hills: frid

Third-eye visionaries Hills present their third opus, a dizzying journey that traverses through the band's origins and beyond to new dimensions. The Gothenburg, Sweden-based band have released two full-length albums since forming in 2006, the second of which, 2011's Master Sleeps, saw a vinyl outing on Rocket in 2013. Part of a rich local scene that also includes friends and Rocket Recordings label-mates Goat, they form the next chapter in a tradition of Swedish psychedelia that found its origins in late-'60s and early-'70s freakouts and mind-melts by the likes of Baby Grandmothers and Älgarnas Trädgård -- not to mention the unholy trinity of Pärson Sound, International Harvester, and Träd, Gräs och Stenar -- before being developed by the likes of The Spacious Mind and Dungen around the turn of the millennium. These inspirations make their mark on Frid by journeying inward, via mantric repetition and hip-shaking pulsations -- as on the ten-minute monolith "Och Solen Sänkte Sig Röd" -- yet they can also lurch into the unknown via the fuzz/wah odysseys of the aptly-monikered "National Drone" and the ceremonial exhortations of the closing "Death Will Find a Way." As they also showed at a rare and spellbinding appearance at the 2014 Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia, Hills have landed on a rich and intoxicating sound that sidesteps the clichés and humdrum stylistic foibles that often plague modern-day psych, and, in the process, breathed new life into an approach that can sometimes seem in danger of appearing redundant through lack of imagination. Frid crystallizes everything that makes these Scandinavian satyrs stand out from the global herd: adventurous experimentation and fearless hallucinatory intensity, rendered with brass-knuckle fortitude. The end result is 38 minutes that translate into a feast for seasoned crate-diggers and fresh-faced converts alike.