Giant Skyflower Band :: Blood Of The Sunroom
You can’t listen to the radiant realms of the late 90s, early to mid 2000s New Weird America movement without crossing the spiritual soundscapes of the short-lived California-based duo Giant Skyflower Band. Pouring from the brilliantly blissful and startlingly original mind of Glenn Donaldson, whose critical occupation in outfits like Flying Canyon, Jex Thoth, and The Skygreen Leopards, among several others, has solidified him as a sonic staple among his peers and contemporaries, comes this esoteric effort that ultimately bridges the gap between one celestial continent with another in the most harmoniously haunting way possible. While the atmospheric academics of the greats like MV & EE, Six Organs of Admittance, Wooden Wand/James Toth, Hush Arbors, and The Tower Recordings, to name a few, served a sophisticated seance upon their respective underground scenes in various parts of the US, that enormous energy challenged even the 1960s with just how strange, and exploratory one can get with their carefully selected craft. Joined by longtime bandmate Shayde Sartin (Wooden Wand/James Jackson Toth, Flying Canyon, Sonny Smith), and a brief pop-in from the legendary Kelley Stoltz, the duo recorded their feverish findings at the Pink Gazelle in San Francisco in 2005 before its release on the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based label Soft Abuse in the spring of 2007. Like a liberating lightning bolt that punctures the essence of the earth, the group’s lone masterpiece, “Blood On The Sunroom,” is not only a testament to the spiritual sophistication of the times but a hyper-fixated hour of sound that truly transcends its listeners into a void of vast vibrancy.
While challenging the balance between popular psychedelia and the radical rhythms of South Asia, the Giant Skyflower Band allows the raga room to breathe across the album’s narrative, and through the jungles of juxtaposition and eager enlightenment. With an intense urgency to spread the gospel of the group’s short-lived message of mysticism and melody to the sonic surface, a nearly capsized vessel from a different part of the galaxy unleashes a blinding light across the album’s 10 tracks. From the melodic mouth of human expression, a celestial consciousness begins to take shape within the group’s cosmic chemistry, while a blistering sunset forms behind their sacred setup of sound. Featuring tracks like “Rainbows And Dreams (With Worms Singing)”, “All Of Us (You And Me)”, “Time Wont Sing A Song For You”, and “Meditations On Christ And The Magi,” the overall vision of the album’s atmospheric arch and magical momentum is sincerely spiritual, and requires multiple listens in various headspaces. Donaldson’s career is exceptionally prolific, and has expanded into a favorable flower over the years since the early days of the Giant Skyflower Band. It can be a struggle to pin him down, but his understanding of the universe is deeply rooted in everything he does. It’s just a matter of time until you connect to his artistic accuracy, depending on what side of the moon you’re on.
