THEY SOUND like they should be some great lost Moog-psych outfit from ’69, and weird and wonderful is definitely a touchstone for the Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band, be sure.
It’s the musical mind-melding of Yves Jarvis, whose album from last autumn, Sundry Rock Song Stock, was a really clever and rather ace melange of political teeth-baring, lighter-than-air folk songcraft and soulful melody, playful, oddball and the right amount of weird; and Romy Lightman, elsewhere part of sororal psych-folk explorers Tasseomancy.
Put the two together and what do we get? Well, if first single, “Elastic Band” is a touchstone, it’s gonna be music to prick up jaded ears; ideas tumbling forth from both in fusion, vocals knotting together in a breathy, mushroomy delirium, fuzz guitars caressing, a bass line that mazes and cycles and clicks, seeming to touch on Prince, Devendra Banhart, Pierre Henry, kicking them all forward into a new place. And yep, the accompanying video is pretty trippy too, as you can see for yourself below.
The album continues the homophonic play of the single – it’s called Banned, and it will be with us via ANTI- on June 25th.
It was recorded in the tranquil environment of the Tree Museum, an outdoor art gallery in rural Ontario – thus following the creative setting for Yves’ Sundry Rock Song Stock, also recorded out in verdant surroundings. Banned was put together over the course of a fortnight in a free-flowing stream of improvisation; go wild in the country, indeed.
We’re told that it is actually about letting your hair down, being free, reclaiming a little of that late-Sixties countercultural optimism; 15 songs obliquely and collectively celebrating naturalism, openness, and sexual liberation.
“There are archetypes associated with love and togetherness,” says Romi. “Then there’s a deeper way of being that sometimes isn’t documented. Our Ecstatic Band genuinely expresses that.
“It’s not only about a genre resonating and what came about musically – it’s about our love in collaboration with wind, trillium, plague days, moss and Precambrian rock.”
Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band’s Banned will be released by ANTI- digitally, on CD and on vinyl on June 25th; you can place your order here.
