Bandcamp The Dharma Chain formed in Byron Bay in 2020 and have been Berlin-based for the larger half of their existence, and Some Kind Of Pure State, the band’s second full-length, sounds like a record made by a band who have decided to commit fully to that move. Recorded at Stare Crazy at Funkhaus in Berlin in December 2025, produced by Jonathan Dreyfus, with Amanda McGrath, Benjamin Rompotis, Giulia Piras and Aidan Stewart at the centre and guest contributions from Enrico Semler (guitar) and Dreyfus himself (piano, guitar, viola), the album lands 5 June via Spinda Records, with Le Cèpe, Echodelick, Clostridium and Dirty Filthy as co-release partners for the vinyl edition. Eight tracks, two of which currently stream as advance singles, and this is a preview review off those.
The two singles are stylistically far enough apart to suggest the record commits to its full press-kit description (“neo-psychedelia, krautrock, shoegaze and post-punk”) rather than treating those tags as a checklist. “Inside A New” opens the album in the shoegaze register: a spacious atmospheric mix with stereo-delayed vocals, modulated clean guitars that swell into wide saturated walls, a warm bass foundation, and roomy organic drums. The vocal arrangement is the cut’s most distinctive feature, with McGrath’s melancholic mid-placed cleans paired against Rompotis’s whispered male voice panned wide across the stereo field. The verse-to-chorus dynamic does most of the structural work; the writing trusts the contrast between the reduced verses and the wider chorus rather than reaching for the wall.
“Red Red Red Red Red” pivots into the album’s krautrock-and-post-punk register, with a dry, mid-heavy mix, machine-tight drum programming, and a knurrig, fuzz-saturated bass that does the rhythmic heavy lifting. Wide distorted guitars carry the chorus textures, and the lead vocal sits deep in the mix under heavy stereo-delay treatment, more incantation than statement. The 150 Hz low-mid emphasis on this track is genuinely retro, and the master deliberately keeps the dynamic range alive rather than pushing for modern loudness, which lets the motorik feel breathe.
The honest preview reservation is that two of eight tracks does not let us judge the album’s full shape. The press kit’s claim that the record is “a document of transformation shaped by the quiet disorientation of change” cannot be verified across these two singles alone; what they do verify is that Dreyfus’s Funkhaus production has the dynamic patience and the textural range the album’s stylistic ambition needs. Heard against the band’s 2026 festival run (Desertfest, Fuzz Club Festival, Brighton Psych Fest, Manchester Psych Fest), the preview lines up with what the live billing implies: a heavy-psych project that earns its space in the doom/sludge/post-rock adjacency more by atmospheric weight than by volume.
Based on the two advance singles (“Inside A New” and “Red Red Red Red Red”) only; six further tracks unavailable until release. Both cuts share the Dreyfus-Funkhaus production signature in dynamic preservation (no overcompressed master, real breathing room on the verses) and in textural ambition (wide stereo placement, multi-layered guitar saturation, dual-vocal arrangements). They diverge sharply in register: “Inside A New” runs a spacious atmospheric shoegaze mix with stereo-delayed vocals, modulated clean-to-saturated guitar progression, a warm bass foundation that supports rather than drives, and roomy organic drums where the kick lacks crisp attack-definition and the snare gets pulled back into the hall. Vocal arrangement is the track’s distinctive element: female mid-placed melancholic cleans (McGrath) against panned whispered male vocals (Rompotis). “Red Red Red Red Red” pulls into a dry, mid-heavy retro-feeling mix with a dominant low-mid emphasis around 150 Hz, machine-tight programmed-leaning drums with a click-forward kick, a fuzz-saturated knurrig bass that drives the rhythmic foundation, wide distorted guitars losing some chord definition at density, and conjuring clean vocals buried deep in the mix under heavy stereo delay. The recurring strengths across both: dynamic patience, textural depth, the dual-vocal axis as structural element. The recurring weakness: chord-density passages lose string definition on the saturated walls.
Streaming so far: Inside A New (the shoegaze opener, dual-voice arrangement at its clearest). Red Red Red Red Red (the krautrock-and-post-punk pivot, with the album’s most distinctive bass tone).
Two tracks is a fragment, and the three-star mark is a holding position rather than a verdict on the full record. What the singles establish is that Some Kind Of Pure State is committed to its hybrid identity, that Dreyfus’s Funkhaus production has both the dynamic patience and the textural range the writing is reaching for, and that the cross-continental Berlin-based incarnation of this Byron Bay band has earned the resources to make a record this ambitious. Worth coming back to 5 June when the full album streams.
