By Majbritt Levinsen. I’ve had the worst writers block! I haven’t been able to put words to anything I’ve been listening to lately and I haven’t been listening to much music either.
Yes, this is some of the best instrumental heavy psychedelic dreamy stoner space desert rock I've heard in a long time!
The intro "Nada Brahma" is filled with meditative grooves and intertwined spoken words which gently prepares your mind for the journey to inner and outer space you are about to depart on. After the intro the massive "The Beard of Macroprosopus" wells over you like a hot desert wind, and you are carried off to an exotic location where you can almost visualize ghostly belly dancers under a star bestowed night sky. It is transcendentally spacey, intense, organic and almost like a live jam, and this can be said about the entire album.
"Across the Luster of the Desert Into the Polychrome Hills" offers a slow and gentle build up where the percussion sends my mind off on a trippy time-travel back to a time when even I was hardly born. It all ends in a sonic adventure with intergalactic space cruising mode activated.
Both "Starry Wisdom" and "Pillars in the Void" starts out with a slower pace, but where "Starry Wisdom" takes on a happy playful groove that eventually descends down into a slower and darker atmosphere, "Pillars In The Void" takes a darker path right from the beginning. That path takes a wonderful turn around the 6 minute mark and shoots you in hyper-speed way out past the terrestrial planets, out towards the gas and ice giants.
"The Black Iron Prison and the Palm Tree Garden" closes off the album with some slow all engulfing dark psychedelia that will make you wonder if you should headbang in slowmotion or meditate. I think I did a combo and enjoyed every second of it.
All this measures up to some great psychedelic space desert rock with a warm and fuzzy aura and a vast galactic scenery.
INN:IS is a trio based in New Paltz, New York, with Kevin Halcott on guitar, Michael Lutomski on drums and Tommy Guerrero on bass. Special guest on track 2 and 6 is Rick Birmingham on fiddle, he also produced the album together with the band, and also recorded and mixed the album.
If in doubt: Our Birth Is But A Sleep And A Forgetting is a highly recommended listen!