Lorelle Meets The Obsolete

Chambers (Sonic Cathedral)

14/20

The harsh sounding Mexican psych duo make quite a statement with their jarring third album. It takes the usually soporific combination of graveyard pace and wandering instruments and, instead of offering them up via intravenous injection, covers them all in poisonous barbs and scrapes them across the user’s bare skin.

Tinny, unwashed sounds and cruel production offer a peculiar alternative to other lo-fi psych records. Rather than wrapping the listener in a soft, warm dream, Chambers situates them in a cold, metallic wilderness – it doesn’t always make for pretty listening. Even the most gentle caresses are of barely-blunted spikes protruding from tangy guitars. The mindless chords found on tracks like The Myth Of The Wise sound as panicked and disoriented as they did on Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett- afflicted debut. The relentless siren wails of Sealed Scene, then, would be right at home in a derelict nursery of a roaring Godzilla – the Japanese B-movie variety, mind you. There’s no Hollywood sheen here.

Mastered by Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, the influence of the drug-rock explorers is especially evident in the twisted croaks of psychoactive toads on Third Wave. The fluttering 13 Flowers that follows is another trip, leading to the grey desert finale Thoughts About High Noon, a track that confidently fulfils its Western connotations with melody and atmosphere. It’s a cold winter in Mexico with Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, but if you can adapt to the harsh conditions then you’ll find there’s plenty to keep you busy.

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Stream Chambers here

Words: James Balmont