Tag: space rock

Cracked Machine at The Southgate

If many space-rock acts have more band member changes than most other musicians change their socks, Hawkwind are the exemplar of the tendency. There might be some scientific theory for this, equally there may not. What is more probable is that it is an occupational hazard for members to get as lost in space as Dr. Zachary Smith. Cracked Machine, here tonight to provide the entertainment at the Devizes’ Southgate, are also prone to getting through some keyboardists and drummers, though if the lead guitarist-frontman and bassist remain steadfast, this propensity is not the only element to them comparable with Hawkwind, and that’s a good thing in my opinion…..

If you’ve any hazy recollection of a maintaining a horizontal posture in a bedroom for the duration of a scratched long player with a gatefold sleeve, staring at patterns either in the mould on the wall or blu-tacked Mandelbrot set posters covering them up, in a smoky haze proportionate to your memories and stenching of wood burner and red Leb, whether only with a bong for a friend or a few stragglers with no more conversation than the bong, save a few comments like “oh wow, man, can you see it?!” then Cracked Machine is the band to seek such fond memories, and bring them to the forefront of your fragile cerebral cortex, through a preponderance of sublime bassy rock bliss.

For if space-rock is a natural progression from Led Zeppelin, Flyod or Hendrix’s overextended bridges of swirling sonic electric guitar skullduggery and wobbly sound effects, Cracked Machine nailed it some years ago and show no sign of altering their methodology. In fact, the tendency is to get harder. Though Hawkwind allowed vocals, Frome’s Ozric Tentacles may be a better comparison for space-rock aficionados.

In this, it’s been some years since I’ve caught up with them live, despite reviewing albums one, two and three. It was left up to Ben Niamor and Andy Fawthrop to review their last two appearances at the Southgate, respectively in November 2022, and October 2018. For me, I will always have the 2019 Devizes Street Festival, when Pete of Vinyl Realm paid and hosted our local stage idea on the corner of St John’s and townsfolk slow-roasted on deckchairs while Cracked Machine’s definitive sound caressed their very souls. But while Cracked Machine’s lineup has changed since then, their devotion to the sound and ability to knock it out to the shimmering rafters, isn’t. 

In that, I knew what I was letting myself in for. It was another one of those birthday things for me, which always seems to charge me with ever-increasing speed. There wasn’t actually much else happening in town Saturday night, much I would’ve missed this for a wanton jig to Motown or some-other such-like, elsewhere. Suppose I had the option to go down the Bin afterwards, but as it was advised by Vince Bell who I met on the bus, such a recommendation had to be taken with a pinch of salt, and was best at 52 to get a taxi direct to my duvet! For a while there though, it was a party, as it is in The Southgate, with it’s no frills hospitable atmosphere, affordable range of drinks, and general “proper pub” tenet. The affectionately dubbed “Gate” doesn’t change like band members of a space-rock band, and it’s a cracking party there more often than not.

Tom Harris kicked off the proceedings with his guitar, belting vocals and the expressions of a hyperalgesic at the dentist. Impossible to fault, Tom delivers the banter as well as his songs, divides covers equally from originals, so if he’s not charming an emotive blues ballad of his own pen, it’s perhaps a scatological one or he’s made amusing entertainment from a slyly chosen cover. Rob Thomas’ Santana summer smoothie reflects the unusually clement climate for March, and Tenacious D’s hilarious Tribute was surely perfect for Tom, and he handled them with might, until drummer Gary Martin arrived from a support slot at the Pump with Clock Radio, and the main act was completed and ready to rock.

They didn’t come up for air throughout these lengthy compositions of prog rock formulated instrumentals, and as a result of not taking advantage of the customary break, their set ran off too early. Landlord Dave encouraged them to pull something else out of the bag, saving the necessity of the crowd’s cliche call for an encore, which you know would’ve happened anyway. To which they considered how to continue, yet what elapsed was another drifting spacey masterpiece of fifteen minutes or more. We loved it.

If the template of Cracked Machine’s sound is arguably narrow, and narrative is vague due to only being expressions of instruments, their nature is stylised, and works wonders, creating a spellbinding ambience. Cracked Machine are always welcomed by the Southgate regulars, for even if the pub strives to diversify, it’s electric blues and prog rock which they favour, and this, with those wobbly keyboard noises and subtly placed samples, is simply a psychedelic progression from it which is decades old, yet Cracked Machine proves it’s worth in the modern world.

Space rock, or acid rock, a direct descendant of Pink Floyd and Zep’s tolkienesque The Battle of Evermore, also acts as the bridge from rock to electronica and ambient house, a bridge the guarding troll usually confounds most rock subgenres with a riddle and renders them unable to cross, that’s why I love it, and that’s while I will only have good things to say about Cracked Machine.

