With all the streams and streaming services in most of our minds these days, Newcastle band Smote has decided to name their latest album A Grand Stream.
But, then, maybe their grand stream might not actually have connections with any digital streaming service as such – it could be a fluid, watery stream, a stream of consciousness, or some sort of imaginary stream of their collective minds.
Frankly, listening to the album (a double one, at that) and its slowly evolving tracks and their psych-infused drones (sometimes with vocals, sometimes not), you are more inclined to look at the latter two possibilities. Think of any given Fuzz Club band presenting their take on Earth or Sunn O))) at their prime and then stretching that underlying heaviness like chewing gum before it breaks.
But in Smote’s case, it never breaks and seems to be stretching to infinity, with Daniel Foggin and his cohorts exchanging heaviness with meditative sojourns as if they were in a Buddhist temple (‘Sitting Stone Pt.2’). And it all comes out, as it was intended, with the band obviously knowing when the tempo or the drone should shift, slowly but surely.
On the whole, it all makes full sense and Smote’s grand stream keeps on flowing, slowly dropping all the veils covering it presenting its true (good looking) face.
