It’s difficult to recall any band that has left me as hypnotized as British psych/space rock greats Ozric Tentacles. Aside from certain goa-trance or even Brian Eno’s Another Green World, Super Numeri has done just that.
On their second Ninja Tune release, The Welcome Table, the Liverpool collective convincingly operates on a higher plane of existence in a dimension other than our own. The otherworldliness of the music they’ve created defies categorization. Like Ozric, it’s music for headspace transportation into a highly hallucinatory state; a state that is easy to be lost in with no direct path out, or in the words of Super Numeri, “Astral Music.”
This is realized immediately on the 24-minute opener “The First League of Angels.” With the eerie sound of whistling chimes, the accompaniment of the harpsichord strums at our cerebral circuitry before being kicked into place by rock music aesthetics. Pleasant intoxication follows with a continuous flow of vast instrumentation, which augments the dense layers tripped-out experimentalism.
“The First League of Angels,” like much of material on The Welcome Table, ranges from a chaotic and an unsettling feel that eventually melds into a soothing and ambient-like composition, inciting massive introspection. Think early Can with hints of late 60s/ early 70s era Miles Davis and similarities to diverse noise collage groups like DFA’s Black Dice.
Super Numeri’s divergent principals are staggering. From the wacky and mesmerizing electronic pulsation of the title track “The Welcome Table,” to the abstract free-form sound of “The Chart” and “The Spies of St. Ives,” Super Numeri goes everywhere without constraint. On “The Sea Wolves,” strange buzzes and creaks provide the base for gentile harp vibrations and Miles-like trumpet expressions, floating atop ultra trippy psychedelia.
Call it what you will—space rock, avant-garde or “groovedelia,” Super Numeri is specialized in making music that builds, floats and falls through, layer after layer, awaiting clarity amid the thick fog of ether that envelopes the ears.
The Welcome Table serves up a warm internal buzz that doesn’t diminish—even after 78 minutes.
