Motorpsycho

[polmico]

That last Elder is excellent imo

Elder's Live at Roadburn is fire.

Well, that’s the two I got. Sounds like I’m in for a treat.

[Klonk]

Ooooh I love Elder. Their last one is an ass-kicker for sure. If it works for you, definitely get 'Lore' which was the album previous. It's outstanding!

I'll be getting this new Motorpsycho soon

[polmico]

Whew. This new one is good. Saether’s vow have never sounded better. That break in “Lux Aeterna” with the distorted guitar? whacked out audiovirus synth? noise? is fucking great, and Jarymr’s fills really propel the whole thing along. Deathprod’s presence on the title track is welcomed.

There might be better tracks from recent albums (“Hell 4-6,” “Lacuna Sunrise,” “Ship of Fools”), but only Here Be Monsters tops this in recent Motorpsycho history. Great stuff. I really need to find a way to see this band.

[polmico]

Recent concert:

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/norwe...v_kTUOQxurNPVc

[polmico]

The recent collection The Light Fantastic is now on Bandcamp:
https://motorpsycho.bandcamp.com/releases

[polmico]

New album on its way:

"All Is One is the final chapter in the loosely-connected and informally titled “Gullvåg Trilogy” kicked off by 2017’s The Tower and connected by 2019’s The Crucible. Recorded between September-November of 2019 in France and Norway, the album was originally planned for a release in spring but was inevitably postponed due to – what else – Covid 19. However, the moment is ripe for new music and the band has used their extra time to give attention to every detail, resulting in a spectacular double album that is dense and Motorpsychodelic in the best possible way. We’ve been digging into this album the past few weeks at HQ and really excited to share more with you soon!"


https://www.stickman-records.com/new...9jXfqTpvEvo9RQ

[Nashorn]

New album on its way:

"All Is One is the final chapter in the loosely-connected and informally titled “Gullvåg Trilogy” kicked off by 2017’s The Tower and connected by 2019’s The Crucible. Recorded between September-November of 2019 in France and Norway, the album was originally planned for a release in spring but was inevitably postponed due to – what else – Covid 19. However, the moment is ripe for new music and the band has used their extra time to give attention to every detail, resulting in a spectacular double album that is dense and Motorpsychodelic in the best possible way. We’ve been digging into this album the past few weeks at HQ and really excited to share more with you soon!"


https://www.stickman-records.com/new...9jXfqTpvEvo9RQ

The album also features Reine Fiske, Lars Horntveth, and my current favorite violinist, Ola Kvernberg.

[mylard]

Has anyone listened to "The All is One" yet? I personally think it's a masterpiece. It's really impressive that a band 30 years into their career can release an album this good. I especially love the five part N.O.X, but I enjoy the rest of it as well. It's incredibly long, but it's very rewarding and satisfying with lots of long throbbing jam sections that build, change, and evolve in interesting ways.

[polmico]

^ Waiting for some US distribution. I'm already having problems getting domestic mail here in Charlotte. Bills have gone missing, magazines are not getting sorted, political signs have mysteriously vanished in transit . . .

Tempting fate with an order from Norway or Germany (I believe that's where Stickman Records is, right?) just seems daft.

But I'm definitely looking forward. I deep, rewarding album is just what I need right now.

[Marco]

Didn't enjoy N.O.X. very much. Listened to the whole thing 3 or 4 times and meh.

[spacefreak]

Has anyone listened to "The All is One" yet? I personally think it's a masterpiece. It's really impressive that a band 30 years into their career can release an album this good. I especially love the five part N.O.X, but I enjoy the rest of it as well. It's incredibly long, but it's very rewarding and satisfying with lots of long throbbing jam sections that build, change, and evolve in interesting ways.

Didn't do anything for me this time round. A snoozefest. The long song couldn't save it either.

[jlneudorf]

Only listened to Light Fantastic. Great track!

[Scrotum Scissor]

I think this one is a bit weak. They should have contemplated for a year or two instead of insisting to put out a mammoth record each year.

I appreciate how they're attempting to do moderately/relatively different things, but given their base (instrumental) concept it always comes out sounding like them anyway - and should therefore be subjected to some level of continuing scrutiny or self-criticism.

