August 21, 2022 by A.S. Van Dorston

Norway’s psych prog titans continue their creative streak with a simultaneously compact and sprawling epic.

In 2015, Motorpsycho was inducted into Rockheim’s Hall of Fame in their hometown of Trondheim. Like American’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, artists are eligible for Norway’s National Museum for Popular Music Hall of Fame 25 years after their first release. At that point, artists’ most vital, creative work is long behind them, and if they are still working, they’re just going through the motions, putting out new music for the hardcore fans, and playing the oldies at concerts. Not so with Motorpsycho. While they put together their first compilation specifically for their Rockheim exhibit, Supersonic Scientists – A Young Person’s Guide to Motorpsycho, it may not be the best introduction to the band, despite pulling tracks from fifteen albums, still just a sliver of their vast catalog. For most bands, that compilation would have been a cap to their best work. But Motorpsycho were just getting started. Starting with The Tower (2017), they started a streak of four of their best albums ever, three of which were double albums. It was starting to get ridiculous, Motorpsycho topping my lists nearly every year. Readers who don’t live in Norway or Europe think I’m crazy, because a lot of people still don’t get their music. The band requires a bit of time and patience to get into. Those who can’t spare the time and effort, well, I have nothing to say.

While I’d agree with the band’s assessment that Ancient Astronauts is “an explorative album without a whole lot of choruses,” it’s not as ambitious as recent albums, and that’s fine by me. A relatively short (4 tracks in 43 minutes) interlude is perfect right now, in order to avoid double album fatigue. It’s closest counterpart is the three track, 40 minute The Crucible (2019), sandwiched between massive 84 minute double albums in the Gullvåg trilogy.

We have the driving prog rock of “The Ladder,” that brings to mind Rush’s “Cygnus X-1: Book 1 – The Voyage’” the dreamy ambient kosmische (think Cluster) of the barely two minute “The Flower of Awareness,” and the epic prog jam of “Mona Lisa/Azrael” which was performed live a few times last year. It’s easy to take Motorpsycho’s musical accomplishments for granted when there’s so much of it, but the final seven minutes (I presume the “Azrael” angel of death section) is mighty impressive, with the band engaging in a fiery improvised jam that recalls the best parts of King Crimson and The Mars Volta.

Topping that is the 22:22 instrumental ambient/space rock epic “Chariot Of The Sun – To Phaeton On The Occasion Of Sunrise (Theme From An Imagined Movie).” Repeat listens to that final track gave me a chance to lift up the top layers and hear more of what’s going on underneath, and there’s a lot going on. It definitely gives the sense of widescreen cinematic storytelling no less effective than many classical based soundtracks. It’s looking like it’s going to rank pretty high up in Motorpsycho’s most unique and effective tracks. And even more impressive was the album was recorded in just a few live takes. Which I suppose means the recordings have not been fussed with a lot in post-production, piecing together a rhythm track here, overdubbing a solo there.

Those final two tracks were written for a live dance performance by the Impure Dance Company, and later used in a related film by Norwegian theatre group De Utvalgte, a still from which was used for the cover art. Along the lines of their collaboration with Ståle Storløkken and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra on The Death Defying Unicorn (2012), this just might attract some new converts who are more impressed by their connections to art forms like dance, theatre and film, than their mastery of psychedelic and progressive rock. The more who join the Psychonaut party, the merrier.