Carlton Melton Indierock | Alternative 6 Items

Carlton Melton, from Northern California, are now a practicing four-piece in the arts of melted-minds psychedelia. With the added kraut-oomph and sike-flutter of fellow Californian Anthony Taibi (whom you may know as being a member of White Manna, and also DDT with Andy) Rich Millman, Andy Duvall, and Clint Golden have now embellished the Carlton Melton sound. Pushing forward as a quartet, the band recorded Resemble Ensemble in July 2021 at Anthony’s home studio, 3D Light in Freshwater, CA. Anthony did all the recording and mixing.

The Melton Magick Karpet settled, and our favorite contemporary sikedelic warlods plugged in, amped up and let it flow—and flow it does—from the krautrock fuelled pszych-raga of "Prescribed Skies," the fluid dronescape of "Elsewhere" that welcomes you into its arms with a warming tone, almost a missing Spacemen 3 demo at the feast here. "So The Story Grows" has the drone scraping through a murk of dazzling feedback and pummel, with the fuller sounding Melton giving the genre a proper wobble, hold on to your brains people. "High Alert"—whas this? Synth and guitar interplay jambusting, this is the Melton wigging out and almost interweaving 70s high table rock with some odd and downright perverse synthfunkpunk rhythms. Get weird or get wired—or both. Easily done here.. Closing out the album with "Route Thirteen" is the road trip home. They’ve been, they’ve massaged and mangled your synapses, plug in the satnav and take the higher-route home, if you get our drift.

This is the new Carlton Melton album, the first full length release since 2015’s widely-lauded Out To Sea, itself a languid drifting of drones and psychedically-enhanced riffmongering. Admittedly, there has been some long EP releases since: Hidden Lights in 2017 (featuring the immeasurable drone-sike-float on “Rememory”) and Aground in 2016 (a companion, the Desert Island weather beaten psych-flow follow up to Out To Sea). Now its time to soak up Mind Minerals.

This album finds the band in fine fettle: all the songs were recorded and engineered at El Studio in San Francisco by Phil Manley over two days (except “Untimely”), with the studio suiting them—a logical progression from previous weekend recordings out at the Dome. Under Manly’s watchful ear / eye, the band have created a futurescape soundtrack, a 3001 Space Odyssey. The drums are more pounding and direct than ever, the constantly re-assuring bass creates a helping hand of propulsion through the clouds of static and shards of electrifying guitar dazzling the horizon. Synths help soothe the sharp edges and lull one into an out of body experience, while the orchestrated calamitous scree brings one back. This is a breathless, yet deep breathing album.

The core trio of Andy Duvall (drums/guitar), Clint Golden (bass guitar), and Rich Millman ( guitar/synth) have some alchemical bond that’s helped them create a post –rock / psychedelic / freeform organic slab of American Primitivism / space drift, unashamed head-music from the melting pot of Northern California. Five decades ago this album would have been released on the ESP Disk Label or even Apple. Carlton Melton provides the aural microdose to reset your mind and psyche!

