Record Review – NYMPH – New Millenium Prayer
The good folks over at Northern Spy Records have just put out a headspinning trip of an album from freaky New York noisemakers NYMPH, which is worthy of your attention if hypnotic, genre-hopping psych jams are your scene.
New Millenium Prayer is an album in the classic sense, feeling more like a single coherent piece broken into movements than simply a collection of songs. “Beyond” greets the listener with a restless bass line and marching percussion before laying down a hypnotic central guitar riff that battles for space with exploratory soloing, wordless vocal interjections and the occasional flash of saxophone skronk. “Beyond” lays the record’s groundwork over the course of 12 minutes that never feel as long as 12 minutes, presenting many of the sounds and motifs that the band will warp and toy with over the subsequent three tracks before sliding gracefully into a subdued acoustic coda.
“Battle Funk” feels like New Millenium Prayer‘s true centerpiece. After its opening blast of saxophone squall, the song repeatedly builds up and breaks down its momentum with handclaps and “yay-yuh” exclamations that give way to full-on noise freakouts, then unexpectedly settle back into a groove. It’s an alternately tense and joyous experience of a song that keeps you consistently on your toes.
The droning “Raag Mon” is the record’s pause to catch its breath. A bed of synth soundscapes characterize its opening minutes, delaying the entrance of drums and guitars until the halfway mark. The song floats along in its own sort of druggy haze, never adhering to anything resembling a traditional rhythm. Its abstract guitar shredding becomes the central focus, before the song mutates seamlessly into the closing title track. An insistent drum pattern materializes with an intricate bass underpinning. Crisp guitar lines join the cries of an electric organ and the occasional wailing vocal as the song progresses into an expansive, killer jam.
One often hesitates to review an album by means of the lazy track-by-track breakdown, but New Millennium Prayer strikes me as an record that justifies this sort of walk-through. Even at a relatively brief 40 minutes, the record feels huge, with all of NYMPH’s eight (or more?) members making their contributions to its complex and colorful sonic palette known. It’s an excursion through krautrock rhythms, bursts of free-jazz noise and mesmerizing guitar work, among innumerable other things. For all its complexities though, New Millennium Prayer is also remarkably accessible. It pulls together a broad spectrum of obscure influences into an exuberant final product that’s both a blast to listen to and unlike just about any other record you’ll hear this year.
More info and a stream of “Battle Funk”
