Accost the universe

>> Kosmos, a constellation of local
hard-rock stars, kraut it out loud

INTERSTELLAR FELLERS: Kosmos

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

With a line-up boasting Voivod drummer Michel “Away” Langevin, bassist Vincent Peake of Groovy Aardvark and more recently GrimSkunk, guitarist Jet Phil of One 976 and Paradise fame, and Tricky Woo’s Alex Crow at the keys, you can bet the stars are in auspicious alignment for Montreal’s Kosmos, a back-to-the-future foray into the heavy duty, psychedelic, sci-fi prog rock of yesteryear.

“It started with music-listening sessions once a week,” says Langevin, whose longstanding obsession with science and outer space remains entirely intact. “We’d gather at Jet Phil’s place and listen to older krautrock and very strange progressive rock. Soon, Phil was buying very obscure vinyl on the Internet from very obscure parts of the planet, so we became obsessed with that type of very futuristic music, even though it was made many years ago. At one point, we thought, let’s try to replicate it, but in a modern context.”

The obvious touchstones are present on the band’s eponymous debut CD, on Brooklyn’s predictably unpredictable heavy-weirdness label The End. Opener “Psycho,” with its blazing horns and oscillations, recalls Hawkwind’s heaviness, and segues into the mesmerizing synth motifs of “Dream,” a nod to—you guessed it—Tangerine Dream. But then there’s the hallucinogenic garage punk of the Gong cover “Much Too Old,” with Xavier Caféïne’s snotty vox. There’s an Indo-phonic mini-raga, a dose of rock poetry en français care of Aut’Chose’s Lucien Francoeur, and abstract alien soundscapes in the vein of the Forbidden Planet soundtrack. Kosmos is schizophrenically diverse, a reflection of its roots.

“We thought about releasing two different albums, one rock and one more avant-garde,” says Langevin, “but ended up thinking it might ruin the basic idea.

“The main influence was krautrock—when you listen to it, even though the bands were related to one scene, they were really different, one from the other. If you take Birth Control, it’s very Deep Purple-oriented, with a lot of riffage and organ. If you listen to Faust, it’s really avant-garde and proto-punk—same with Can. If you listen to Amon Duul II, it has this cult feeling, because it was a commune—it has this weird witchcraft feel to it. The goal was to reach all these different aspects.”

That it was, but the quartet—or rather quintet, with Fred Filteau, electronic twister and tweaker, recently promoted to full membership—never intended to be stuck in the past.

“It is based on a scene that was very popular in the early ’70s, and there are some definite sounds that are very hard to find nowadays, but we still tried to give it a modern twist, a bit of metal here and there, and of course, some of the stuff was probably impossible to do 40 years ago.”

CD launch at le Savoy
(Metropolis) on Wednesday,
Oct. 24, 8:30 p.m., $6