Bardo Pond / Carlton Melton - Split

Both these bands belong in the 'rock' end of the psychedelic rock spectrum and this split comprises a monster jam from each. On Bardo Pond's side we're treated to a massive searing doomy instrumental psych dirge with bombastic drums and chunky fuzzed out wedges of guitar underpinning much freeform buzzing and squealing. I think there's a flute going on in places here too. Quite mystical sounding heavy psychedelia that's a little more acid-fried than their usual epic post-metal fare. Cosmic slabs of molten rock that turn out to be very tasty indeed. On the flip, Carlton “face” Melton open their side with Hawkwind-esque whooshes like astral winds with processed guitars twinkling away underneath like a well-behaved piece of kosmische drone, but you know that with this being Carlton Melton things won't be staying that way for long, and lo and behold it fairly quickly ascends to rumbles and creaks and groans. It sounds like weight, but not in the same doomy way as the Bardo Pond side does. There's more of an almost Sun Araw-meets-Sunburned Hand type busy post-dub chunter going on through a lot of this. Towards the end some drums are introduced and a churning riff emerges from the sea of bass rumble, so basically the track just builds and builds for the duration of their side. These are both satisfying jams that bring the rock so fans of either band worried that this would be a vehicle for throwaway B-material can now rest easy.