The Asteroid #4 hail from Northern California as a proudly underground quintet, making some of the spaciest and evocative music in the neo-psychedelic scene. With this eponymous album, their eighth release since first forming in the late ‘90s, they continue to deliver quality soundtracks for the reality-adverse and stargazers alike.
The Asteroid No. 4 is a winding, evocative masterpiece of psych rock, as spacy and resonant as it gets, and with a wandering spirit that takes it in even further directions. All the classic elements of a psychedelic record are present, down to the Indian percussion and existential lyrics—but there is something distinctly unique to these songs, which hazes in and out of focus as the album swirls around like a kaleidoscope.
The first track, “The River,” opens the album with a groove rooted in Eastern music and a “lost in the wild” feel, paving the way for a stunning sonic exploration that will evoke the most wonderful psychedelic imagery. Sometimes more conventional and rocksteady such as with the hard rock freak-outs “Rukma VImala” and “Back Of Your Mind,” sometimes completely lost in mysticism and contemplation, such as the tracks “Ode To Cosmo” and “Yuba,” Asteroid No. 4 seems to take almost everything that neo-psychedelia has produced to push the genre forward, taking inspiration from Indian music, California stoner rock, and their idols Spacemen 3, and crafting into a sound that sends to the end of universe and back while projecting a most vivid light show.
This band has never reached or even welcomed the recognition most artists with less to offer lust for viciously. During their only shot at fame, a tour with the Brian Jonestown Massacre, they abandoned their set to play country covers. But success is nothing short of what they deserve for this stunning new record.
In A Word: Ethereal
