Vorhex Angel :: Drain
As a native Tennessean born and raised just outside of Nashville, the Orrall brothers were always a tonal topic of creative conversation in the 2010s, in particular the iconic impact that Jeff The Brotherhood had, and continues to have, on indie music on both the East and West Coast. During a time that couldn’t be any different than our current climate, and artistic atmosphere where industries, labels, publications, etc., have intensely imploded from sellouts, and situational struggles from taking on too much water, and everything else under the sun, Vorhex Angel, a New Orleans, LA/Arcata, CA/Claremont, MA-based supergroup trio, eagerly emerged from these cultural channels and harmonious hardships that, for the last twenty-plus years, have softly shaped and meticulously molded musicians and artists around the world. Since forming in the early 2020s, members Jake and Jamin Orrall and Kunal Prakash, a longtime collaborator of Jeff The Brotherhood and member of the Big Easy-based group Silver Synthetic, the transcendental trio, haven’t wasted one single spiritual second on their meditative melodies and esoteric energy as they continue to develop their cataclysmic craft. With the release of their latest effort “Drain”, which came out earlier this week on the Hopewell, New Jersey-based label Soul Selects Records, the group has widened the electrifying entrance by several feet, making way for the elemental essence and dynamic darkness that make Vorhex Angel a force to be reckoned with.
“Drain is not in-the-background cooking-type music. Maybe it is for particularly adventurous chefs.”
Like the graphic graffiti and the never-ending nuclear-fallout fever that engulfed the city of New York and critical communities in the mid to late 1970s, the band’s brand of sprawling signals and radical reverberations captures that chaos, while simultaneously spiraling into the melodic madness of our trepidatious times. Across the double album’s seven tracks of pungent psychedelia, where textured talismans hang freely in the biblical breeze, lurks a lyrical landscape that breathes that infamous midnight-oil bliss. For all those weird and wonderful years in the business, a body of work like this only comes from the meditative mist every so often. Written and recorded in the spring of 2025 and featuring guest musicians Chris Harford, Sigmund Lerner, and Tom DeLaney- no, not the legendary African-American songwriter, most notably known for his 1920 classic “Jazz Me Blues,” the album unfolds its pulverizing petals, casting a sonic shade on listeners who patiently pose like spiritual statues below. Featuring tracks like “Honey”, “Okie’s Song 1”, and the album’s epic ender “The Great Fatted Bull (Stone Tablet #36)”, Vorhex Angel should not be slept on but instead carefully consumed with a nice glass of Sazerac.
The sprawling experimental double album’s seven tracks