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Wormwood; Cracked Machine’s New Album

A third instalment of space rock swirls and cosmic heavy duty guitar riffs was unleashed in January from our homegrown purveyors of psychedelia, Cracked Machine. Plug in and prepare for takeoff, Wormwood continues on their already stunning discography of celestial shenanigans….

Pretty much where we left off with the Gates of Keras, Wormwood offers that prog-rock gorgeousness, as beefy as Bovril on the boil, heavy-laden guitar riffs beguiling the stoner or non-stoner alike; you need not skin up to be immersed in this. Pink Floyd’s moments of drifting ambience, meets contemporary likes of the Ozric Tentacles here, it’s a trip more than an album, flowing from track to track and taking you along for a ride of euphoria and headbanging moments, in equal measure. Someone, pass me a lava lamp, pronto.

All instrumental, and mentally metal, gorge yourself stupid, encased in its epic journeys. By its very flowing nature, it makes it tricky to say much more as a way of review, I found the summit track, Eigenstate particularly ‘aving it, and when it falls into eight minutes of Return to Anatres, you’re drifting back through clouds of guitar riffs as solid as tungsten. Yet, if space-rock as a subgenre has welded into the likes of Spiritized or Spaceman 3, Cracked Machine are more likeable to Hawkwind, which in my most humblest of opinions is no bad thing. Wormwood doesn’t go on whim of experimentation or try to slide anything unexpected into it, it just ripples along a course like a stream. Although intros like that of Desert Haze can cause you to assume things are going to get all trancy-techno, it doesn’t stop at that riverbank.

You may have caught them down the Gate for their album release show, I was gutted to have had to miss it. You may have seen them before, such as the year Vinyl Realm hosted a stage at Devizes Street Festival and all took flight from the Market Place to erect deckchairs at St John’s and lie in mega bliss. Such is the accomplished Cracked Machine, forging space-rock into a new era, yet not forgetting its rich history. Put this on and be submerged. 

Here’s their LinkTree, fill your boots, open your third eye…..

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Atari Pilot’s Right Crew, Wrong Captain

Only gamers of a certain age will know of The Attic Bug. Hedonistic socialiser, Miner Willy had a party in his manor and wanted to retire for the evening. Just how a miner in the eighties could’ve afforded a manor remains a mystery; but that erroneous flaw was the tip of the iceberg. In this ground-breaking ZX Spectrum platform game, the Ribena Kid’s mum appeared to guard Willy’s bedroom, tapping her foot impatiently. Touch this mean rotund mama and she’d kill you, unless you’d tided every bit of leftovers from the bash. Turned out, months after the game’s release, one piece, in the Attic, was impossible to collect. Until this glitch became public knowledge, players were fuming as an intolerable bleeping version of “If I was a Rich Man,” perpetually looped them to insanity.

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I swear, if I hear that tune, even some forty years on I cringe; the haunting memory of my perseverance with the impossible Jetset Willy. Music in videogames has come a long way, thank your chosen deity. Yet in this trend of retrospection I terror at musical artists influenced by these cringeworthy clunky, bleeping melodies of early Mario, or Sonic soundtracks; like techno never happened, what are they thinking of? It was with caution, then, when I pressed play on the new single from Swindon band “Atari Pilot.” I had heard of them, but not heard them. I was pleasantly surprised.

For starters, this is rock, rather than, taken from the band’s name, my preconceived suspicion I would be subject to a lo-fi electronica computer geek’s wet dream. While there is something undeniably retrospective gamer about the sonic synth blasts in Right Crew, Wrong Captain, it is done well, with taste and this track drives on a slight, space-rock tip. Though comparisons are tricky, Atari Pilot has a unique pop sound. No stranger to retrospection, with echoey vocals and a cover akin to an illustration from Captain Pugwash, still this sound is fresh, kind of straddling a bridge between space-rock and danceable indie. Oh, and it’s certainly loud and proud.

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A grower, takes a few listens and I’m hooked. Their Facebook blurb claims to “change the rules of the game, take the face from the name, trade the soul for the fame…I’m an Atari Pilot.” After their debut album “Navigation of The World by Sound” in 2011, a long hiatus took in a serious cancer battle. But Atari Pilot returned in 2018 with an acoustic set at the Swindon Shuffle. The full band gathered once again the following year with live shows and a new set of “Songs for the Struggle.” This will be the title of their forthcoming follow-up album, “When we were Children” being the first single from it, and now this one, “Right Crew, Wrong Captain,” is available from the end of July.

Its theme is of isolation, “and defiance, after the ship has gone down,” frontman Onze informs me. There’s a haunting metaphor within the intelligent lyrics, “you nail yourself to the mast and you pray that everything lasts, you just want to know hope floats, when the water rises, coz it’s gonna rise, take a deep breath and count to ten, sink to the bottom and start again.”

