[engl] San Francisco tripmakers-supreme Carlton Melton return with a new 25 minute-plus three track 12" EP for Agitated Records, their first release since their widely received 2LP "Out To Sea" in 2015 and ,indeed the accompanying 2016 RSD "Aground" 12" release.. Hidden Lights is the first missive from recent recordings undertaken once again at El Studio with the watchful engineering and collaboratory help of Phil Manley (Trans AM / Lifecoach / Fucking Champs).. Phil throws in some slinky guitar moves that help make the Carlton Melton Magick Karpet soar…. John McBain (Evil Acidhead /Monster Magnet /Wellwater Conspiracy ) also guests on guitar, and has once again mastered the ’Melton’s sike-adelic-drone to perfection…Released on 500 12”’s or unlimited DL!!! Take a trip to the hidden lights.

[engl] This will be their first full length release since 2015’s widely lauded “Out To Sea” double opus, itself a languid drifting of drones and psychedically enhanced riffmongering. Sure, there’s been some long EP releases since.. Hidden Lights in 2017 (featuring the immeasurable drone sike float on “Rememory”) and Aground in 2016 (a companion, the Desert Island weather beaten psych-flow follow up to Out To Sea), now its time to soak up.. Mind Minerals. Mind Minerals finds Carlton Melton in fine fettle, all the songs were recorded and engineered at El Studio in San Francisco by Phil Manley on September 3rd and 4th 2016 (except 'untimely' - recorded at the Dome by Brian McDougall), the studio setting suits them -- a logical progression from a weekend’s recording out at the Dome. Under Manley’s watchful ear/eye, Carlton Melton have created a futurescape soundtrack.., a “3001 Space Odyssey”. The drums are more pounding and direct than before, the constantly re-assuring bass creates a helping hand to propel you through the clouds of static and shards of electrifying guitar dazzling your horizon. Synths help soothe the sharp edges and lull you into some out of body experience whilst and orchestrated calamitous scree pulls you back…. This is a breathless, yet deep breathing album. It demands full immersion.. Searing guitar piercing the drone with relentless power, the core trio of Carlton Melton; Andy Duvall (drums/guitar), Clint Golden (bass guitar), and Rich Millman ( guitar/synth), have some alchemical bond that’s helped them create a post –rock / psychedelic / freeform organic slab of American Primitivism / space drift , this is unashamed head-music from the melting pot of Northern California.. 5 decades ago this album would have been released on the ESP Disk Label or even Apple.. there would have been no helter skelter if the desert Hippies had locked onto these vibes, plug in, turn on, tune out..float free.. Carlton Melton can provide your own aural microdose to reset your Mind / Psyche!! Andy Duvall plays juno synth on 'the lighthouse' special guests - Phil Manley - juno synth on 'snow moon' and 'sea legs' / Guitar on 'eternal returns' and 'psychoticedelicosis'. John McBain - guitar on 'electrified sky' and 'way back when' / synth/mellotron/guitar on 'atmospheric river'. All songs mastered by John Mcbain at JPM mastering. Cover artwork is “Walls” (2013) by Andy Vogt

[engl] Carlton Melton, from Northern California, are now a practising fourpiece in the arts of melted-minds psychedelia. With the added kraut-oomph and sike-flutter of fellow Californian Anthony Taibi (whom you may know as being a member of White Manna, and also DDT with Andy) Rich Millman, Andy Duvall, and Clint Golden have now embellished the Carlton Melton sound. Pushing forward as a fourpiece, the band recorded Resemble Ensemble in July 2021 (just before Andy moved back over East!) at Anthony’s home studio, 3D Light in Freshwater, CA. Anthony did all the recording and mixing. The Melton Magick Karpet settled, and our favourite contemporary sikedelic warlods plugged in, amped up and let it flow.. and flow it does. .from the krautrock fuelled pszych-raga of Prescribed Skies, the fluid dronescape of Elsewhere that welcomes you into its arms with a warming tone, almost a missing Spacemen 3 demo at the feast here… So The Story Grows has the drone scraping through a murk of dazzling feedback and pummel, with the fuller sounding Melton giving the genre a proper wobble, hold on to your brains people… High Alert.. whas this? Synth and guitar interplay jambusting, this is the Melton wigging out and almost interweaving 70s high table rock with some odd and downright perverse synthfunkpunk rhythms.. get weird.. or get wired..or both.. easily done here.. Closing out the album with Route Thirteen is the road trip home.. they’ve been, they’ve massaged and mangled your synapses, plug in the satnav and take the higher-route home.. if you get our drift.. Carlton Melton, starting 2023 in a better place than most, soaring high on their synaptic-dazzling magick karpet…

