Part 9 of a 20 part rundown of my favourite tracks of last year

No Youtube. Boo!

Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan!

It’s perhaps not the most mature way to start a record, sure, but it’s always a good for a giggle. Once Seven That Spells (a Croatian psych outfit who rather fabulously describe themselves as a “modern, aggressive psychedelic wall of sound incorporating polymetrics and occasional Viking funeral rites, hailing from the 23rd century where rock is dead”) have finished invoking the devil’s name In lays it’s cards on the table for the entirety of it’s nigh on seven minute duration. The drums are rampant – despite the record it introduces being called The Death and Rebirth of Krautrock it sounds closer to an aggressively pacey hip-hop beat than motorik – and the bass bounces around the lower registers and occasionally fires off on acrobatic runs that act like pyrotechnic punctuation. Over that a guitar line slowly ascends higher, higher and higher still until it climaxes in a histrionic harpy squeal. And then it starts over. That’s about it. It may be a one trick pony, but that doesn’t really matter if it’s a good enough trick. How long would it take you to get bored of watching a pony that could do backflips? And if each flip was that little bit more wild, that little bit more impressive, gaining ever more altitude, twisting and flailing it’s little pony limbs at seemingly impossible angles? Despite doing the same thing over and over again it seems to get more urgent each time. You suspect Seven That Spells set out to write a song with the express purpose of it soaring, rocketing ever higher until it crashes into the sun. And that’s exactly what they’ve done. Psych is all about getting inebriated on repitition, and In sounds more like a deep huff of nitrous oxide than an acid trip, and is all the better for it.