Like sister band Circle or Japanese outliers Boris, Pharoah Overlord occupy a singular space: it doesn’t much matter who’s involved or what kind of music they’re making – stoner rock, scratchy jazz, endless Italo-disco – somehow it is, and will always be, them.
Over the course of 25 years and 20+ releases the band have charted a course that might seem odd at first glance but, viewed from on high, reveals itself to be a wide and eminently logical ellipse. If Louhi doesn’t find them back exactly where they started it’s certainly a variation on a theme – and likely the start of yet another weird, wonderful circumambulation.
The record finds the band on form that is minimal and meditative but also very fucking LOUD. It’s divided into two neatly interlocking parts, both of which are built around simple-but-exemplary riffs that possess the power to nullify all thought, leaving you staring blankly into the middle distance while a shoestring of drool hangs pendulously from your lower lip.
There’s something Om-ish about the album’s opening riff: cyclic and hymnal, as though Al Ciscernos decided to shrug off some of his band’s spiritual trappings and, instead, lose himself in the louche hip-thrust of ‘Buick Mackane’. This is soon paired with the grinding whine of a hurdy-gurdy, a combination that might seem odd on paper but, when locked together here, makes a strange sort of sense. Threads of feedback and scritch-scratch guitar then add further texture, like a dusting of powdered glass atop of a hearty bowl of oatmeal.
Once more, Aaron Turner (SUMAC, Isis, etc.) joins the fray on vocals – a collaborator and adjacent who has moved in Circle circles even before his guest spot on Pharaoh Overlord’s (2019) album 5, having released Circle material via his defunct Hydra Head imprint and shared vinyl space with projects like Split Cranium and Mamiffer. Here he sounds looser and less constrained, perhaps influenced by the ever-spiralling freedom and creative abandon of his work with SUMAC. There are glottal gurgles, Eugene Robinson-style ululations and at least one occasion where it seems Turner is weaponising a plug of phlegm caught at the back of his throat, rattling it percussively like a pea in a whistle.
The album’s second half starts on firm footing but threatens to dissemble as it progresses, slowly becoming more spacious and abstract. Subtle background elements suggest the Stranger Things soundtrack if there was a bit of gluesniffing involved and deformed Daniel Higgs ragas that’ve been twisted into bizarre new shapes, all while Richard Dawson’s guitar scrabblings become increasingly frantic.
Rather than collapsing grandly inward, however, things end with plush chords and some of Turner’s most ecstatic-sounding vocals: an unexpected and rather sudden conclusion, but one that is nonetheless fitting for such a grand slice of immersive and exultant stoner-kosmische.
