In celebration of the release of their 3rd studio album, "A Grand Stream", SMOTE once again return to the land of Bristol, armed with their uniquely distinguishable sounds of hypnotism and intensity. A band noteworthy for their powerful live performances, SMOTE combine elements of drone, doom and psychedelia, forming an indestructible wall of sound, to be believed only through self-witnessing. Support on the evening comes from Thraa, conjurers of meticulous, heavy & improvisational noise.

CONSUME THE CROFTERS.

SMOTE

Transcendence through repetition, welcome to the world of Smote, an entity opening up uncanny new psychic pathways. The coterie of key players around lynchpin Daniel Foggin have made their patient emergence in great strides. Touring both the UK and Europe, as well as appearing at prestigious festivals such as Roadburn and Le Guess Who, all the while offering two full length albums on esteemed indie label Rocket Recordings. Through a combination of quasi-medieval kruatrock and crushingly high volume, Smote are a cathartic experience not to be missed.

Daniel Foggin, guitarist, writer and chief architect of Smote, last summer uprooted himself from his usual home in Newcastle, to live and work in a farmhouse in Kelso, near the Scottish border, with Rob, the drummer of the band. “Through the summer when I was working up there, we would finish work and go sit by a small river and have a couple of beers in the sun, and it was the best thing ever” he relates “So I guess the philosophy is that to some people it looks like any other stream, but to us it was supreme happiness. That can be applied to a lot of things in life”

Hence came the title A Grand Stream for the third Smote album proper, one largely recorded in this same farmhouse. It’s an album that’s the truest incarnation thus far of his vision for this band - a full-scale psychic voyage into the ether and a drone-and-repetition-fuelled series of incantations that takes simple, primal ingredients and utilises them for the purposes of aural sorcery, summoning spectres and revelations aplenty in its wake.

What has emerged from Foggin’s sojourn in the Borders may be imbued with a rich rural intensity but it’s also perhaps the darkest and more foreboding work that Smote have made to date. As he notes himself, the rawness of this record occurred in tandem with its recording process.

“I’ve done this pretty DIY, and done stuff that will give most sound engineers nightmares” he laughs “I’ve got 4 microphones and an interface. and had a whacky set up of my sound city 120 watt and a 4x12, some synths and basic percussion stuff like tambourines and shakers all in a tiny living room. Then drums, bass and all the other glue was added in my practice room at later dates. I’m really happy with the production on this one; it feels like one sonic journey”

Barely a truer word could be spoken on this 70-minute-plus opus, which embarks on the most intrepid dive imaginable into the audial Deep End. Whilst the folk-tinged, ceremonial ambience that Smote have made their trademark is present and correct here, as on the ominous rhythms of ‘Coming Out Of A Hedge Backwards’ and the uplifting Earth-style cadences of opener ‘Sitting Stone Part 1’ alongside it’s more ambient and eerie counterpart, Foggin and his cohorts also waste little time exploring new textures and dimensions.

“In terms of influences, I was listening to a lot of Anna Von Hausswolf, Maria W. Horn, and ØXN” reckons Foggin. “I think this is pretty significant in the fact that all of these artists combine traditional instrumentation with contemporary instrumentation, and it’s all fucking heavy. Not so much in the way of playing ridiculous mega riffs, but in terms of using the simple sound of instruments to create atmosphere. For example I think a violin playing double stops can be just as heavy as a cranked no-master volume guitar amp, just like an organ can be just as heavy as tuned oscillators and filtered synthesis”

Said heaviness manifests itself most powerfully in the mammoth two-parter ‘The Opinion Of The Lamb’ - a near thirty-minute ritualistic voyage into the heart of darkness that melds Swans-style intensity, Trad Gras Och Stenar earthtones and Sunn O))) monomania to devastating effect. This marks the culmination an album that takes this band - one who’ve always eschewed the cliches and stumbling blocks of all contemporary psych rock in favour of their own unique and wyrd vision - into a realm in which they transcend through willpower and skill alike into something preternaturally thrilling and intimidating, mapping out their own crepuscular new paranormal territory. Question is; dare you step over the threshold?

FFO: Trad Gras Och Stenar, Goat, Anna Von Hauswolff & GNOD

THRAA

"There’s something about drone that seems to really suit duos. Earth, SUNN O))), OM, Nadja... The list goes on. And now we can add Thraa to the mighty canon. While you could be fooled into thinking the tracks are meticulously notated compositions of heavy minimalism, their slowly unwinding, Sisyphean meditations are in fact recorded as single-take improvisations. The four pieces here will echo through your bones like the roar of a distant giant in a mythical valley and provide the warmth of a freshly flayed sheep’s skin. It’s as if Kim Gordon has swapped her designer sparkles for a cockroach-black hoodie and signed to the Southern Lord label." (JR Moores, author of Electric Wizards: A Tapestry of Heavy Music, 1968 to the Present)

"Opening act Thraa are a duo from Manchester, who are so new to the table, that if you are already aware of them, you will already know just what a promising act they are. If you don’t, now is the time to jump on board, as they are going places. Sound wise, there’s a large amount of guitar drone going on, but if you listen between the lines, I think you will be pleasantly surprised to hear splatterings of both Emma Ruth Rundle and BIG|BRAVE style vibes in the mix. It was absolutely engaging to see them perform with the minimum of fuss, Thraa made a sound so big, that it would bring down stadiums. Leaving the audience begging for more they bring such a feeling of heritage to their performance, it is insane to believe they’ve only been performing for around a year" (Sleeping Shaman 20.11.23)

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