Jaga Jazzist did that with their new release, which is great -and- a bit different.

[polmico]

Jaga Jazzist did that with their new release, which is great -and- a bit different.

You're hearing something I'm not. I don't deny that it's great. It's Jaga Jazzist. But it sounds like Jaga Jazzist. Their last album, in all its electronic bleepy weirdness, was different. This one erases most of that and goes back to what had worked in the past.

[JKL2000]

The All Is One sounds great to me, but I'm new to Motorpsycho. I just ordered the 2CD set - can someone who has this tell me what the packaging is like? Nice?

I'm obviously saying this from inside a vacuum, but I'm surprised at the negative appraisals here. that whole long suite sounds so good to me. Throbbingly good! I guess this means their best albums will REALLY sound good to me - which are your favorites? Or should I work my way backward, or start from the beginning?

[Crawford Glissadevil]

The All Is One sounds great to me, but I'm new to Motorpsycho. I just ordered the 2CD set - can someone who has this tell me what the packaging is like? Nice?

I'm obviously saying this from inside a vacuum, but I'm surprised at the negative appraisals here. that whole long suite sounds so good to me. Throbbingly good! I guess this means their best albums will REALLY sound good to me - which are your favorites? Or should I work my way backward, or start from the beginning?

The sublime The Death Defying Unicorn would be my favorite.

[miamiscot]

The All Is One is marvelous!!!

[Marco]

The All Is One sounds great to me, but I'm new to Motorpsycho. I just ordered the 2CD set - can someone who has this tell me what the packaging is like? Nice?

I'm obviously saying this from inside a vacuum, but I'm surprised at the negative appraisals here. that whole long suite sounds so good to me. Throbbingly good! I guess this means their best albums will REALLY sound good to me - which are your favorites? Or should I work my way backward, or start from the beginning?

I think their recent works pale in comparison with the Kapstad-era. Check out Little Lucid Moments, Heavy Metal Fruit, The Death Defying Unicorn or Still Life with Eggplant, then Timothy's Monster and the rest.

[SteveSly]

The All Is One sounds great to me, but I'm new to Motorpsycho. I just ordered the 2CD set - can someone who has this tell me what the packaging is like? Nice?

I'm obviously saying this from inside a vacuum, but I'm surprised at the negative appraisals here. that whole long suite sounds so good to me. Throbbingly good! I guess this means their best albums will REALLY sound good to me - which are your favorites? Or should I work my way backward, or start from the beginning?

I discovered them around 2010 with the "Heavy Metal Fruit" album which I still think is great. "The Tower" and "The Crucible" are also favorites of mine.

[polmico]

I tend to group Motorpsycho's works into "eras." These eras are marked by broad similarities in the sound and approach to the albums from the same time period. There is the indie rock era, the psych pop pastiche era and (for lack of a better term) the modern era. There are transition albums between these eras.

Indie Rock: Demon Box, Timothy's Monster, Angels and Daemons, Blissard (I've not heard the complete debut album which is OOP.)
There was a moment where Motorpsycho could've almost broke through in America. Some of the tunes from this era were even played on MTV's 120 Minutes (if I remember correctly, which I might not). Songs like "Kill Some Day" from Timothy's Monster and "The Nerve Tattoo" from Blissardhave a definite "grunge-y," mid-90s alternative feel to them. In other words, definitely not "Prog." But then on the same album you'll have a tune like "The Golden Core"--15 minutes of slow building, repetitive lines with mellotrons and anticipation--and you'll realize that Motorpsycho is not easy to categorize. Blissard is my pick from this group (and perhaps my favorite album from the band), but the re-issue of Angels and Daemons, an album comprised of three EPs, might be the way to go. The complete concert from 1997 included on that re-issue gives an excellent overview of this era of the band.

Transition album: Trust Us
You get the sense that they're moving to the more lavish and intricate arrangements of the next phase of the band. I know a lot of folk consider this among their best. I'm not going to argue.

