Psychotropic Zone: Petroglyphs

Ole Lukkøye – Petroglyphs

Having been in existence for over two decades now, Ole Lukkøye is absolutely one of my favorites among the Russian psychedelic bands. Their deep, highly hypnotic and enchanting sound has been influenced by folk music of different parts of the world, psychedelic rock as well as ambient music. At their best, the band really transports the listener deep into ethnic trance. Petroglyphs is a compilation album that includes their best pieces starting from the first album Zapara and it gives a very good picture of what this band is all about.

The almost 80-minute-long CD has 10 tracks on it. First, we've got a couple of tracks from the debut (“Zapara” and “Ankara Karachi”) that prove that this band knew early on what they were doing. The enchanting tones of mixed acoustic and electric instruments together with the hypnotic beats and mantra-like vocals in Russian work magnificently. Taken from the album Toomze, the groovy “Become a Sky” has a bit more modern sonic world and gets close to World music. The softer and more minimal but very percussive “Children” is from their following album from 1998 and it was a previously unknown track to me. The 2000 album Crystal Crow-Bar was in heavy rotation at my place for many months and from this brilliant album we've got the heady and hypnotic “Melting” that gets you in deep trance state and the totally wonderful, ethnic and deep sounding “White Stone”. Also included are a few tracks from Horse-Tiger album produced, mixed and mastered by Faust's Hans Joachim Irmler and released on Klangbad in 2002. Including nice, archaic-sounding female vocals and starting off with ambient atmospheres, “Zagoralos'” is based on a traditional Russian folk song and is the longest (12:24) track on the compilation somehow bringing to mind A Mountain of One with its delay guitars and modern, groovy beat. “Sleepy Herbs” is a wonderfully druggy and dreamy song and “Horse-Tiger” itself is actually heard here for the first time since it was dropped from the album. It's very pleasant, spacey, mellow and synthesizer-oriented stuff. Finally there's still “Free Warriors” taken from the 2006 album Kumaneira and here the psychedelic dub elements are combined in a marvelous way with the very Russian sounding melodies that are well emphasized by the accordion. If you are not familiar with this band yet then Petroglyphs is an excellent way to get in to their profound, ethnic and mind-expanding world view that draws both from ancient tradition and modern technology. What a wonderful group!

Psychotropic Zone (Finland)
16.02.11 by Dj Astro