Review: Perhaps ‘7.0’
Need a burst of sonic sunshine to kick start the run in to a possible summer indoors? You’ve come to the right place my friend. 7.0, is the latest release from Perhaps, a musical collective who’ve been quietly beavering away and releasing snapshots of their ecstatic sounds sporadically over the last few years.
This latest one really feels like the musical equivalent of a polaroid from a summer festival, which given the amount of guests involved – members of Earthless and Acid Mothers Temple among many more contribute here – it may as well be.
I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, but if you close your eyes while listening, it’s very easy to imagine yourself at some massive field based shindig somewhere. The inherently airy synths that drift in and out seem to radiate shimmering light. Layers of echoing guitars seem to overlap and pass each other as if they were floating towards one another through the air from different stages at a festival.
It’s as if they’ve distilled the spirit, if not entirely the sound, of the rave era, and added it to a cocktail of krautrock and vintage psych rock…
The constant gently funky rhythm just engenders the mental imagery of people in a large space, dancing hypnotised in the heat. It’s as if they’ve distilled the spirit, if not entirely the sound, of the rave era, and added it to a cocktail of krautrock and vintage psych rock, then made the Happy Mondays drink it. Hell, even the pyramid on the artwork immediately brings the Glastonbury Festival’s ‘Pyramid’ stage to mind.
Trance rock might be the term I’m looking for here. For all the surreality of it, the different hints of instruments swirling in the mix (did I just hear a glockenspiel?), what Perhaps are doing has a euphoric element where they subtly build over that core repetition, subtly morphing from one phrase to another, all while the rhythm remains constant and easy to lock into.
In the right mood, and particularly with headphones, it can be spellbinding and lets the mind take flight. I mean, it also totally works as a sound track for doing menial household chores too if you just want some pretty background music, but that’s probably not what they intended it for.
Label: Riot Season
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp
Scribed by: Jamie Grimes