Pscyh Pop Pastiche: Let Them Eat Cake, Phanerothyme, It's a Love Cult
Guest horns, keyboard players, flutes and just about every instrumentation you can imagine mark this era of the band. They were consciously capturing and interpreting 1960s psychedelic pop. The gorgeous arrangement (complete with flute and electric piano solos), harmonized vocal lines, sunny-side pop of a song like "Go to California" from Phanerothyme tells you everything you need to know about this era. The band had to strip away a lot of elements to play these tunes live. I love these albums. Motorpsycho can write a damn fine pop tune.

Transition album: Black Hole/Black Canvas
Reduced to a duo (drums are handled by Saether and Ryan), the band strips its sound, too. A sprawling double album, this album is definitely more a straight rocker than the previous albums.

Modern era: Little Lucid Moments - The All Is One
Probably too many albums to lump together, but here it is anyway. The complex arrangements from the pop era meet the metal grunge of the first era. Big fuzzy bass lines, tight drumming, worked-out guitar solos, BIG jams. Tough for me to pick a favorite, but I'll go with Here Be Monsters. The closing track on that album, "Big Black Dog," is musically and lyrically evocative. A howl in the dark, a world devoid of sense, full of fear--a song that confronts those dark elements head on.

Motorpsycho is a band that wear their influences proudly on their sleeves. They aren't afraid to cover their influences (The Who, Love, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Moondog, Art Ensemble of Chicago). But it's always Motorpsycho. They can work with Jaga Jazzist, and it sounds like Motorpsycho. They can make a country western album (or two), and it sounds like Motorpsycho. I remember reading an interview with Saether right around release of The Tower (the double album that begins the loose trilogy of albums completed by The Crucible and The All Is One). He noted that he'd begun listening to VdGG. If you listen to "The Tower," you can hear the influence. (Think about those moments in VdGG where half of the band is playing one thing, the other half is playing something else.) And yet, it still sounds like Motorpsycho.

You can probably tell I'm a bit of a fan (fanboy). I went from The Death-Defying Unicorn to Timothy's Monster in my exploration of the band. It's harder to imagine two different albums, but they both work so well. I don't think there's a wrong move to make in their discog.

Perhaps a good place to start an exploration of the band is here:
http://www.motorpsychodelicclips.com

[spacefreak]

which are your favorites?

Death Defying Unicorn

[Lebofsky]

One story which I may have mentioned before about how I learned about Motorpsycho. I was on tour in Germany with a band. Our driver, who was German, had good taste in music and would put on all kinds of interesting CDs. Often we'd be like, "who's this?" And the answer would be, "Motorpsycho." We'd be in clubs setting up and the staff would be blasting music over the speakers. Something would catch my attention and I'd ask, "who's this?" and the answer would be, "Motorpsycho." Each of these songs were so different from each other, which was why we always found ourselves asking, "who this?" By the end of the the tour I bought some CDs to bring back to the US.

By the way... this was in 1999! They were already all over the map then, and all of it good. Trust Us, which was the new one at the time, is still my favorite. But yeah, it's hard to say which albums are highlights as there are amazing songs on all the records. Some deliver more than others, some deliver different things for different moods. That said, the insanely good ones: Angels and Demons, Trust Us, Phanerothyme, Little Lucid Moments, Death Defying Unicorn. But I hate making that list because then you'll miss The Golden Core, Barleycorn, Gullible's Travails, etc. etc. etc. etc.

- Matt

[Marco]

Great story Matt.
I like how they have very dedicated fans in Italy and Germany.

[Scrotum Scissor]

And yet, it still sounds like Motorpsycho.

When they covered "Spin, Spin, Spin", two Norwegian papers attempted to attach it to Terry Callier's original version of the song. When the band promptly explained that they'd never heard Callier, the music writers in question were lost for words. They'd never heard of H.P. Lovecraft, the 60s semi-legendary group whose take on "Spin" is rather different from Callier's but obviously the template for the 'psychos.

Motorpsycho were into grand-scale references from rock history already from the start, at a time when crediting King Crimson or Blue Cheer was definitely NOT kosher in Norwegian cultural media. But you're basically right in that it always becomes them and theirs. The rendition they did of "California Dreamin'" was sucker rubbish, though. Fun, but deliberately silly. And "The House At Pooneil Corners" left a bit to be desired as well, being the monster it is in the first place.

