Naked Stray – Omega
Genre: Indie Electronic, Psychedelic Rock, Dream Pop
The American counterculture of the 1960s remains incredibly influential among young artists. Its effect is no small part due to the promise it held. It also helps that few of those predictions actually came to pass. The counterculture movement is an heirloom of the past.
The type of psychedelia it embraced stands alongside transcendental meditation and hula hoops as great ideas. And, as far as much of the world is concerned, they exist as fads. Great artists are, after all, especially adept at sorting through the past and finding the elements with which they can manufacture the future.
Naked Stray’s Omega is reminiscent of all things psychedelic from the 60s. The visuals seem to reference Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point. The music shares in the obsession for space-pop. And, in 2022, this desire of escapism to a different world, for blending identity into a single unit, seems particularly apt. In looking at the past, Naked Stray may have just predicted the future.
SSTO – Drifting
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Dream Pop
Similar artists: Tame Impala, Pond, Beach House, Das Kope, GUM, Wooden Shjips, Holy Drug Couple, Temples
Psychedelic rock much like progressive rock, Sci-Fi movies, or comic books enjoy indulging in impossibilities. Pies in the skies, submerged castles, and flight in various contraptions are all images not uncommon in any of the art forms listed before.
Those are very hopeful, romantic notions though. The world’s continued technological growth has made some of those notions likely. But, it certainly hasn’t looked as attractive. Psychedelic rock is a refuge from the world. It’s an alternative reality that doesn’t really exist except in the mind of the musician and the listener.
It’s an intimate thing that the listener and artist get to share. SSTO’s carefully crafted Drifting sounds like an aural gift to a community of psych-rock fanatics. These are sounds that glitter, glow, and pat the listener on the back reassuringly. SSTO are your friends.
