Ecstatic Vision Brings 'The Vibe' To Metro Saturday

By Casey Moffitt in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 17, 2015 9:45PM

Ecstatic Vision caught our ears when they released their debut album, Sonic Praise, by finding a way to stand out from a crowded and growing field of psychedelic bands littering the underground landscape. They'll be performing at Metro Saturday night as a supporting act for Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. We caught up with guitarist/lead singer, Doug Sabolik, before the Philadelphia fuzz trio began their tour to talk a little bit about their far-out album and hitting the road this fall.

Ecstatic Vision took the more unusual route of promoting their album by dropping a 13-minute video on us. "Astral Plane" is a wild journey that takes us to a place where Can and Hawkwind collide. The neat trick Ecstatic Vision pulls off with this epic track is making the song move along, keeping the listener's attention and easing the transitions through the piece smoothly from one movement to the next.

"It's kind of anti-what-everybody-else-is-doing," Sabolik said of the video. "It gets weirder and weirder as it goes along. And it's one of the tracks that gets noticed the most. It encompasses what Ecstatic Vision is. We're taking you on a journey and that song has the most journey in it of all the tracks on the album."

"Also, it's live," he said, noting that the video captures the band actually playing the song. "The guys who filmed it, Woodshop Films, are kind of an institution for weird videos. We told them what we were looking for, and they just said, 'Yeah. We can make that happen.' And I think it turned out great."

Sonic Praise is a fun ride. With just five tunes, it clocks in around the 40-minute mark. These guys don't hurry through a song, but they are efficient in creating a hypnotic groove that carries the listener along for the journey. Ecstatic Vision doesn't take shortcuts to create this vibe and it proves to be a highly effective method of accomplishing a crazy psychedelic sound.

"It's what we call 'The Vibe,'" Sabolik said. "That's what Ecstatic Vision is. It's the repetitive thing. Focus on The Vibe, not on the riff."

Sonic Praise doesn't rely on typical gimmicks we've heard on the plethora of psychedelic albums that have come across our desk the past few years. It's the rhythm that takes the driver's seat while the guitars set up the melodies in the songs. There's some organ, saxophone, flutes and auxiliary percussion in the background to add to the ambiance, but it's the repetitive rhythm from the bass guitar and drums that grabs you.

"When I started writing this album, there wasn't a lot of psychedelic bands out here, but yeah, I noticed the trend lately," Sabolik said. "Everyone says they have a 'psychedelic band' these days. There's that psychedelic garage scene and the heavy psych stuff, but a lot of sounds like the same old same old. They have a sludge riff, a lot of fuzzy guitars. But it's still pretty typical rock riffs they're working with."

Sonic Praise certainly has its share of fuzzy guitars and echoed vocals, but that's not the focus of the album. It doesn't need those elements to create the psychedelic feel. It all falls back on the rhythm. Even the vocals are used to add to the rhythm of the songs as opposed to create the melody. Even a lot of the lyrics are repeated. The melody comes from well-crafted, but not flashy, guitar licks.

"A lot of it is like Kraftwerk," Sabolik explained. "Simple, yet elegant melody lines. That's what's going to pop into your head when you're taking out the trash or picking up the mail. I make that guitar line the hook."

Sabolick looked not only to some of German krautrock to help develop The Vibe on Sonic Praise. He took elements from Afrobeat albums, and Middle Eastern reed flute music. It may seem odd, but they all have the common thread of highly repetitive rhythms which were easily incorporated into rock style of Sonic Praise.

"I have a pretty good tribal and world music collection, and I took a lot from those sounds" he said. "I put those albums on and find the psychedelic in those sounds. I'll try to get my friends to hear it, but they're all 'This sucks,' and they think I'm kind of crazy. But when you merge those sounds into rock music, it starts to sound otherworldly."

Sabolik said he's excited to bring these new songs out on the road, and is especially excited to have saxophonist/flutist Kevin Nickles join the three regular members of the band on this tour.

"People are in for a special treat," Sabolik said. "Having been in the scene for a while now, I know there's no money to go around. That's why we've just kept with three people. It works better for space in the van or flights to Europe. In a perfect world, there'd be 10 people in this band."

It's a tour that Sabolik said he wasn't sure was going to happen, as the band knew it was a possibility to support Uncle Acid earlier in the summer, so they didn't book any shows in the fall hoping they'd land the gig.

"We just found out a couple of weeks ago, so we're talking a little bit more than a month before the tour is scheduled to start," he said. "It was getting kind of scary, because here we are with a new album and if this fell through, we had no tour for it."

"But we're happy we're on it and we're going to take full advantage of it. We're going to kill it," he said. "The band that opened for Uncle Acid last year - Danava - they were great. And that's what we're hoping to be this time."

Sabolik said Ecstatic Vision's live show is what got them signed to Relapse Records, and it's just going to be a bunch of guys having a good time releasing The Vibe.

"Oh, and strobe lights," he said. "There's lots of strobe lights. So if you've got any kind of an issue with that sort of thing, you've been warned."

Ecstatic Vision performs with Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats and Ruby The Hatchet on Saturday, Sept. 19 at Metro, 3730 N. Clark, 9 p.m., $25., 18+