May 17, 2024 by A.S. Van Dorston

The Danish minimalist psych masters expand their scope and continue their run of classics with fifth album.

When I hear certain Danish music, I think about the clean, minimalist designs of speakers and electronics like DALI, Dynaudio, Bang & Olufson and Lyngdorf that hark back to the Danish modern movement that started over a hundred years ago. My impressions are not accurate for all Danish music, of course, but the Causa Sui folks in both their production values and album art designs for their El Paraiso label that eschew extraneous ornamentation. Similarly, The Sonic Dawn have always been restrained in their approach to psychedelic pop, a genre often known for throwing everything plus the kitchen sink into sound effects, pedals and excessive reverb.

The band’s roots go back to 2008, when and Emil Bureau and Niels ‘Bird’ Fuglede formed Shogun Assassins with a different drummer (also known briefly as The Mind Flowers). Their debut EP Blue Liquid Black Sounds Red Display (2012) had a bluesy sound that bore some resemblance to Sweden’s Graveyard. 2013 single “Japanese Hills” signified their transition to The Sonic Dawn, with mostly clean guitar sounds and tight ensemble playing with a subtly jazzy swing. The blues element recedes into the background like grains in wood, along with psychedelic folk and prog. With Emil’s immediately recognizable pattern of vocal melodies, the Sonic Dawn sound manages to absorb many types of influences while remaining minimalist, often with a dreamy vibe, though they can certainly rock when it’s called for.

Four years is the longest gap between albums, though Emil Bureau’s two solo albums from 2019 and 2023 were welcome diversions during the wait. A lot of shit has gone down since 2020, and there’s fire in their bellies as they address dark themes in the opening track “21st Century Blues” (can you believe we’re already a quarter way through the century??), and first single “Iron Bird,” about the latest war pigs who send killing machines into the skies. Not normally known for any overt Sabbath worship, this track is about as close as they’ve ever sounded to the original proto-metal pioneers. After all the talk about minimalism, the band introduces a fourth member, at least in the studio, Erik ‘Errka’ Petersson on piano, Hammond B3, Rhodes and clavinet. The band has used keyboards before, but this does nudge them slightly into psych prog territory, with bits of fuzz working their way into these tracks, but still retaining an uncluttered sound.

The band knows what most of us know, that we’re facing an extinction event possibly in our lifetime. But they’re not all doomsday predictions, as their music continues to radiate an uplifting warmth in both sound and lyrics in “Dreams of Change,” “Micro Cosmos in a Drop,” and “Friend,” the latter two invoking Hendrixian visions, if not Utopian, at least hopeful. With both Eclipse (2019) and Enter the Mirage (2020) being two 21st Century psych classics, it’s no easy task to measure up to them. Phantom does so with deceptive ease.