ninehertz

Forty-one minutes. One track. I may have to hand in my doom licence when I say this, but I can't just jump into this listen at any time, I need to find space to approach tracks of such length for the first occasion, particularly when reviewing. You can't half listen or play a few of the tracks and come to the rest later. It needs its own slot in your day, free of other distraction - particularly when its experimental psych, with all the nuances that you then expect to encounter.

This is what Unbelievable Lake, a trio from Belfast and South Derry have crafted and compiled here, focussing on the "liminality, identity and the suffocating paralysis of Northern Ireland society." I prepare the mood, am in the zone, press play. It's a jangly, atmosphere-building opening that greets you, before it settles for the vocals, but with an electricity in the air. It has a gong-bath meditative-drone quality to it, but more than your run of the mill ambient drone, a sense - an anticipation - built by the guitars which subtly toy with the spaces at all times, which have a prog edge to them even without actually going into that realm. Strange, but it is an alluring environment that you find yourself in, that Unbelievable Lake have terraformed around you.

The comparisons you'd be drawn to make will not be of a surprise - Om, A-Sun Amissa, Hawkwind, Pink Floyd - but without being able to define why, I have No Mouth... feels different, possibly by drawing from each elements on the drone, psych, prog and ambient spectrum into something their own. The psych prog inflections of those latter reference points show their head when it drops down and rebuilds from around the thirteen minute mark, the guitars becoming playful sparks from out of the clouded stratosphere. It balances its invention against its metronomic repetition well to get the best of both, when it feels like it might meander a little something will take your ear anew; when it may push off too far you can find yourself dragged back into drone trance state readily enough.

It gains some impetuous around 25 minutes in to push it into modern day Hey Colossus worlds crossed with Gnod's gnarly mysticism. It doesn't last, of course, this is a journey with a backdrop of evolving vistas; the minimal approach thereafter still tense with excitement for what may come. Its ending has the sense that they're losing grip, this far in, energies expended, a madness not too far away.

There's a been something of a return to this approach to drone in recent years, which is magnificent to see especially as it has been built upon and subtly reimagined. Ireland and the UK have seen their share of this fertile and excitingly fresh approach - with the likes of Orme, Teleost and fellow Cursed Monk labelmates True Home at the heavier end, or the ambient psych imaginings of A-Sun Amissa or Dead Sea Apes. And now we have I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream which stands out due to its unique composition, a beacon from the experimental and psychedelic end of this brave new world of doom drone. This feels more than just an album, they have created a world, and with the submission of the requisite space to give to it, it's a wonderful place to explore.