The artwork on this new release by Grant Beyschau has a staring at the sun feeling. The text and colour gradient have a blurred disorientating quality, like the whole thing is a fleeting moment as light bounces through a lens offering a glimpse into some psychedelic realm.
This fuzzed out headiness quickly finds its sonic equivalent in the expanding universe underpinning the 11-minute opener PLL. A droning buzzing organ slowly growing tiny active edges, before grouping into droplets of activity. A distant rumble of chatter like someone by your side, back in reality, that’s oblivious to your internal bliss…
Coronation buzzes like a heat warped tape reel from Terry Riley’s studio as it pulses and stretches before disappearing into a malfunctioning play head (which Beyschau tells us is a genuine tape failure mid zone out). The wonderfully titled Barefoot in the Head feels like little more than rising heat forming a mirage, a hanging curtain of strange energy.
It’s clear, 3 tracks into this album, that Beyschau is in full zero gravity mode here. Whilst the normal sense of deep kosmiche drips off everything, this is light years from the thundering spacey magnificence of last year’s solo Wooden Flower, an album that made our ‘best of…’, or his group activities in the equally superb Myrrors.
In fact, based on the intimate quality of the music, Munds Spring feels like the Arizonian is simply delighting in the joy of playing for himself at home, a form of meditation. Limited to what he has to hand and recorded live directly onto a two-track tape. This album originally seeped out with no fanfare 4 years ago, but whatever the reasons for its rebirth now, it feels like a perfect mental balm for these ongoing strange times.
This album continues with the snaking sax and thick smudges of Nama, a full 9 minutes of intoxicating spirals and atmospheric ribbons. The title track, Munds Spring feels like woozy, somehow lopsided sunbeams as trippy flutes half reveal themselves in watery reflections.
The closing track Annular Rings immediately feels somewhat busier with bird song and odd, almost vocal elements folding over another warm drone. Slowly aural steps form in the haze as the album gently dissolves.
Undoubtedly the 40 minutes that Munds Spring beams out your speakers and can drift in a few different ways. It’s highly atmospheric and with repeated listens, there’ll be times it will totally pass you by, but you’ll also quickly see, somehow, sometimes, when you allow yourself to be consumed, it will open up into absolute beauty.
Whilst it’s the most subtle music we’ve yet heard from Beyschau, it’s another hugely impressive and heady capsule of his work.
Munds Springs is out now on cassette and download
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