They're undoubtedly dedicated to psychedelia from "within", though - as especially proven by Let Them Eat Cake. They grasp it with both balls and hands.

My fave five would be, in no particular order: Timothy's Monster, Let Them Eat Cake, Trust Us, The Death Defying Unicorn and Here Be Monsters.

[SteveSly]

I tend to group Motorpsycho's works into "eras." These eras are marked by broad similarities in the sound and approach to the albums from the same time period. There is the indie rock era, the psych pop pastiche era and (for lack of a better term) the modern era. There are transition albums between these eras.

Indie Rock: Demon Box, Timothy's Monster, Angels and Daemons, Blissard (I've not heard the complete debut album which is OOP.)
There was a moment where Motorpsycho could've almost broke through in America. Some of the tunes from this era were even played on MTV's 120 Minutes (if I remember correctly, which I might not). Songs like "Kill Some Day" from Timothy's Monster and "The Nerve Tattoo" from Blissardhave a definite "grunge-y," mid-90s alternative feel to them. In other words, definitely not "Prog." But then on the same album you'll have a tune like "The Golden Core"--15 minutes of slow building, repetitive lines with mellotrons and anticipation--and you'll realize that Motorpsycho is not easy to categorize. Blissard is my pick from this group (and perhaps my favorite album from the band), but the re-issue of Angels and Daemons, an album comprised of three EPs, might be the way to go. The complete concert from 1997 included on that re-issue gives an excellent overview of this era of the band.

Transition album: Trust Us
You get the sense that they're moving to the more lavish and intricate arrangements of the next phase of the band. I know a lot of folk consider this among their best. I'm not going to argue.

Pscyh Pop Pastiche: Let Them Eat Cake, Phanerothyme, It's a Love Cult
Guest horns, keyboard players, flutes and just about every instrumentation you can imagine mark this era of the band. They were consciously capturing and interpreting 1960s psychedelic pop. The gorgeous arrangement (complete with flute and electric piano solos), harmonized vocal lines, sunny-side pop of a song like "Go to California" from Phanerothyme tells you everything you need to know about this era. The band had to strip away a lot of elements to play these tunes live. I love these albums. Motorpsycho can write a damn fine pop tune.

Transition album: Black Hole/Black Canvas
Reduced to a duo (drums are handled by Saether and Ryan), the band strips its sound, too. A sprawling double album, this album is definitely more a straight rocker than the previous albums.

Modern era: Little Lucid Moments - The All Is One
Probably too many albums to lump together, but here it is anyway. The complex arrangements from the pop era meet the metal grunge of the first era. Big fuzzy bass lines, tight drumming, worked-out guitar solos, BIG jams. Tough for me to pick a favorite, but I'll go with Here Be Monsters. The closing track on that album, "Big Black Dog," is musically and lyrically evocative. A howl in the dark, a world devoid of sense, full of fear--a song that confronts those dark elements head on.

Motorpsycho is a band that wear their influences proudly on their sleeves. They aren't afraid to cover their influences (The Who, Love, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Moondog, Art Ensemble of Chicago). But it's always Motorpsycho. They can work with Jaga Jazzist, and it sounds like Motorpsycho. They can make a country western album (or two), and it sounds like Motorpsycho. I remember reading an interview with Saether right around release of The Tower (the double album that begins the loose trilogy of albums completed by The Crucible and The All Is One). He noted that he'd begun listening to VdGG. If you listen to "The Tower," you can hear the influence. (Think about those moments in VdGG where half of the band is playing one thing, the other half is playing something else.) And yet, it still sounds like Motorpsycho.

You can probably tell I'm a bit of a fan (fanboy). I went from The Death-Defying Unicorn to Timothy's Monster in my exploration of the band. It's harder to imagine two different albums, but they both work so well. I don't think there's a wrong move to make in their discog.

Perhaps a good place to start an exploration of the band is here:
http://www.motorpsychodelicclips.com

Thanks for the synopsis. As mentioned in my previous post, I did not even know they existed until around 2010-ish, so I need to go back and explore their history. I had no clue they had been around that long.