Brighton’s Wax Machine are a band so steeped in the kernel of psychedelic seep that there’s every indication they may have slipped through a side door in space-time and sprouted anew a few years back on the UK coast. However, for all intents and purposes it’s best to believe that they truly sprang from the fertile mind of Brazilian-born, Italian/English-raised Lau Ro (Guitar/Vocals). Lau’s international upbringing served as the wellspring for some of the eclectic taste that informs the core of Wax Machine’s sound. Their debut album Earthsong of Silence will be released 20th March on Beyond Beyond is Beyond.
Today the band share the first single, “Shade” which premiered on Clash who said “get some of that harmony with the cosmos.”
Lau Ro explains “In my current understanding, ‘Shade’ is about using mantra and repetition as a means of manifestation, both on a personal and social level. It’s coming home to that place within, where one is in harmony with the cosmos, moving beyond the individual self and realising one’s small part within the macrocosm. It’s about coming home to nature, becoming whole through the embrace of the Earth.”
The video was created by Gabriela Bran who says “On hearing the song for the first time I was entranced. My initial process began by meditating on the song. The words, I wrote out and stuck up on my walls and the sounds, I listened to until I knew every beat.
Each time I replayed the song I found new sounds and different instruments. It quickly brought images to my mind as I listened and visualised myself in the Shade, described by the lyrics. That then inspired me to put the images I saw in mind, down on paper and into the video.”
On their new album that eclecticism incorporates Spiritual Jazz, Krautrock, Tropicália and Library Music while filtering them all through a psychedelic lens. It borrows from dreams and trances to give life to a psychedelic experience that feels hauntingly familiar, yet strikingly new. On his journey Lau met up with fellow Brighton musicians and birthed Wax Machine with members from local bands Rokurokubi, Hill, Strange Cages and singer-songwriter Woody Green. Ro’s fellow travelers include Isobel Jones, who adds soaring vocals and provides Wax Machine’s entrancing flute work alongside Toma Sapir who locks down a groove on the kit that keeps Earthsong of Silence from floating into the ether.
The band’s laid down a couple of great EPs over the last couple of years, awash in the same smoke curls that surrounded Ivory, Fifty Foot Hose, and The United States of America — a distinctly more nuanced niche than most of their peers are filling. They pick up right where their last EP’s title track, “Mind Palace,” left them —growing into the mossy eiderdown of the English countryside, delightfully dosed and drenched in the sun that filters through the trees. The flutes, wandering guitars, and jazz touches come rising through the mists once again, but this time they’ve given the album an aura of mystique not quite present in their early offerings.
Along with a guiding hand from Kikagaku Moyo’s Go Kurasawa behind the boards, they add a new dimension to their sound, further exploring both their English psych-folk roots and mining a deeper appreciation for a West Coast sound dipped in sun, peace and serenity.
Their sound coalesces within Earthsong of Silence. They skirt the blade like full force psych-folk warriors, but also skitter through more OUT territory — clattering odysseys that resolve to map nowhere and everywhere are nestled next to propulsive grooves that lap at head-nodding ecstasy. As they slide into the second half of the album they infuse the turbulent “Turiya” with the spirit of Hapshash & The Coloured Coat if they’d been produced by Joe Byrd.
Wax Machine are on both sides of the mirror, and with Earthsong of Silence they’re showing the rest of us the way through. The only question remains if you’ll follow them.
The band will be on tour later this year, more dates to be announced shortly:
Jan 17th – Lewes Psych Fest – Westgate Chapel
21st March – Hope and Ruin – Brighton
22nd March – Wedgewood Rooms – Portsmouth
29th March – The Tyne Bar – Newcastle
11th April – Helgi’s – London