Holy moly Trouble in Mind has another total burner on its hands! Holögrama's debut LP is motorik spacerock of the finest order. The one-man project of Francisco Borja of Spain, Holögrama has thus far put out a split record with We Are The Hunters and a few other digital or CD-R only releases before Waves, which is my first experience with the band, and what an experience it is!The LP, clocking at six songs in thirty four minutes, is an exercise in refined taste. My immediate thought is that there's no wasted time on the record - something exciting is going on at each moment, maybe a lead-up, a deep groove, a new instrumental part, or a climax. The central song "Pink Sky," manages to incorporate all of these, starting with a hypnotic bassline before adding in vocals, an impressive spindly, sci-fi guitar solo, spacey noise elements, and more. It's the longest track at nine minutes, but it's one-hundred percent engrossing and virtuosic.
And it's funny because immediately following its finish comes this lithe, bouncy organ part, kind of checking the listener to make sure he or she is not too complacent, but then a familiar bass groove enters the picture before Borja's vocals and a harpsichord complete the picture. It's a touching moment in a record that gets a lot of its power from a steady rhythmic dynamic and goes to show that Borja is in complete control of his pacing and mood.
I can't help but think of the record Mind! put out last year and that's because they're both spacerock bands from Spain, and they don't even sound all that similar because of different instrumentation. Holögrama's record is more electronic-based and willing to collapse into a groove, but on a personal level, it does make me wonder about other Spanish psych bands that I may not know. If you know of any I should check out, feel free to send me an e-mail or comment below!
