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Yellowcake: Lumerians return with a song about a nuclear bomb going off as you watch
08.20.2019
11:16 am
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Oakland, California based spacerockers Lumerians have shape-shifted their distinctive brand of pulsating cosmic psychedelia—which incorporates elements of krautrock, drone, dub and free jazz—once again. Leaving behind the electronic sound of their recent album Call of the Void, the group have stripped down to an aggressive guitar-based garage rock jam with their new single “Yellowcake” out now as a 7” record on Fuzz Club Records. It sounds a bit like the Contortions (or Brainiac) shot from a DMT-fueled canon into the eternity of deep space and it’s a first for the band, who had NO guitars on their first release whatsoever.

“Yellowcake” is, as Lumerians tell us, “about someone waiting on a train platform before sunrise to go to work, staring at the city and fantasizing about what it would be like if a nuclear bomb went off.”

Freak out with Lumerians live all over Europe this month. Tour dates here.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.20.2019
11:16 am
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Psychedelic druids Lumerians return with ‘Call of the Void’
05.14.2018
12:02 pm
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Lumerians, those psychedelic druids of the transdimensional extra-terrestrial motorik realms are returning. The genre-hopping mind-benders of uninhabited deep space are known for incorporating anything and everything into their futuristic sonic gumbo—pulsating krautrock, noise, free jazz, drone and dub. It will come as no surprise that after a four year hiatus they’re still experimenting sonically on their upcoming album, Call of the Void.

Vocalist Jason Miller explains: “If Transmalinnia represented the exploration of an alien world and The High Frontier a voyage through space, Call of the Void is a penetrative exploration of Earth through an alien gaze gone native—the weight of gravity, the build-up of pollution and sediment, experiences of ecstatic revelry and tragedy.”

The core founding members of Lumerians are Chris Musgrave (drums/percussion), Jason Miller (vocals, synth, organ, guitar), Marc Melzer (vocals, bass, synth) and Tyler Green (guitar, synth). The intensely interlocked rhythm section of Musgrave (sometimes he sounds like Jaki Liebezeit and other times like Tony Allen) and bassist Melzer undergirds what the rest of them do, putting me in mind of Can, Hawkwind, Neu! and Soft Machine at once, but I still can’t help thinking of them as The Ventures of this era.

Their third “official” album—not counting two collections of improvised compositions called Transmission from Tellos III & IVCall of the Void, will be released on June 22nd on the London-based indie label Fuzz Club. The album is dedicated to the memory of Barrett Clark, Lumerians’ long-time friend, sound engineer and collaborator who passed away in 2016 during the tragic Ghost Ship warehouse fire. Recorded mostly at their own New Telos Sound studio built in the site of a former church in Oakland, California and at Hyde Street Studios—formerly known as Wally Heider Studios and the location of legendary recordings by the likes of Neil Young, Jefferson Airplane, David Crosby, Herbie Hancock, Creedence, Fleetwood Mac and countless others.

To announce the album the band have shared the lead single “Silver Trash,” a song about both “a very memorable camping trip us and some friends took in Big Sur or an encounter with inter-dimensional beings in the Redwoods of the Pacific Northwest.” Doesn’t sound like an either/or proposition! Listen LOUD:
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.14.2018
12:02 pm
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Space rockers Lumerians premiere their retina-burning ‘Transmissions from Telos Vol. III’
12.04.2014
04:55 pm
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Bay area space rockers Lumerians have a newly released full length album called Transmissions from Telos Vol. III and to premiere their new material, they’ve got a new retina-burning “live” video performance of the album in its entirety, which you can watch here first on Dangerous Minds.

Using various techniques in analog video synthesis, camera feedback loops and other sorts of in camera manipulation, “DIY pixel mystic” Andy Puls created a wholly improvised, live visual score to Lumerians pulsating intergalactic grooves. Watch it below. Transmissions from Telos Vol. III is available on regular black or electric blue vinyl from Cardinal Fuzz.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.04.2014
04:55 pm
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‘Life Without Skin’: Lumerians take you on a BAD trip
07.23.2013
06:15 pm
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Worms and really creepy aliens. Just go with it.

Lumerians’ upcoming longplayer, The High Frontier comes out on August 27th on Partisan Records.
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.23.2013
06:15 pm
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The Triptastic Sci-Fi Krautrock Afrobeat Sound of Lumerians
05.29.2013
03:07 pm
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The latest single from Oakland, CA-based spacerockers Lumerians has dropped. “Dogon Genesis,” the second release from their upcoming longer player The High Frontier (out on August 6th on Partisan Records) sounds like Suicide meets Fela meets Logan’s Run.

Lumerians will be playing at The Chapel SF on Saturday June 8th.

I love this trippy video lava lamp they created for “Dogon Genesis”:

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.29.2013
03:07 pm
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The world is not ending, but YOU are: New from Lumerians, ‘The Bloom’
12.14.2012
05:23 pm
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Behold “The Bloom,” the latest synapse-melting video from Lumerians.

Their new Horizon Structures EP (Knitting Factory Records) comes with Lumerians 4D portal viewing glasses with instructions for watching the video which was shot in Chroma Depth High Definition. Directed by the group and Kerry Laitala.

WARNING: Viewing may cause 4DHD (4th Dimensional Hyperspatial Disorder).

