Following a number of utterly essential self-released cassettes over the past five years or so, Maidstone's Sanctuary of Praise finally make their long-awaited appearance on record and mint themselves a new imprint in the process. Now functioning as a three piece, Ether Unending is reflective of a slow evolution at the heart of SoP's sound, the first traces of which were first evidenced on the A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall live cassette released at the start of this year. 'Live' was somewhat of an elastic term in that context, the recordings not so much documenting a specific show, but a product of a series of performances spliced and edited into one woozy, hypnotic whole. The eight tracks - or should that be 'movements'? - that comprise Ether Unending trace a similar path, cut-up instrumental passages of hiss, drone and feedback undulating and shifting into one another through a lysergic fog, before suddently re-forming into motorik grooves fronted by singer/band leader Tom Bryant's deadpan Dan Treacy-meets-Pete Kember vocal. TV Personalties and Spacemen 3 are key reference points, as too are Psychic TV, all bands with varying and distinct interests in psychedelia. And like those artists, Sanctuary of Praise are no mere revivalists, understanding of the core nature of psychedelia as transgressive and transcendant. An almost Cageian-like attitude to repetition is at play here, a stylistic device that reflects that choice of title - riffs cycle, mantras repeat, and off the songs spiral into the infinite infinite like a post-industrial raga. It's brilliantly entracing stuff, at once both locked in and implaccably free-form. Just as you think you've a handle on these guys, they flick a switch and turn to smoke.
FFO: Psychic TV, Spacemen 3, TV Personalities, Index For Working Musik, Cuneiform Tabs
