Promon Funky Fumes Inpsyde Media (Italy)

Once in a while something so incredibly weird comes up that it sort of makes you very very confused indeed. And so to Promon. One of the winners on the recent psynews.org new artists contest (as displayed on Inpsyde’s Psychedelic Sparks), Promon are sample-friendly duo Lars Arne Mikael Forsberg and Sven Robin Gunning. And Funky Fumes is an oddity, full of Scandinavian mythology with the forest alive and breathing, and out to get you… After the short intro of Tenk, Beyond Contact has an organic growl over hollow-swallow bass with technoid percussion going ape as it builds. There’s squiffy sounds all over the place, and good layered squeakage over the top. Zenodorf Cooling-Fan features Terrance McKenna over the top of a particularly sharp, bed-o’-nails bit of nighttime music. But at Slemvaxt things get really weird. They have a little song – "it’s a mushroom, it’s a fungus, and it’s living all around us and among us." Some little urchins sing the ditty, before a very psychedelic, very alive bit of schitzo-minimal, with disjointed melodies all over. Very disturbing, and doubly so when the Promon guys themselves appear to sing the same song. Badly. It’s delightful in its sheer insanity. After that, we get into the insane synthwork of Defined Inside; the harsh, reality-twisting pneumaticadelia of Gnillevart Emit; the hypnotic Bruno Bandit and the brilliantly-named Throbbing Hobbits, a very bouncy and seasick-making journey to another part of the enchanted forest. Massive standout has to be Trolltyg, with Scandinavian folklore getting a real-old psychedelic workout. Mad noises and even madder voices get the pulses racing, and it smacks you around the room like nobody’s business. Plus, just when you think it can’t get any higher, it does. This is classy, quirky stuff steeped in murky mushroom mulch, with some mindblowing moments in its mythical madness.

More info: www.inpsyde-media.com