[engl] Northern California psychedelic sorcerers Carlton Melton are brain surfers, mind trippers, … “psychlists,” if you prefer. The band will take your head for a ride, occasionally rushing at superluminal speeds through a wormhole or gliding softly on a gentle breeze in a leafy glade. Sometimes your brain needs to rage, and sometimes it needs to repose. For a decade and a half, the band has yo-yo’ed, almost schizophrenically, between these two modes: walloping space jams with furious guitar solos in one hemisphere of the brain and ethereal, feather-light splashdowns in the other. Not to mention a track here and there that builds from the latter into the former. But with two new releases in 2023, the band has evolved. Whether psych rock or ambient trance, their sound remains driving, organic, and flowing. With the addition of Anthony Taibi (White Manna, DDT), however, the group’s metal freak-outs are Hawkwindier and their droning kraut trances are Spacemen 3-er. In January, the quartet released the playfully spacey Resemble Ensemble, recorded in Taibi’s home studio 3D Light. October now sees the band Turn To Earth, a work with scents of Autumn, a season of death and transition. The cover art evokes a vine-covered, electric crucifix. The sound is, well, earthy but also gritty and striving towards change. The album was recorded in Fall 2022 and now harvested in Fall 2023. Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in San Francisco. With Becker at the helm, the synths have become more prominent (“Cosmicity,” “Roboflow,” “Migration”) and the tone heavier on the doom (“Cloudstorming,” “Unlock The Land,” title track): several moments could even serve as background music for epic dark fantasy films like Conan the Barbarian, Fire and Ice, or Heavy Metal. As exquisite as Turn To Earth is, Melton are best appreciated as a live act: their recordings as well as their gigs are largely improvised – not so much composed as birthed. And yet their most recent tour ended abruptly and perilously. The group had to cancel its final three shows once members were admitted to Arnhem hospital in the Netherlands. Five years later, reinforcements have strengthened the band and restocked its arsenal of great tracks. Turn To Earth, sure … but keep your head in outer space.

[engl]  Nestled deep in the forests of Mendocino County in Northern California, huddled under the protective shade of towering redwoods and within earshot of frothy waves crashing against the Pacific coastline, squats a geodesic dome that has served as crucible for the experimental genius of Carlton Melton. Nature and Man operate under different logics. But here, Carlton Melton wholly entrusts this idyllic environment with the task of inspiring and guiding their musical improvisations. The Dome has been the ideal setting to facilitate their creativity. Without forcing a specific dynamic or theme, the band inhabits its womb-like confines to improvise, explore, dream. Their music draws on psychedelia, stoner metal, krautrock, and ambient atmospherics to convey, above all else, a mood. A prickly guitar melody will float lazily, a wall of dissonant feedback will resolve into a hypnotic drone, or a colossal riff will exhume the soul of Jimi Hendrix. One hears Hawkwind or Spacemen 3 jamming with Pink Floyd at Pompeii. Indeed, Carlton Melton have one foot in the ancient world and one tentacle in deep space. They are both the pack of proto-humans drumming with femurs in Kubrick’s 2001 and the film’s inscrutable monolith hinting at the universe’s mysteries. The “Stoned Ape” theory holds that early hominids ingested psychedelic mushrooms that provided an evolutionary boost to their brains, helping them blossom into Homo Sapiens. Imagine such cavemen trippin’ balls, their nightmarish visions sending them into feverish bouts of rage and then gentle moments of introspection. They very well could have heard the music of Carlton Melton rattling inside their skulls, first driving our ancestors mad then upward into a higher realm. Andy Duvall (drums, guitar), Clint Golden (bass), and Rich Millman (guitar, synths) have yet to play Pompeii, but they have already wowed crowds at European festivals such as the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia, Roadburn, and Desertfest Antwerp. Live, they are jaw-dropping. On record, mind-altering. In fact, with each album, Carlton Melton adds a subtle new element, synapses firing new neural connections. In 2020, they release new full-length Where This Leads, marking ten years of the band’s working relationship with their UK label Agitated Records and five years of recording with Phil Manley in his El Studio in San Francisco. With Where This Leads, the band rewires the listener’s mind. “Smoke Drip Revisited” is a ticklish acid flashback, “Porch Dreams” a dabbling in country psych, and “Closer” a driving, freak-out of guitar heroics. One senses that the group is conveying a message that cannot be expressed verbally but only suggested through synth sighs, walloping rhythms, and soaring solos. Would Carlton Melton therefore be a group of stoned apes dizzily grasping for meaning or telepathic futurists communicating to us through crude man-made instrumentation? Well, lower the stylus to find out. - Eric Bensel, Paris July 2020