PHOSPHENE DREAM
It was an all-black psychedelic rock affair at Bowery Ballroom last Tuesday night. Trance-inducing rock bands the Black Angels and Black Mountain teamed up for their fall tour, alternating head line duties and laying down enough consciousness-expanding tunes for a crowd of Woodstock-ready proportions.
The Black Angels took opening duties at Bowery, whereas Black Mountain opened up during the next evening's second NYC date at Music Hall of Williamsburg. The crowd was buzzing right away with anticipation for Austin, Texas psych rockers The Black Angels. As soon as the band took the stage with ominous opener “You on the Run” from their 2008 record Directions to See a Ghost, the numerous sweet smells of a certain illegal substance battled the cool, stagnant air for supremacy.
Psychedelic rockers the Black Angels have, up until now, seemed perpetually stuck in the 1960s. Their druggy brand of atmospheric tunes sounded like something you would listen to while religiously following the Grateful Dead around town, whilst on a pretty serious acid trip.
But with the Texas five-piece’s third full-length album, Phosphene Dream, released on September 14, the Angels have cleared up their musical haze; the full effect is less hangover and more groovy rock-out. Released on the revamped blues label Blue Horizon and recorded in Los Angeles, Dream relocates the Angels from their time trap and plants them a little closer to the present. In fact, the band even recently collaborated with Brit trip- hoppers UNKLE for a song on the Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack called "With You in My Head." You can't get any more current than vampires.
The large, gothic ballroom in the Angel Orensanz Center boiled in a sinister red light that illuminated the decaying cathedral backdrop with its curling, cringing Corinthian collumns and rust-colored archways as Austin, Texas' psychedelic-rock group the Black Angels took the stage for a secret, invite-only show to give the masses a taste of their new album, Phosphene Dream, which officially debuts on September 14.
Already making a heavy showing at the SXSW festival earlier this summer, and continuing onto the Reading Leeds Festival in the UK just two weeks ago, the Angels have fulfilled the fall-tour prerequisite by captivating festival junkies in the summer months, and have thrown a glob of icing on the proverbial cake with their new album debuting this month. Taking much of their influence from the iconic psychedelic group The Velvet Underground (including their name and band logo), the Angels throw together a darker, more penetrating twist.
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