Sinds 2018 is België een festival rijker en wel op het gebied van heavy psychedelics. Zeker omdat zijn voorloper Yellow Stock niet meer doorgaat, is dit uiteraard een welgekomen verrijking in het muzieklandschap. Wat meer is, in deze tijden waar festivals steeds meer in een op hol geslagen kermis transfomeren en de muziek zelf eerder een bijverschijnsel is geworden, kiest Down The Hill resoluut voor kleinschaligheid. Zo worden er op de kop 5OO tickets aangeboden en daarna stopt het. Qua programma mag U Down The Hill gerust beschouwen als de verderzetting van het helaas ter ziele gegande Yellowstock en is het helemaal toegelaten om een snakepitje te vervoegen.
In Creative Inertia #8 werd de hoofdact Wolvennest uitvoerig aan het woord gelaten, maar uiteraard staat er nog veel meer op het programma op dit tweedaagse Down The Hill festival dat het Hageland zal doen trillen.
Een greep uit het aanbod:
BISMUT (NL)
BISMUT, PROGRESSIVE HEAVY PSYCH SINCE 2016
Jamming in the depths of the Nijmegen underground, Bismut was born. It clicked like crazy between the 3 gentlemen. While playing Bismut developed his own sound consisting of a mixture of styles such as; prog rock, doom, metal, stoner, jazz, psych, and hard rock. Since their foundation, the three musicians have played many shows at home and abroad in sympathetic clubs and at major festivals such as Into The Void, Zwarte Cross, Sonic Whip, Stonerfall, Yellowstock, Desert Fest Antwerp, Alterna Sounds Fest, and Psychedelic Network Festival. Bismut released 2 long players on the independent label Lay Bare Recordings: “Schwerpunkt” in November 2018 and “Retrocausality” in September 2020. Both albums, now sold out, were very well received. Despite the corona vicissitudes, Bismut still managed to play some beautiful shows, including banging performances at Desertfest 2021, Fuzz25 and Alterna Sounds Festival Münster.
DJIIN (FR)
Djiin is a psychedelic stoner-rock band whose name is inspired by spirits and other beasts of the Semitic beliefs and traditions. Influenced by 70’s progressive rock and krautrock bands, doom scene, and heavy rock from the glory days of the early Sabbath era, as well as other modern references based on the diversity between western and traditional eastern sonorities,
Djiin develops a personal, atypical, and captivating universe. Composed of four years of a guitar, a bass, and drums, and led by a powerful, charismatic, and low-voiced female singer and harpist, the band comes out with its powerful and fuzzy riffs, its twisted beats, its psychedelic melodies, and its vocal incantations for a transcendent rendering.
A real evasion invitation.
The use of the electric harp in this “classic“ rock line-up gives unique and surprising sonorities that accentuate the band’s mystic and ritualistic universe.
Elephant Tree (UK)
Formed in early August 2013, Elephant Tree began life in the dingy back streets of London’s answer to Tin Pan Alley. Moving into the summer of 2014 the group decided upon the tracks to be included in their first EP, named after the hypothesized ancient planet of the same name. Theia. Two more albums followed the self-titled album in 2017 and Habits in 2019.
Amidst the chaos that was 2020, the group parted ways with their previous label and took on the new challenge of dealing with their own releases. Folding under the wing of the newly created Sheep Tooth the group managed to keep Habits very much alive and with the initial success new releases were sure to follow on in good time.
With plans in action, motors roaring and gears churning, the group may be spotted traveling to studios around London soon. Just as long as there’s space in the local beer garden…
EL PERRO (USA)
Debut album “Hair Of” due Spring 2022.
EL PERRO is a brand new band led by guitarist/vocalist/songwriter/producer Parker Griggs of RADIO MOSCOW. The sound contains elements that fans of Radio Moscow will recognize, but this is rock music with a new, fresh spin and feel. The band’s debut album, “Hair Of El Perro”, takes heavy psychedelic rock as a starting point but
jams into a more syncopated territory, spicing its sound with Latin rhythms and hints of Funkadelic-style grooves.
You could say that EL PERRO plays psychedelic funk rock, and you wouldn’t be wrong.
Beside Parker Griggs, EL PERRO also includes former Radio Moscow drummer Lonnie Blanton, bassist Shawn Davis, guitarist Jaron Yancey and on percussion, Tawny Harrington.
KARKARA (FR)
A deafening echo that suddenly speaks out of the dust, conveying all the desolation of an endless landscape up to the sky.
A journey for those who like exotic rock to sound viscerally loud, raw, and high gained. To blow up the speakers for good. Fuzzed guitar and Buzzing didgeridoo locked with sped-up drums and cranked bass sound that makes you feel like you are riding a spacecraft at full speed between the dunes.
Created in 2017 in Toulouse, France, the threesome takes its an inspiration among different rock genres, from the sweet middle eastern psychedelic rock to the raw shattering sounds of garage fuzz and german krautrock.
Even going so far as to use their favorite atypical instrument – the didgeridoo – the three members of KARKARA, like desert wizards, take pleasure in pushing further the boundaries of the genre and take their audience into a mystical and indomitable world.
WOLVENNEST (BE)
Formed in 2013 by Michel Kirby, Marc De Backer and Corvus Von Burtle, the trio released a first full-length in collaboration with Austrian veterans Der Blutharsch in 2016 through Weme Records. This weird album got in the radar of occult German label Van records, that repressed it and is since then Wolvennest collaborator for every release.
Joined soon after by a solid live line-up, the band found in Shazzula its voice and synth/theremin magician. In 2018, Wolvennest released their sophomore “Void” in 2018. Thanks to this album, Wolvennest toured Europe twice and had the chance to perform it, fully, at Roadburn 2019 edition. The “Vortex “EP was released the same year.
2021 proved to be, despite the “no live music era”, a busy year for the Wolvennest collective: a double album (Temple), a live album (live in Ancienne Belgique), and a collaboration under the “Nest” banner, featuring long time friends from the Occult European circle. The sextet, regularly joined by their producer Déhà on stage, will hit our stage on Friday.
Alle verdere info:
SVN's Unsane Vortex 