- Genre: 'Alt/Country'
- Release Date: '10th December 2021'
Our Rating:
Anyone with even a passing awareness of Mr Bungle should know to expect weird shit from the band and its members, and so it is that Travis Duo – that’s Jarvis Earnshaw in collaboration with Trevor Dunn of Mr Bungle / Melvins among others have created, in the album ‘Hypnagogia’ a hybrid of Psychedelic Jazz / Avante-Garde / Experimental / Ethnic Jazz Fusion (although for a duo, they’ve got quite a roll-call of performers in the credits, including Devin Brahja Waldman (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thurston Moore, Notable Deaths) and drummer Niko Wood (Shake The Baby Til The Love Comes Out), as well as Daniel Carter (Yoko Ono, Jaco Pastorius, Yo La Tengo, Sun Ra) on saxophone and flute, and Sean McCaul (Philip Glass Ensemble Naqoyqatsi) contributing xylophone)
If you’re not sure you’re quite ready for a full album of it, they’re leading with ‘Hitherto’ as a single. It’s four and a half minutes of disorientating, trilling woodwind and rippling string and scrapes and drones and each element is probably delicate, soft, even pretty, but playing across one another in seemingly different keys and time signatures, the effect is rather less soothing and tranquil, and rather more headspinning, a kaleidoscopic, psychedelic feast of sound that lifts you out of your body and takes you far above it, onto another plane. It’s kinda fun if you’re willing to let go.
