I admit that I didn’t have a clue what French trio Stone From The Sky was about when I witnessed their gig at Gothenburg's newest festival Wizard Of Fuzz in early October. I had heard snippets here and there but didn’t think much about it. Well, was I in for a nice big surprise? Yes I was. The gig was one of the most explosive things I have experienced in years. This of course made me curious about the band and their music so after a quick search on the Internet I found the band's Bandcamp page and downloaded the album “NGC 1976”. It’s free to download but by Iommi's left hand you will pay for it. Right? Yeah I thought so…
Now, Stone From The
Sky leans heavy onto the tradition of shoegazing, kraut rock, stoner and
progressive rock. And it’s not farfetched to make connections to stuff like
Earthless, Colour Haze, Monomyth, My Sleeping Karma and Sungrazer. Its instrumental guitar rock that builds its energy from the
tension that occurs when you have nice mellow parts that clash with big
explosions of riff. Add an infernal
groove to that mix and you have some kind of description of what this is about.
To keep this kind of music interesting for the 41
minutes that it takes to listen to the six tracks that is “NGC 1976” is not an
easy task. But Stone From The Sky pulls it off in grand style. Opening track
“Pelican Bay” starts off with a slow pace and after two minutes the whole thing
goes off in a big wave of melodic guitars handled by Florent who lays down the
law of the riff like a boss. Stone From The Sky then continues to unfold the
secretes of the six strings in the tracks that follows. And I like the fact
that they have made Dimitri’s bass lines an important part of the whole
soundscape of “NGC 1976”. It’s right there up front in the mix right beside the
guitar which I think is one of the secrets to this album sounding so great. The
music is built around three instruments equal to each other that all together
make a very nice nucleus from which it all transcends to space.
It’s obvious that this
trio has spent a lot of time in the rehearsal room and on stage. The almost
hypnotic power of “NGC 1976” takes you on that wonderful non chemical trip out
in the vast desert of the universe of rock that sometimes occurs when you least
expect it. Stone From The Sky brings new energy to this genre of stoner rock or
whatever label you might want to put on it. Bien fait mes amis!
- The Void
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