(2021) Bardo Pond - Volume 1  


Review:
Super rare self-released recordings from 2000, from the Philadelphia psych rockers; a must-have insight into their long, strange trips. Bardo Pond are a long-running psychedelic rock band from Philadelphia. During the ’90s, they were the flagship band of Philly’s “Psychedelphia” space rock movement, which also included the likes of Aspera, Asteroid No. 4, the Azusa Plane, and tangentially the Lilys. Explicitly drug-inspired – their titles were filled with obscure references to psychedelics – they favored lengthy, deliberate sound explorations filled with all the hallmarks of modern-day space rock: droning guitars, thick distortion, feedback, reverb, and washes of white noise. Hints of blues structure often cropped up but Bardo Pond’s earliest roots lay with avant-garde noisemakers from the realm of free jazz and from New York’s no wave movement and downtown Knitting Factory scene. As their musicianship improved, the band gradually incorporated more traditional influences, but maintained their affinity for the outer fringes of music. Thus, their brand of space rock echoed not just genre staples like Hawkwind and Pink Floyd, but jam-happy Krautrockers (Amon Düül, Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel, Guru Guru) and experimental indie heroes (Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and especially Spacemen 3). With a steady stream of releases on Matador, including Lapsed (1997) and Dilate (2001), the band stuck around long enough to draw comparisons to the spacier, noisier contingent of post-rockers, like Mogwai and Flying Saucer Attack. Since 2000, they’ve released a numerically titled series of improvisation sessions in addition to their proper studio albums. Subsequent releases have arrived on labels such as ATP… AllMusic





Track Listing:
1. Sit, Sleep (08:20)
2. Cymbals (07:54)
3. Syn Dept. (06:05)
4. Before (10:02)
5. Into Something Else (13:43)


Media Report:
Genre: post-rock, psychedelic rock
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits