Krautrock is yummy, but if you’re reading this, you probably already know that. And there’s a good chance you already know that Lumerians are experts at crafting extra-tasty psych jams. In which case, you’ll be very happy to know that The High Frontier is yet another serving of delicious, melt-in-your-mouth psychedelic rock, garnished with the typical hypnotic grooves and smothered in synthesizers. It tastes good, is good for you, and won’t make you fat. Aaaaaaand I’m done with the food analogies. The High Frontier is yet another fantastic krautrock release in 2013, following up a couple of my personal favorites in Follakzoid’s II and Pyramidal’s Frozen Galaxies.
The new offering from Lumerians differs from those two in that it feels earthier, almost akin to The Black Angels, whereas Follakzoid and Pyramidal shoot you up into space and never bring you down. That does not mean the spaciness is absent from The High Frontier, and like Naam’s Vow it bridges the gap between the spacey and the earthy sides of psychedelic rock, while being more focused on repetitive krautrock grooves than Naam are.
‘Dogon Genesis’ opens the album with a combination of trance-inducing synths and hazy guitar riffs that combine to perfectly display the album’s balance between Earth and Space. The rest of the songs shift between the two extremes; the bluesy bass riffs of follow-up track ‘High Frontier’ sound a bit more grounded, while ‘Smokies Tangle’ and ‘Life Without Skin’ are a bit more out there (with the latter sounding unusually melancholic for a psychedelic track).
‘The Bloom’ starts spacier, with the synths taking the lead for the first half or so, but gradually begins to come down as the guitar dissonance dominates. Then there’s ‘Koman Tong,’ which I don’t really know how to describe; I can’t tell if the drums are real or programmed, and there’s a fuckload of things happening in its three minutes and thirty-one seconds. It’s the shortest track on the album by a minute and a half, but the sheer weirdness of it makes it the most complex song of the bunch.
Overall, High Frontier sounds like being stranded on a strange planet. It doesn’t leave you wandering the outer reaches of the galaxy like other krautrock albums do, but while your surroundings appear familiar on the surface, they feel alien nonetheless. It’s certainly a different kind of journey than I’m used to from bands of this style, and the end result is most satisfying.
