Dead Sea Apes – Sixth Side Of The Pentagon
Since forming in 2009, instrumental Manchester trio Dead Sea Apes have long peddled evocative psychedelic echoes and doomed visions of delayed dub, but just like Peter Pan or Frankenstein, their new LP, the mind-bendingly titled Sixth Side Of The Pentagon, is a piece of art deserving of a sub-title, in this case something along lines of “ … or: When The Band Decided To Go Full Dub”. Studded with undulating excerpts taken from Spectral Domain’s closing track, their trademark heavy chug is now entirely done away with, confirming the seismic shift from that last LP to total slo-mo dub is complete.
Dead Sea Apes consequently now inhabit a region between meditation and cosmic bliss, insidious grooves bedecked with all manner of minimal space FX. Nimble bass fingering lays down thrumbing grooves, shards of guitar and skittering percussion making the most of the cavernous spaces around them. Ghostly licks hang in suspension, echoed out to infinity.
Many tracks are half-forgotten memories of others, making it unclear where one begins and another ends. As such, you can dip in and out of it as you please and largely find the narrative unchanged. Micro-details sign the way, though, if you look beyond the third dimension. Targeted blasts of aggression do the damage on “Lo Res”, for example, while flecks of patient, atmospheric beauty are teased out of the guitar on “Nerve Centre”, a track that otherwise deploys a vocal for the first time in the Dead Sea Apes repertoire, a barely-there turn from Hannah Grasskamp of Jungfrau that, along with a couple of mid-distance spoken-words from artist and writer Adam Stone, ensure these apes are still continuing on a path of intrepid evolution.
~Sixth Side Of The Pentagon is released 3rd April 2017 via the collaborative efforts of Cardinal Fuzz and Sky Lantern Records.~