Bleep

Kandodo is the solo project of The Heads’ Simon Price, but sometimes it expands to a trio when Wayne Maskell and Hugo Morgan join in the fun. In this form the band goes by Kandodo 3, and there’s good reason that the name takes cues from Spacemen 3. As demonstrated on new LP K3 this Bristolian bunch have plenty in common with the legendary space rockers - droning guitars, astral beats and reverb-drenched reveries crop up all over the album.

The similarities with Peter Kember and Jason Pierce shine through from K3’s opening number ‘King Vulture’. A heat-hazed sprawl of languid drumming and walls of fuzz, ‘King Vulture’ locks into the Spacemen 3 aesthetic nicely while also forging a sound that is distinct to Kandodo 3. This is an archetype that holds across K3, with the band taking on elements of Spacemen 3’s aesthetic without becoming overly reverant of their sound. The lengthy ‘Everything - Green’s - Gone’ combines shimmering guitars with murky drones to mesmerising effect; ‘The Gaping Maw’ dissolves into a sea of fuzz; ‘Lapwinger’ comes across like one of The Velvet Underground’s more abstract experiments alongside John Cale.

K3 ends with its grandest statement, the near-40-minute ‘High On Planes/Drifter’. This track is a treasure-trove for anyone with even a passing interest in psychedelic music - moving between rumbling ambiences and dusky, peyote-spiked guitarscapes, ‘High On Planes/Drifter’ acts as both a summation of and an appendix to the far-out experiments of the rest of the LP.

With K3, Simon Price has extended his Kandodo project to realise one of his most ambitious and impressive records.