Harumi "Hunters of Heaven"

The wonderful Swedish psych band Dungen’s new record finally arrived in my ears a day or two ago, which normally would have caused much excitement for my head. However, it came to me the same time as Harumi, a re-released curio from the first psych era, distinguishable from many of its contemporarires by two factors: its producer (Tom Wilson, also of VU, Dylan, S&G), and the ethnicity of its creators (if you haven’t guessed by the title or album cover, Japanese). And listening to these two records within close proximity to one another, I’m pretty sure, has only heightened my appreciation of both. You see, Dungen’s aesthetic has become clear to me now: they’re so clearly influenced by Harumi’s sort of psychedelic music, i.e. sure it’s folky and acidic and experimental, but more importantly, its cultural currency is largely based on unavailability and subsequent aura-acquisition. And this is the same sort of feeling that Dungen has (largely successfully) mined thus far: an anonymous psych-folk mind-meld as potent because of its mysteriousness as its (often v. good) songwriting. Mmkay, back to Harumi right quick. The band wheels through a variety of styles on its only album, but hits a stride 2/3 of the way through, starting with “Hunters of Heaven” (mp3), which revs up and passionately delivers an arsenal of organs, violins and trumpets, in the interest of getting its Orion on.

Harumi is being reissued by Fallout. Buy it from Soundlink here.

ALSO: Speaking of 12th-wave psychedelia, if you’re in the central/southern Indiana area, you should come out to Landlocked Music tonight at 8pm (if not earlier) for Brightblack Morning Light, a band I’ve been eagerly anticipating seeing live for some time now. I wrote them up here (the mp3 is reupped too).

ELSEWHERE: If you want to hear John Cale’s jowly dismemberment and fun-ectomy of LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” (me on same), then go here.

BUT WAIT: Go to Idolator to grab Franz Ferdinand’s cover of same (huh, strange), that properly highlights the New Order-ishness of the whole affair.