Artist Detailed Info: Celestial Power

Formed in 2009, Dead Sea Apes have built a reputation as master fusionists of post-rock, stoner, space rock, and doom. While it’s been tempting to brand the power trio as Manchester’s answer to Yawning Man, their hefty instrumentals still conjure North English darkness and drizzle, rather than Californian sunbeams and cacti. A few months after the band’s last album, 2023’s Rewilding, personal tragedy led them to an existential crossroads: Bassist Jack Toker had to take a hiatus to support his wife in her battle with cancer, which required intensive chemotherapy treatment. (Thankfully, she made a strong recovery.) Their primary creative vehicle having come to a halt for the foreseeable future, guitarist Brett Savage and drummer Chris Hardman are forging ahead with another heavy psych project: Celestial Power.

They’re not alone. Dave Cambridge, founder of the experimental rock label Cardinal Fuzz, plays additional guitar on three of the album’s four tracks, with Nik Rayne of The Myrrors carrying the remainder. In one of the shortest ever examples of lulling listeners into a false sense of tranquility, “Politics Of Ecstasy” opens with a spoken sample of Timothy Leary and about ten seconds of gentle fingerpicking. Then, it explodes—and it never relents. An obvious reference point would be the mighty Bardo Pond, such is the cement-thick quality of the disorientating and multi-pedaled distortion.

That these cuts feel somewhat looser and more spontaneous than Dead Sea Apes’ recent studio work is to be expected, given the project’s makeshift origins, but there’s still a solid, thorough line tying everything together. Celestial Power’s first track segues into “Something Hidden,” which has greater emphasis on the lead guitar licks. Albeit set to a doomier tempo, it isn’t a million miles from the far-out soloing that J Mascis unleashes with Heavy Blanket or, indeed, the kind of jams that Mike Vest transmits prolifically out of Newcastle Upon Tyne via his plethora of assorted projects. The aforementioned collaboration with Rayne, “Mandate of Heaven,” has a classic more-Sabbath-than-Sabbath agenda, a slow, minimalist approach that’s paid dividends for so many stoners, droners, and doomsters over the decades.

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