Here is a translated review...
HILLS "FRID" (Rocket Recordings)
West coast of southern Sweden, on the delta of the river Gˆta. Here it was created the main junction for the trading and the cultural exchange of the Germanic tribe of Gutar with the rest of the known world. Here takes shape Gˆteborg where today born inebriating flakes of supernatural noises fainted into a fiery mass of impulses and screeching, corrugated metals, altered genius. Psych-prog flowing like a cosmic dust. Hills music.
Not by chance the geographical position plays an important function in the artistic genesis. A fundamental access to appropriate the new knowledge, traffics, thoughts, different hemispheres, notions of another knowledge. The relationships between western philosophy and oriental spirit are ancient theme. Wherein probably, the best way to face it is the connection between the study and the development of romantic-hindustani dictates, as it can foresee from the notes of "Frid". Listen and lose oneself in this fourth album of Hills represents a travel beyond the mind boundaries, wedge oneself through dimensionless specifications, through miasmatic nourishments deserving of a stellar mastery. A mixture in which the influences are multiple and where the expansion of the talent, is closer to art-rock themes, able to summon a much wider number of listeners. Compared with the elements of first recordings, especially the beautiful 'Master Sleeps', we find the same womb cloned by kraut Can style or the endless 'west coast' sparks transformed in acid-space by Wooden Ships structures. But particularly an alive indo-european breath, full of folk with charm and chaos mixtures, a classic of middle east lands. After the legendary performance at Liverpool Psych Fest in 2014 the creative path restarts. The statement into the EP "Psych For Sore Eyes vol.2", the same year, to recreate even the features and the best moments in the experimentation of the minstrel Ian Anderson, an awesome buzz concentrated by a wild ride full of a vitriolic and enchanted fire. Indeed, 'Montelius V‰g' was frenzied movement joined to aesthetic and spiritual concepts.
The new album "Frid" seems to an infinite impressionistic 'Sister Ray' with the sitar and the flute that replace the John Cale viola, in which the arteries pump cosmic flows with swirling repetitiveness, devastating guitar solos delivered by a trance-fuzz at the limit of the mediumistic, aesthetic of obsession and impulsiveness produced by the incessant repetition of drones and sonic oscillations. Six titles, six defaced pictures, where seems vibrates a knife derived by Paul Whitehead to recreate the contrast of pastoral climate with the more violent and internal one.
'Kollektiv' seems the manifesto that introduces any reference to inflections sixties that are linked with the artwork album for an interesting correlation to 'Sov Gott Rose-Marie' of the legendaries swedish progsters International Harvester, then became Harvester and at last Tr‰d Gr‰s Och Stenar.
'Drone National' immerses itinerants scents of psychedelic lineage, the sitar mixes oriental lines and marvels astrals. Hypnotism, mystical syllables and constant oscillation. Fluctuating keyboards and superhuman lyricisms draw 'Anukthal Is Here', religious contemplation of airy chords until that the electric spirit possess the soul. A jewel, a carpet of pure silk interweaved by celestial hands. Tibetan Buddhism in 'Milarepa': wizard, poet, religious. The flute looks like a spell to get rid of the presence of multiform demons, beneficial doctrines, lonely meditations. Tuckerian percussions and hourglass drums. Vehicle or instrument of thought or of thinking, here is the westernized ecstasy of 'Och Solen Sankte Sig Rod', an endless narcosis between terracotta tubblaa, cymbals, swirling bass, the guitar scratch seems to whisper like an infernal bansuri until that the inextinguishable faith brings it back to the way of light. Atavic wah wah and overshadowed litany, time is coming: 'Death Will Find A Way' is an exalted singing where the sound takes on an idyl and the poison becomes a tinsel.
"Frid", peace. The creative journey symbolizes another time the way to accomplish to arrive to the higher stages of the interiority that takes to liberation. Hills aspire to go over the complexity of what they express. Under an egis of musical genres that include progressive, ethno, psych and a further diffusion of heavy pills into dark power, they experiment a continuous improvisation and connect the universe without boundaries, the indistinct of the figure and the infinite of awareness.
