Spider Goat Canyon - Walking With Geordie
Self-released - 2026
Psychedelic, Noise, Doom, Improv
Rated: *****
About twenty years ago I got to review the first two studio albums by Australia's Spider Goat Canyon (with the members now residing in Melbourne and Wellington (New Zealand)) for the now long defunct Up Magazine, both garnering a whopping 9 out of 10 from yours truly. Afterwards they went off my radar at some point, so I was very happy to accidentally stumble across their latest release, titled 'Walking With Geordie', the second one derived from a late 2023 live and improvised studio jam session in Melbourne (the first one being 2025's Vozvrat Kirpicha where they were jamming together with their founding guitarist Steve Brick as a second axe slinger), with more to come according to the footnotes on their Bandcamp Page.
Good news all over and it doesn't stop there. The music on 'Walking With Geordie' is truly stunning and exists of title tracks Part I and II, together forming one big, improvised jam session that feels like a meticulously composed instrumental masterpiece. Every riff, ever rumbling bass line, every drum fill - it all feels likes it should be exactly where it is, laying down a meditative and hypnotizing soundscape of heavy rock goodness, with you as a listener being glued to a chair for every second of the way, jaw dropped, drool dripping in your lap. It says everything about the sheer craftsmanship and chemistry on display here.
Part I starts with some minimalist guitar notes that very slowly build towards greater things by starting a conversation with the toms while the bass is listening from the sideline, mumbling in itself, eager to join but doesn't quite seem to know how yet. Layers are being added, the pounding rises, the pace picks up ever so subtle and a melody slowly unfolds itself before the first real groove kicks in. A drowsy one, taking you on a journey to the subconscious part of your brain, and yet to be discovered parts of your core elements, slowly engulfing you with an abstract, transcendent and entrancing landscape before lifting you up, higher and higher, gears shifting while your misled feelings say otherwise. And it goes on and on for over 26 minutes like living in a realistic dream with clouds of fish floating above the ocean and a puppet master pulling the strings even after they've being cut, not only detaching the clouds from the sky, but also you from your body as if the clouds want to say "come, join us, let's watch this spectacle together". As you don't have the physical ability anymore to say "no", you go along and become one with the fish, forming a trance-like bond; a big, invisible audience submitting to what happens in that one studio miles below.
And that's only Part I. The trickery doesn't end there.
Part II doesn't even try to amend things in a big way, it seamlessly takes over the crescendo that ended part one to drown you in a pool of nasty feedback, droning bass and drums desperately searching for a hidden exit in the walls of the recording room. Hitting, cutting, carving, it's all being pulled out of the creative bag to ensure that one truly desirable thing is being reached: total freedom (which was already there, but you probably get the point - or not, as the latter is probably one of the side effects of the total freedom that was already there in the first place) and near the three minute mark it appears they find a weak spot in the wall when the drums become more frantic - as if the added tempo will be beneficial, but you and the fish see from up above that the walls don't break as the brick seems to be made of highly flexible material that might be impossible to destroy. For the next give or take six minutes it's a constant battle of push and pull, keeping a faster pace at first with snarling, high-pitched guitar notes that are merely there to cheer the rhythm section on, pushing with all its might, but eventually settling down, accepting fate by showcasing doom and gloom that's being translated to what's coming out of the speakers - a slow, lowdown groove that comes suspiciously close to drone territory, but retains just enough punch and an infectious bass line to keep them from drowning all together. Fatigued, but steadfast and determined layers of conviction are being added, eventually waking you up with an all-out freak fest of hard-hitting drums, psychedelic guitar patterns and free-flowing bass, the walls crumbling down, the clouds dissolving, you carried by a mattress made of imaginary flower-shaped hands before softly landing back on earth, staring in the eyes of three guys who just handed you the trip of a lifetime, wondering who is gonna build the studio back up again. Or is that mountain of debris just another hallucination; another attempt to try to grasp everything that happened in the past 42 minutes?
(Written by Ronny Dijksterhuis)
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