Khan - That Fair and Warlike Form // Return to Dust
Full Contact Safari Records – 2025
Rock, Psych, Stoner
Rated: *****
They’re blowing up! Or already did so? Either way, seeing Khan at Sonic Whip this past year was again magical. And after hearing their new two track, 45 minute long That Fair and Warlike Form // Return to Dust album, I can’t wait to see them again! Magic…
It’s what these Melbourne three do. Magic. There’s this moment, deep into the first track of That Fair and Warlike Form // Return to Dust, where time starts to flow at a different speed and seems to fold in on itself. Guitars swell like the rising tide, a pulse like the heart of something ancient underneath and a haunting synth has you surfing across the edges. No longer a sound, but a presence. And you can feel your heart start to grow and this is where Khan now thrives, in the space between all the surging energies, between the fury and the stillness, the chaos and the clarity.
That moment, out of time, shows that the Melbourne three, Josh Bills (vocals, guitar, keys), Will Homan (bass), and Beau Heffernan (drums) are no longer writing songs. They are building landscapes. Inventing worlds. And each of the two over twenty minute long pieces are a journey, through a magical and vast terrain. From desolate plains of clean guitar and ambient textures, to volcanic eruptions of sludge and post-metal force of nature. Heavy is as heavy comes, but this is not just heavy, it’s deeply meditative, out of body experience music, cinematic and so otherworldly beautiful.
On opener That Fair and Warlike Form you can drift endlessly and still feel the bands resistance to go into a freak out jam. Instead they build deliberately, layering each emotion, texture and riff with purpose and intent. The vocals, clean, solemn and commanding. Guiding you like a shaman through the desert, showing you the way like a dreaming track storyteller, bringing forth understanding and acceptance.
Return to Dust follows and with equal weight it evokes all of the above, below and beyond. Cosmic and earthy, as synths shimmer and riffs collapse like crumbling stars at the end of eternity. Echoing not just the ancient or the future, but all the magic that has every been around. There’s so much gravitas surrounding this record that one might assume this record wasn’t made at all, it was unearthed, conjured into existence. And now that it is here, it has become a world unto itself, one to live in, revisit and slowly absorb. One passage at a time, for all eternity…
(Written by JK)
Khan's Creatures on the Stoner HiVe Top Countdown of 2023
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