First 400 LPs (300 Colour / 100 Black) Come With A Specially Compiled Limited 70+ minute Carlton Melton “Mandatory Melton” CD (7 tracks of magick Melton classics) & full size poster of the outer gatefold sleeve…pretty!!** Northern California psychedelic sorcerers Carlton Melton are brain surfers, mind trippers, … “psychlists,” if you prefer. The band will take your head for a ride, occasionally rushing at superluminal speeds through a wormhole or gliding softly on a gentle breeze in a leafy glade. Sometimes your brain needs to rage, and sometimes it needs to repose. For a decade and a half, the band has yo-yo’ed, almost schizophrenically, between these two modes: walloping space jams with furious guitar solos in one hemisphere of the brain and ethereal, feather-light splashdowns in the other. Not to mention a track here and there that builds from the latter into the former. But with two new releases in 2023, the band has evolved. Whether psych rock or ambient trance, their sound remains driving, organic, and flowing. With the addition of Anthony Taibi (White Manna, Ddt), however, the group’s metal freak-outs are Hawkwindier and their droning kraut trances are Spacemen 3-er. In January, the quartet released the playfully spacey Resemble Ensemble, recorded in Taibi’s home studio 3D Light. October now sees the band Turn To Earth, a work with scents of Autumn, a season of death and transition. The cover art evokes a vine-covered, electric crucifix. The sound is, well, earthy but also gritty and striving towards change. The album was recorded in Fall 2022 and now harvested in Fall 2023. Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in San Francisco. With Becker at the helm, the synths have become more prominent (“Cosmicity,” “Roboflow,” “Migration”) and the tone heavier on the doom (“Cloudstorming,” “Unlock The Land,” title track): several moments could even serve as background music for epic dark fantasy films like Conan the Barbarian, Fire and Ice, or Heavy Metal. As exquisite as Turn To Earth is, Melton are best appreciated as a live act: their recordings as well as their gigs are largely improvised – not so much composed as birthed. And yet their most recent tour ended abruptly and perilously. The group had to cancel its final three shows once members were admitted to Arnhem hospital in the Netherlands. Five years later, reinforcements have strengthened the band and restocked its arsenal of great tracks. After the rockus interruptus of that 2018 tour and the tantric tease of the intervening Covid lockdown, Melton have some unfinished business. An October 2023 tour is poised to set the freshly minted quartet back onto the stages of Europe and within the cerebral folds of its fans. Turn To Earth, sure … but keep your head in outer space. Carlton Melton is: andy duvall – drums/gtr; clint golden – bass; rich millman – gtr/synth; and anthony taibi – synth/gtr.

First 400 LPs (300 Colour / 100 Black) Come With A Specially Compiled Limited 70+ minute Carlton Melton “Mandatory Melton” CD (7 tracks of magick Melton classics) & full size poster of the outer gatefold sleeve…pretty!!** Northern California psychedelic sorcerers Carlton Melton are brain surfers, mind trippers, … “psychlists,” if you prefer. The band will take your head for a ride, occasionally rushing at superluminal speeds through a wormhole or gliding softly on a gentle breeze in a leafy glade. Sometimes your brain needs to rage, and sometimes it needs to repose. For a decade and a half, the band has yo-yo’ed, almost schizophrenically, between these two modes: walloping space jams with furious guitar solos in one hemisphere of the brain and ethereal, feather-light splashdowns in the other. Not to mention a track here and there that builds from the latter into the former. But with two new releases in 2023, the band has evolved. Whether psych rock or ambient trance, their sound remains driving, organic, and flowing. With the addition of Anthony Taibi (White Manna, Ddt), however, the group’s metal freak-outs are Hawkwindier and their droning kraut trances are Spacemen 3-er. In January, the quartet released the playfully spacey Resemble Ensemble, recorded in Taibi’s home studio 3D Light. October now sees the band Turn To Earth, a work with scents of Autumn, a season of death and transition. The cover art evokes a vine-covered, electric crucifix. The sound is, well, earthy but also gritty and striving towards change. The album was recorded in Fall 2022 and now harvested in Fall 2023. Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in San Francisco. With Becker at the helm, the synths have become more prominent (“Cosmicity,” “Roboflow,” “Migration”) and the tone heavier on the doom (“Cloudstorming,” “Unlock The Land,” title track): several moments could even serve as background music for epic dark fantasy films like Conan the Barbarian, Fire and Ice, or Heavy Metal. As exquisite as Turn To Earth is, Melton are best appreciated as a live act: their recordings as well as their gigs are largely improvised – not so much composed as birthed. And yet their most recent tour ended abruptly and perilously. The group had to cancel its final three shows once members were admitted to Arnhem hospital in the Netherlands. Five years later, reinforcements have strengthened the band and restocked its arsenal of great tracks. After the rockus interruptus of that 2018 tour and the tantric tease of the intervening Covid lockdown, Melton have some unfinished business. An October 2023 tour is poised to set the freshly minted quartet back onto the stages of Europe and within the cerebral folds of its fans. Turn To Earth, sure … but keep your head in outer space. Carlton Melton is: andy duvall – drums/gtr; clint golden – bass; rich millman – gtr/synth; and anthony taibi – synth/gtr.