Bandcamp Myriads is four tracks and nearly fifty minutes, all of it instrumental, and none of it in a hurry. White Noise Generator, a trio from Passau down on the Austrian border, recorded the whole thing live at Martin Frank’s studio back in 2022 and left it sounding like a live session, for better and for worse. There are no vocals to hide behind and no edits to tighten the seams, just three players locking into long-form heavy psych and letting it sprawl toward stoner-prog. When the room and the band are pulling together, that is exactly the right call. When the mix stacks up, the honesty of the approach becomes its limitation.
Start with the good, because the good is very good. “One” is the clearest argument the band make for themselves: a natural, airy live-in-the-room feel with real dynamics left in the master, guitars that are rotzig and mid-forward but articulate, a bass that growls in the foundation without stamping out the kick, and drums that are plainly un-triggered, the snare carrying a characterful, roomy crack. Nothing is compressed to death, and the track moves like a band actually playing rather than a file being processed. “Hold” is the other keeper and the most ambitious thing here, thirteen minutes that open on a spacious ambient intro and stretch out through extended atmospheric passages before the heavy sections land, a proper post-rock build with a genuinely wide dynamic range. Even here the low mids over-stack once the wall goes up and swallow most of the bass, but the architecture of the piece carries it.
The title track is where the method works against them. “Myriads” is run hot, the master pushed until the micro-dynamics disappear and the guitars turn into a broad fuzzed wall whose individual notes drown in a low-mid mush, the distorted bass and kick colliding into one undefined push at the bottom. “Maverick” has the opposite problem from the same root cause, a wet, roomy live feel that tips into muddy frequency-stacking, the guitar definition dissolving into atmosphere and the bass smearing to a diffuse hum. Both are perfectly listenable jams with good ideas in them, but the recording flatters neither, and on an instrumental record where the tone and the groove have to do all the talking, a mix that blurs the riffs is a real cost.
Myriads is an honest, unfussy heavy-psych record from a band who clearly play well together and trust a long jam to go where it needs to. At its best, on “One” and the back half of “Hold,” it has the loose, dynamic, room-lit quality that studio-polished stoner records spend a lot of money trying to fake. It is held back by two tracks where the live-to-tape density curdles into mud, and by the sheer patience it asks of a listener with no vocal line to follow. For the heads who want their instrumental psych sprawling and unquantised, and who will meet a record halfway, there is a lot to sink into here. Fans of the slower, more exploratory end of the fuzz will get the most out of it.
Long-form instrumental heavy psych sprawling into stoner-prog, cut live in a room in 2022 and left sounding like it. “One” is the strongest: a natural, airy live-in-the-room feel with real dynamics kept in the master, rotzige mid-forward guitars that stay articulate, a growling bass that does not bury the kick, and un-triggered organic drums with a characterful roomy snare. “Hold” is the ambitious one, thirteen minutes opening on a spacious ambient intro and building through extended atmospheric passages into the heavy sections, a wide dynamic range even if the low mids over-stack and swallow the bass once the wall goes up. The title track is run hot, the master pushed until micro-dynamics vanish and the guitars become a fuzzed wall of low-mid mush with bass and kick colliding at the bottom. “Maverick” tips its wet roomy feel into muddy frequency-stacking, the guitar definition dissolving into atmosphere and the bass smearing to a diffuse hum. Loose, dynamic and genuinely alive at its best, muddied by density at its worst.
Standout tracks: One, Hold
