The eighth Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura album is a three-hour 4LP box set of psychedelic musings on the departed musicians of 2016. Produced by Richard Formby (the engineer behind Spacemen 3, Wild Beasts, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Skullflower and many more) and recorded at a converted church in Leeds, this is DSDV's most melodious and spacious album to date. You can hear clear nods to The Grateful Dead throughout as well as fragments of Can, Santana/McLaughlin's Love, Devotion, Surrender and even Tim Buckley's Blue Afternoon band. Drowned in tape echo and with a Wally Heider-style snap to the drum sound, the recording has all the traits of a classic Formby production. Gone is much of the blur of guitars that shrouded the band's previous albums in cacophony. Whilst still present here and there, it's been replaced with a somewhat virtuoso level of interplay that smacks of a bygone, pre-ironic era in rock music where sincerity, dedication to the craft of improvisation and the desire to transcend the mundane via heightened, sustained hive-mind mentality was all that mattered. Line-up: David Birchall (guitar); Andrew Cheetham (drums); Richard Formby (synths); Dylan Hughes (guitar); Nick Mitchell (guitar/Bass VI); Dom Tanner (guitar); Otto Willberg (bass)