The funky Bay Area spacerockers are playing with Psychic TV tonight and tomorrow night in Oakland, CA.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.14.2012
05:23 pm
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Spacerock druids Lumerians performing lysergic Osmonds’ cover and interview
03.14.2012
12:08 pm
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Spacerock combo Lumerians (who share their name with an alien race on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but insist that there is no relation) will be bringing their strangely hypnotic, trance-inducing sound to SXSW again this year.

Known for their live outings featuring elaborate projected psychedelic visuals, the group aims to make each of their performances a ‘happening’ that audiences will not soon forget. SF Weekly music critic Carla Selvin called experiencing Lumerians in concert “tantamount to listening to the soundtrack from an epic science fiction movie about a jungle on another planet.”

Since the release of their first full-length album, Transmalinnia in March of 2011 on Knitting Factory Records, the Bay Area band has steadily racked up new admirers touring with post-punk stalwarts like the Butthole Surfers and Killing Joke.

We caught up with one of the Lumerians for an interview:

How did you know that you were Lumerians?

On our third trip down from Mount Shasta to pay for primitive provisions from the locals using sacks full of gold, we noticed the glares and realized we just might not be like everybody else.

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How did you recognize each other as fellow Lumerians?

It’s sort of a dialect/pronunciation thing. When speaking with the language of eyeball-crushing, incendiary spacerock, we noticed little things like elongated vowel sounds and heavy rhotic r’s.

Is there a belief system or lifestyle that Lumerians adhere to? A cosmology?

Wait for the stillest moment, consider something passive and insignificant and then start an argument about it and draw it out as excruciatingly long as you can, preferably with strangers watching.

Is there a Lumerians beach house like the Monkees used to live in or do Lumerians have a space ship?

You know how in Highlander 2 when they recap the whole Highlander history and explain that they’re actually all just ancient exiles from an alien world? I forget where I was going with that, but I guess we live in a spaceship that bends the universe around it rather than flying or maybe it’s a beach house, except instead of sand and water outside, it’s got taco trucks and human trafficking.

Where do Lumerians hang out in Austin during SXSW?

We like to explore using a technique called ‘stumbling distance cartography.’ Look it up.

In the clip below, Lumerians perform their hoodoo-infused cover of The Osmonds’ “Crazy Horses” on San Francisco public access program Dance Party Revival:

 

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.14.2012
12:08 pm
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Dangerous Minds at SXSW

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Austin street art. Photo credit: Mirgun Akyavas
 
Greetings from sunny Austin, TX. Well at least it’s supposed to be sunny today and tomorrow, but never mind that persistant pouring rain, Dangerous Minds will be covering the SXSW music festival all this week. I got in last Thursday and Marc Campbell and I have been roaming around Austin trying to take it all in and report back about a little of what’s going on here. It’s a loud, colorful food truck-strewn chaos of a city right now, that’s for sure. Every single square inch of Austin seems to have some sort of corporate branding.

I’ve eaten some great food, seen some amazing films and soon enough the music part of the festival wil start. In the coming days, we’ll be bringing you movie premieres (Small Apartments with Matt Lucas and Johnny Knoxville, the epic new Bob Marley documentary, the charming Grandma Low-Fi, the Bad Brains doc and many more), interviews with Indian Rope, Cloud Nothings, Daytrotter’s Sean Moeller and some “unplugged sessions” that have been scheduled with Jonathan Wilson,Father John Misty, Jenny O, Bee vs. Moth, Madi Diaz, Chelsea Wolfe, Poor Moon and the premiere of a new music video from Bay Area druid spacerockers Lumerians.

Click here to see Mirgun Akyavas’ photo gallery of Austin street art.

More music and film coverage at Tap Into Austin 2012.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.12.2012
01:20 pm
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After Eden: Hypnotic new video from Lumerians
07.26.2011
05:35 pm
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“After Eden,” the latest video from Oakland, CA’s druidic spacerockers, Lumerians. This hypnotic, trance-inducing clip is an homage to Alain Robbe-Grillet and borrows footage from his 1970 film, L’Eden et Après.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.26.2011
05:35 pm
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Guassian Castles: The latest release from space-rocking druids, Lumerians
03.24.2011
02:44 pm
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Music video for “Guassian Castles” from the album Transmalinnia from our space-rocking pals from the Bay area, Lumerians. Shot and Directed by Curtis Tamm

There are some stroboscopic effects here, so they asked me to add “WARNING: May cause seizures or momentary loss of consciousness in susceptible viewers.”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.24.2011
02:44 pm
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Spacerock druids Lumerians performing lysergic Osmonds’ cover
01.26.2011
10:21 pm
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Druidic, droning space-rockers Lumerians perform a hoodoo-infused cover of The Osmonds’ “Crazy Horses” on San Francisco public access program Dance Party Revival.

Their debut album, Transmalinnia comes out in March on Knitting Factory Records.

More Lumerians on Dangerous Minds

Crazy Horses: The Osmonds tear it the fuck up
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.26.2011
10:21 pm
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Space rockers Lumerians play ‘Black Tusk’
12.28.2010
02:42 pm
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Strangely mesmerizing Bay Area space-rock combo, Lumerians, will be the opening act for the Butthole Surfers shows in Brooklyn this week (12/30 and 12/31) at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Lumerians’ debut full-length, Transmalinnia, is due in March on Knitting Factory Records. In the clip below, they perform “Black Tusk” on cable access.
 

 
Via Brooklyn Vegan

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.28.2010
02:42 pm
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