Headroom stay inside the locked-groove, bouncing off its walls. Battalene's guitar alternates between trebly, slapback-riffs and strangled chord clusters that act as a palate-cleanser before she steers back to higher octaves. If this is a rehearsal cut, whoa; it's molten, never accelerating nor messing with dynamics before fading tidily to a close.
On the B-side, the formula gets tweaked just as you're getting used to SYR-esque guitar heroics. "Head In The Clouds" is a scorched-earth, synthesizer-driven and drum-less instrumental. A heavy, organ-like drone weighs the bottom down, allowing frequencies to oscillate and buzz above, while a guitar (maybe?) ripples through it all, occasionally piercing the thick canopy of synths with a stab of light, but often glazing the background with gorgeous overtones. At first listen it's difficult – but after ten trips through this record, this became my favorite, dense with patterns and instrument interplay, near-unrecognizable guitar doled out in slo-mo, a collective, unrelenting sense of nirvana being the only order of business here.
Oh yeah, the Neil Young paean. "Flower Of Light" closes the record, it's near-10 minutes divided neatly in half, with the first half only rhythm guitar, walking bass-line, and Neil-summoning solo; the vocals and drums hit at once halfway in – it feels like a benediction, or maybe like shoegaze on cough syrup. It's beautiful and the solo here, the most melodic on the record, is perfect. Sure, it might dial down the fried form a bit, but it's still skronky and distorted and cloud-gazing and not for the faint of heart, even if they approach gentler vibes during the relaxed, couple-minute outro.
I'm not sure where the band goes from here – Head In The Clouds starts in the sky, and stays there for 40 focused, mind-expanding minutes. And that's enough for now – wanting more after encountering a force of nature is unnatural. Like the forest or the stars, sometimes you gotta stare at what you got, appreciating the details and endlessly fascinating molecules and moments all around.
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