Leonardo Pavkovic always has a card up his sleeve by hypnotising his listeners, whether he’s cooking something inside the MoonJune kitchen. When he adds that extra amount of spices and wasabi sauce to the mix, you know it’s going to be delicious.
That and the collaboration between Markus Reuter, Tim Motzer, and Kenny Grohowski, it’s a combination that you can’t refuse. Bleed is one of those releases that just hits you, very strongly. For Motzer & Reuter, whose friendship goes back nearly 15 years, they’re like two peas in a pod, collaborating on different albums, and keeping up with each other.
Once they met Kenny back in 2019 at the Shapeshifter lab in Brooklyn where they recorded the live album (Shapeshifters) on August 18th that year (pre-COVID), they would become a band of brothers. Their latest release, showcases a various amount of meditation guidance on the Bleed album.
Recorded at NRS Recording Studio in Upstate New York by Scott Petito, the trio puts listeners in a trance by hypnotising them into a state of mind. Just on the 14-minute track ‘Monolith’, they go into this frenzy, extending the jam section from King Crimson’s closing track ‘Starless’ from their 1974 album, Red.
There are clock-ticking environments, overdubbing organ and mellotron choirs, batshit intensity from Grohowski himself, followed by Markus and Tim, transforming themselves into vicious, blood-thirsty beasts, who prey upon human flesh! And once they start attacking the villages, you better run like hell. Because once they start attacking and ripping off the flesh, they’re the two creatures you don’t want to ever fuck around with.
‘Oracle Chamber’ opens up with a cross-over between post-punk and doom metal, rolled into one. Like a river boat, sailing across the Nile River to the Red Sea, it’s one of their most ominous pieces that’ll make you shit your pants, nonstop!
It takes different passageways; from Joy Division, Electric Wizard, and Agitation Free, rolled into one. And it’ll make you want to dig out your old records from the swirling Veritgo label, to the pink ear vibes of Ohr Records. Then, Grohowski goes into a free-for-all improvisation on his drum kit on the chaotic arrangement, ‘Impenetrable’.
Markus and Tim give Kenny the carte blanche he needs to go into this hay-wiring effect by letting him be centre stage on this crazy, off-the-wall number! But it’s ‘Causatum 08’ that gives Motzer a chance to take a break from all of the heavy stuff, and into this deep, dark surreal nightmare that’ll haunt you for the rest of time.
‘Externalities of the Truest Universality’, sounds like a Tangerine Dream album as if it was following up to Phaedra, and continuing where they left off with Atem. It’s a nod also to the Early Floyd records from the Ummagumma years, followed by The Division Bell sessions. There’s a sigh of relief where the trio embarked on this intense journey as they reached dry land and kissing the sand, nonstop. And what a ride they’ve embarked on.
Bleed is the trio’s challenging release from MoonJune Records. The graphic designs done by Bernhard Wöstheinrich says it all. It hits you right there and then. It slices and dices from one track to the next. And those hot slices that you’ve eaten, are they mouth-watery or not?
