Pitchfork

The Psychic Paramount are a power trio partially consisting of survivors from the excellent and under-loved Laddio Bolocko; check out their tune "Laddio's Money (the Death of a Pop Song)" if you don't already know that they were the unacknowledged legislators of an alternate universe in which post-rock was a dense, muscular, gloriously loud affair. It would be merely nostalgic to point that out if this meaty offering were not such a pleasing logical progression from that early milestone.

What you get here is a proggy minimalist vamp, a repeating figure on guitar, bass, and drums that chimes and shimmies and wavers like, well, like Phaer and Twyne, the 16th century translators of Virgil, might have had in mind when they rendered the poet's description of bees in the Elysian Fields as making a "huzzing fervent noyse, that every feeld of murmour ringes" (sorry if that is pretentious but it really sounds like that). It builds and builds until the bees become a bit like Focus and then a bit like Blue Cheer and then a bit like High Rise, dirty crushing psyche-noise-rock-sludge and the whole thing rings and builds and you are banging your head in sympathy and abandon and then OOF! They cut to near total silence with just a tiny, intensely quiet trace of the drums, at near inaudibility. This cunning jolt of almost sadomasochistic control over things-- just as they were orgasmically cresting-- seals the deal. These guys know what they're doing.