Following 'Jaguar Mirror' [c.2016] and 'Night School Of Universal Wisdom' [c.2017], psychonaut Thunder Tillman and his personal shaman Pony deliver another sublime EP, completing an illustrious trilogy with arguably their most expansive work to date, 'Condor Sunflower'. The title track is emotionally overwhelming, a drum procession that carries a righteous battle hymn to epic heights, accumulating primitive instrumentation, ceremonial chants, emotive chord changes and Beach Boy harmonies before exiting on a tear-jerking coda. The intermediary track 'Sväva' is just as vulnerable, a modestly-arranged and leisurely-paced lullaby, where angels coalesce with a droning organ and eventually unfurl into the warm glow of rapture. Before we hit rock bottom, Thunder and Pony halt the elevator, abandoning any sense of melancholy and climbing to new heights with 'Creation Discoteque', an 11-minute Prog beast that chronicles a myriad of their musical adventures. This retrospective of altered states does seem designed to drop the curtain on their meticulously-crafted narrative, but not without foreshadowing their future and throwing in an air-shaking rave-up that sprints toward the finish line. What we find enviable, spanning 3 glorious Thunder Tillman EPs and short films, is the duo’s creative simpatico, something that many artists in collaboration never truly behold. It's not their joint musical intuition, their intrinsic understanding of one another’s craft, or even the power of their improvisational tether, but their spiritual alliance that nobody can touch. It's as if they share a tandem bicycle ride on the highest plane of consciousness to lounge in the members-only spa where they telepathically discuss secrets of high-grade musical alchemy.

[ESP089] Condor Sunflower

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[ESP089] THUNDER TILLMAN - A2 - Sväva - SNIPPET

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