It sometimes feels like you can’t move for bands/groups divining/refining inspiration from the lysergic “codified” 1960s, Lenny Kaye’s “seminal” Nuggets’ influence growing trendier, groovier and cooler by the second. So, it’s extra special when a band exists that respect a script (the archived historical past/passed) but are also able to adlib, go rogue and off-the-cuff. Wooden Shjips are THAT band.

On deck, Shjip mates: The Teutonic sounding, sonic-phonic quintet Ulrika Spacek, (s)pace-setting, mood-getting, full-on psyche-drone-zone-warfare. These ain’t no Sissies, Carrie-ing on…

Shjipping News: This space-rocking-choogling-boog-a-looing quartet number Ripley Johnson amongst the crew, the hirsute auteur who also flits and flirts with his other creation-reaction-buccaneers Moon Duo. Tonight is a fuzz-rock motorik masterclass, an experience where TIME stands STILL, the astral plane (crash)lands and departs, you are in E-con-o-me-oh-my class, a higher-consciousness-raising, all chakras-blazing, hip-hypnotic show (and tell).

Sense-ability:

Taste: Savour the trip. And it is a trip. A trip to other realms, the canyons of your mind enhanced and entranced. A sensorious voyage of thrills, spills and brain-shake. Once ingested never bested. The summit is summat (atop is top).

Touch: Feel the (sur)real, (in/out)sound as tactility, heightened nerve-endings signifying enlightened beginnings.

Sight: a cavalcade of colours, a kaleidoscopic-n-mix of optics and vision-things. An escape from the matrices of mundanity.

Sound: The sonar plexus nexus is activated, the cortex-vortex channelled and tracked. Relax, turn off your bind and boat up-dream.

Smell: the scent of (re)discovery, the nose knows, it knows no bounds. Follow your nasal instincts to the pan-aroma.

For the GMT-afflicted the clocks went back the night before, the extra hour proffered by the time-space-continuum the symbol of seasons/time/life passing/arriving at a rhyme-place-condominium.

For Wooden Shjips the time is now, the time is theirs, it can be yours too, if you choose, it’s yours to lose. Get (in) Shjip shape, (Back to) landlubbers.

Kemper Boyd
@dissapointon