New mate­r­i­al from Mon­tre­al psy­che­del­ic band Ele­phant Stone always gives my heart a lift. I was cap­ti­vat­ed when I first saw this band at The Lex­ing­ton at a psych night back in 2011, and a few nights lat­er at the much-missed Bull & Gate in Ken­tish Town. Rishi Dhir‘s sitar play­ing is mes­meris­ing and adds an incred­i­ble depth to the band‘s work.

The new track is called La fusée du cha­grin (The Rock­et of Sor­row) – it’s a taster of their upcom­ing EP due to be with us on Feb­ru­ary 18th. The EP is called Le Voy­age de M Lone­ly dans la Lune. It is a con­cept album that fol­lows the sto­ry of M. Lone­ly who boards a rock­et ship to the moon. Unusu­al­ly for Ele­phant Stone, this album is in French, con­nect­ing with the band‘s Mon­tre­al base. The EP sees Rishi work­ing again with Miles Dupire-Gagnon on drums, Rob­bie MacArthur on gui­tar and Jason Kent on key­boards and guitar.

Front man Rishi Dhir admits to being a fan of sci fi, and drops a few sec­onds of NASA audio at the open­ing sec­onds of La fusée du cha­grin to set the scene and start us on the sky­ward tra­jec­to­ry. The jour­ney is marked by a shift into a puls­ing rhythm, echo­ing the ener­gy of a rocket‘s thrust as it pro­pels sky­wards. There‘s still that famil­iar Ele­phant Stone rich psy­che­del­ic aura that drench­es the track and pulls you into its core but this taster from the EP indi­cates a shift into some­thing more uptem­po and energetic. 

The album‘s nar­ra­tive fol­lows on from the haunt­ing con­cept album release from 2020 called Hol­low telling the tale how after man has trashed this plan­et, a few head off to a recent­ly-dis­cov­ered plan­et. The Har­mo­nia is a ves­sel built spe­cial­ly to take them to their new home but once they arrive it appears mankind has not learnt any lessons and sets about caus­ing destruc­tion all over again. Hol­low was reviewed here and was on gourmet gigs Top Albums for 2020. 

Spe­cial edi­tion splat­ter vinyl will be avail­able in Cana­da on Ele­phants On Parade, the UK/EU on Fuzz Club Records, and the USA on Lev­i­ta­tion. Each ver­sion is very lim­it­ed edi­tion and has exclu­sive splat­ter colours.