Capra Informis

I'm late to this rocketship (what's new this year???). Goat offshoot Capra Informis launched Womb Of The Wild, a four track EP that strips some of the esoteric "world music" ephemera that colours so much of the Swedish psych coven's aesthetic, and has taken a dronier approach to the spaced-out mantra. It is more about finding a spectral groove and entrenching in it rather than offering anything truly evolutionary or propulsive. 'I Darkness, You Fire' has the rattling of bamboo sabres, the sonorous whine of hyperspeed horizons imbued with pastel shades, the glottal thrum of a tantric trance, the rhythmic patter of percussion ushering in a new school of thinking (that is, clear the mind and not to think at all). The title track has an angularity to it due to the rumbling riff, yet it somehow becomes the snake eating its own tail, a White Hills obvious monstrosity that still becomes the garish background foundations for the chants, djembe and hand percussion to take the fore. it's a feverish loop that sets controls inexorably to the dying sun. 'Cold and High' goes for the subterranean cult vibe, submerged in crimson pointed hoods and blazing torch fire, the rattling of broken shells heralding a fertility rite that is as unnerving as it is euphoric. Ending with 'Enter Thaumiel', a pagan lilt made more apocryphal by the sighs and whispers rushing and flowing through the eaves as the organ reaches a funereal slowdance "high" that is taken out of Celtic wonderland by the staccato drums.

A lot of words here, yes - because Capra Informis evokes them. This feels like a testing of the waters - nothing tentative here, more a signal of intent. The incantations to come will be all the more plane-shifting, no matter what throne you kneel at. There will be no sacrificial Goat - that band is very much in control of its own domain - but Capra Informis is an able acolyte in every respect. Get Womb of the Wild through Rocket Recordings here.