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Expo '70, "Psychosis"/"Night Flights"
With these two being recorded in 2008, it is not surprising that these two LPs from this solo project have a similar sound and vibe to them, though both do go in somewhat different directions, with Psychosis focusing on the droning slow space rock material, while Night Flights opens the sonic pallet up to include more than just guitar and bass, but primitive analog electronics as well. They both definitely take minimalist droning guitar into a more astral plane than usual, however.
Psychosis is actually two side-long tracks, "Sleeping Corpse" and "Widow Planet," that are each broken into three shorter pieces. The former suite is somewhat lighter and ambient while the latter crosses the line into darker drone territory. "Into Body," the first part of "Sleeping Corpse," begins with deep undulating bass drones and echo chamber guitar scrapes. The low end gets pushed into noise territory while the guitar scrapes eventually morph into more prog-rock like soloing. The overt guitar playing reappears in "Cold Forecasting," where it begins as simple two chord rhythms but shifts into pure soloing that is a bit reminiscent of Earth’s recent blues/country infused sound, though here it is in addition to a noise driven backing.
"Left to Die," the opening movement of "Widow Planet," has a more traditional organic guitar ambient sound with a hint of dubby bass that puts it in league with Main circa Motion Pool: it has a looped sound that is depressive and dark. The style continues into "Stark Bleakness Rising," which pulls away the bass and instead showcases slow, repeated guitar riffs with some more guitar soloing on top. The closing "Haunting the Terrain" goes even farther into sonic space, having a more traditional dark ambient/industrial influenced sound that still shows exceptional analog warmth while keeping the conventional guitar sound at bay.
Night Flights, on the other hand, is four distinct tracks that expand the instrumental repertoire. "Transcending Energy from Light" has a distinct Moog pulse with the occasional perceptible guitar note and high frequency vacuum cleaner shriek. The sound ends up in a swirly psychedelic vortex with only the occasional noisy synth stab or clear guitar note escaping. "Alpestrine Fog" keeps the low end synth pulse but with warmer guitar tones that are a bit more inviting and less space-y than the previous one.
"Cognac Smoke" is probably the most dynamic track of both LPs, which actually has some rhythmic movement due to the old school Suicide-esque analog drum machine that propels the pitch bent guitar noises and bird-call like shrieks along. The closing “Seismic Nuances” recalls the looped guitar chaos, with proggy guitar solos to distinguish it.
With the guitar based drone sound staying popular, more and more artists need to carve out their own niche to simply not get lost among the detuned chords and sustain pedals. Expo ’70 does so by adding that liberal dash of '60s psych and '90s dark ambience to the fray. While there are the occasional bits of sameness within each album, as a whole they are a good mix of the familiar and new.
samples (Psychosis):
samples (Night Flights):