There’s a bracing movement which dispels predefined ideas of indie and progresses towards something encompassing a general pop feel, of bands I’ve highlighted previously, Talk in Code and Daydream Runaways, Atari Pilot would not look out of place billed in a festival line-up with these acts, and would add that clever cross between space-rock with shards of the videogames of yore, yet, not enough to warrant my aforementioned fears of cringeworthy bleeps. Here’s hoping it’s “game over” for that genre. That said, thinking back, when you bought your Atari 2600, if you recall, oldie, you got the entire package of two joysticks and those circler controllers too, as standard; could you imagine that much hardware included with a modern console? Na, mate, one controller, you’ve got to buy others separately.

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So, if decades to come we have a band called X-Box or PlayStation Pilot, I’d be dubious, but Atari gave us quality, a complete package; likewise, with Atari Pilot!

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A Cracked Machine at the Gates of Keras

Don my headphones, chillax with a cider, and prepare my eardrums for a new album from our local purveyors of space-rock goodness; Cracked Machine is a wild ride….

There are few occasions when mellowed music truly suspends me in the moment, when it just exists in the air like oxygen and totally incarcerates and engulfs my psyche. Jah Shaka and ambient house rascals the Orb both achieved this a couple of dusks at Glastonbury, but the same with likewise happenings, I confess I was intoxicated on matter maturity caused me to long leave in my past!

The issue for any reborn psychedelic-head is pondering the notion, will it ever be the same again, will music and art tease my perception to quite the same degree. The sorry answer is no, unless your intransigent mate slips something in your drink. Yet it’s not all despair, with a sound as rich and absorbing as Cracked Machine, it’s doable without drugtaking shenanigans.

They proved this at the most fantastic day in Devizes last year, which was that bit more fantastic, when what was intended to be a bolt-on feature became the highlight of DOCA’s Street Festival. Funded and arranged by Pete and Jacki of Vinyl Realm, the second stage highlighted everything positive about local music; a historic occasion we’ll be harking on for some time yet. I nipped away briefly after Daydream Runaways stole the early part of the day. But where the lively indie-pop newcomers had roused the audience, I returned to witness a hypnotised crowd and a mesmerising ambience distilling the blistering summer air. Smalltalk was numbed, as if the area was suspended in time. A doubletake to confirm we were still perpendicular, sitting in deckchairs or slouching against a wall on the corner of Long Street and St Johns and not slipped through a time vortex to a Hawkwind set at a 1970 free-party love-in. I was beyond mesmerised, but not surprised.

For this is how it was with their impressive 2017 debut album, I, Cosmonaut, the soundscapes just drifted through me, as I causally drafted the review, reminding me of a smoky haze of yore, giggling in a mate’s bedroom, listening to Hawkwind’s Masters of Universe. Youth of my era though, were subjected to electronic transformation in music, which would soon engulf us. Rave culture cut our space-rock honeymoon short, though, Spaceman 3 were a precursor to the ambient house movement of the Orb, Aphex Twin and KLF, others changed their style, like Frome’s Ozric Tentacles merging into Eat Static, and a perpetually changing line-up for Hawkwind appeased the older rock diehards.

I love I, Cosmonaut, it manages to subtly borrow from electronica and trance, only enough to make it contemporary, but keep it from being classed as anything else other than space-rock. I felt their second album, The Call of the Void avoided this slice of Tangerine Dream, and submerged itself totally in the hard rock edge; bloody headbangers! Therefore, it’s a refreshing notion to note newly released Gates of Keras bonds the two albums and sits between them perfectly.

Again, there’s little to scrutinise as it rarely changes, it meanders, trundles me to a world beyond wordplay, as these completely instrumental tracks roll into one another, gorgeously. A Deep Purple styled heavy bass guitar may kick it off, yet the opening track Cold Iron Light takes me to the flipside of Floyd’s Meddle, with seven and half minutes of crashing drums and rolling guitar riffs. Temple of Zaum continues on theme, Ozrics-inspired funkier bassline, and we’re off on the drifting journey, splicing subtle influences. The Woods Demon, for example, stands out for particularly smooth almost Latino guitar riff, making it my personal fave. Yet Move 37 is heavier, upbeat, like the second album. Low Winter Sun is sublime blues-inspired, imagine Led Zeppelin created Satisfaction rather than the Stones, if you will.

Recorded back in November, this is eight lengthy soundscapes of pure bliss, and will guarantee you a safe trip. A signature album for a lonely lockdown of dark, yet emersed in a time of Tolkien-esque vibes and mandelbrot set fractal posters. If this was released in the mid-seventies-to early-eighties every spotty teenager would be inking their army surplus school bag with a biro-version of Cracked Machine’s logo. As it is, age taking its toll and all, I have no idea if this still happens, but doubt it. None of that matters, here is a matured era of the genre, only with a glimpse of how it once was. Nicely done.