Album Review : Hypnodrone Ensemble – ‘The Problem Is in the Sender – Do Not Tamper with the Receiver’: An epic drone-rock statement from the Berlin-based collective.

So here’s the real sound of the psychedelic underground filtering through once more. Beyond retro, pastiche or nostalgia, forward thinking, lifeblood music that connects the pathways of cosmic rock, kosmische, trance and improv, part of the essential root system that feeds so many derivatives. Experimental guitarists Aidan Baker and Eric Quach have been injecting their creative energy into this network for over a decade now via solo work, in bands and other guises (check in with Nadja, Caudal, Tavare and thisquietarmy) plus as the main drivers steering Hypnodrone Ensemble. This perennial collective alone have clocked up vast soundscape mileage with a catalogue of expansive post-psych albums and now comes release number ten, ‘The Problem Is In The Sender – Do Not Tamper With The Receiver’.

This time around Baker and Quach are joined by regular Ensemble contributor Gareth Sweeney on bass with the usual Hypnodrone essential, a triple drum unit of Fiona Mackenzie, Angela Muñoz Martinez and Sara Neidorf. The new album also sees an intriguing extension to Hypnodrone’s established instrumental modus, welcoming experimental vocalist Lane Shi Otayonii into their cosmos. So does this mean this time around Hypnodrone Ensemble do songs? Well in some ways yes, in the same way that Damo/Malcolm era Can did. Otayonii’s voice adds an agile, probing pathway through the Ensemble’s deep electric drones and tidal rhythms. It’s another portal which allows the listener to make their way into the album’s mesmerising otherworld.

Perhaps significantly Otayonii’s singing is central to album’s rumbling elemental opener, Transit. It’s a track with a mystical momentum, swirling Amon Düül thermals, smouldering sustained guitar, quivering synths and an understated recurrent bass palpitation. Within the rhythmic maelstrom, the extraordinary vocals cut through then submerge, part devotional, part shamanistic, a timbre rich blend of throat sung dynamics and tonal agility as arresting as the great Mari Boine.

What this first track reveals is a sense of cohesion around Hypnodrone Ensemble’s work on ‘The Problem Is In The Sender – Do Not Tamper With The Receiver’. Here is a project that releases an equal balance of concert recordings and studio iterations but this album seems to represent an amalgam of these two contexts. Recorded in a single day by the septet at Punctum in Prague during a break on their 2023 European tour, it captures a group who had already built an uncanny, shared intuition on their preceding live dates. Now on this recording these developing relationships come into sharper focus and the subtlest structures emerge.

Maybe it’s on Desdemona that this synergy most clearly expresses itself. Unfolding around a Mingus-deep walking bassline, the shimmering shoegaze dimension extends, weeping with slide guitars and tingling strings along the way. Otayonii’s vocal chant returns as a melodic fulcrum to give the track a song-crafted familiarity.

Of course, Hypnodrone Ensemble under the guidance of overt experimentalists Aidan Baker and Eric Quach repurpose any hint of formalisation into an inspiring twist for their ever-progressive music. As if to respond to the risks of convention Underdogs brings a fluid ambient overtone to the set. From the fluttering snares to the periodic electronic chimes, the track unwinds with a new age delicacy. Things seem minimal until the stalking tom toms urge the piece into an area of ‘Monster Movie’ intensity. Here Hypnodrone Ensemble engage in their irresistible cosmic jam overdrive.

But there’s a dramatic awareness to this album which raises it above any long-form psych-rock meandering. On ‘The Problem Is In The Sender – Do Not Tamper With The Receiver’ Hypnodrone Ensemble readily step beyond self-indulgence with a real communicative power. A track like Alchemia draws lucid descriptive moments, from the tense jangling guitar motifs to Otayonii’s emotional almost Gregorian chant. There’s a Godspeed gravitas at work through the song as it climbs a narrative path towards an inevitable crescendo.

Not that this necessarily marks the album’s conclusion. In comes the twenty five minute ‘bonus’ track Punctum, a coda which seizes the Ensemble in a Prague studio and preserves the magic. All the Hypnodrone elements are there: the craning guitars; the suggested melodies; the locomotive rhythmic gears; the vocal gymnastics, the stratospheric scale of everything. It’s as if ‘The Problem Is In The Sender – Do Not Tamper With The Receiver’ is getting handed over to the listener to engage with the music in whatever way they will. See you on the other side.

Get your various formats of ‘The Problem Is In The Sender – Do Not Tamper With The Receiver’ by Hypnodrone Ensemble from your local record store or direct from the labels (Katuktu Collective, Cruel Nature, Wolves and Vibrancy, WV Sorcerer) HERE