‘Hyloxolos,’ the self-titled debut from the eponymous psych-rock supergroup, is a rare instance of immediacy meeting expansive ambition. Conceived over an intense 48-hour creative burst at 64sound in Los Angeles, the record captures the first vibrations of a band still discovering itself, yet fully aware of the possibilities within those initial, unpolished moments. Engineered by Tyler Karmen, the album presents six tracks that feel at once urgent and spacious, as if the room itself, filled with Dave Harrington, Peter Matthew Bauer, Dylan Carlson, Dylan Fujioka, and Otis Bauer, has been distilled into sound.
The album opens with “Kansas City,” a seven-minute-plus excursion where Harrington’s layered guitar washes swirl atop Carlson’s heavy, doom-inflected riffs. Fujioka’s drumming provides a propulsive backbone, simultaneously deliberate and elastic, allowing the track to expand without losing focus. Otis Bauer’s bass underlines the tension, holding a thread through the undulating textures, while Peter Matthew Bauer’s harmonic sensibilities add subtle contours to the sprawling sonic canvas. The track exemplifies the record’s capacity to feel both monumental and intimate.
“Century of Speed” accelerates into hypnotic momentum. Carlson’s weighty guitar chords interlace with Harrington’s shimmering pyrotechnics, creating a sense of forward motion that seems unstoppable yet patient, like a train negotiating both straightaways and curves. Fujioka’s percussion shines here, intricate yet driving, a constant negotiation between freedom and structure. The track conveys an unspoken dialogue among musicians learning each other’s tendencies while pushing toward a unified expression.
“Gloom Ascension” slows the pace but deepens the palette. The song’s atmosphere is dense, Carlson’s signature American doom blues melding with dissonant textures from Harrington, while Otis Bauer’s bass anchors the descent into contemplative darkness. Fujioka’s nuanced percussion navigates between quiet accents and swelling storms, highlighting the ensemble’s capacity for dramatic contouring within a single composition.
“Mountain Cult” introduces ritualistic repetition, a slow-burn hypnotic force where each player contributes a subtly shifting motif, producing a trance-like cumulative effect. The composition feels both grounded and spiritual, each musician weaving in patterns that suggest an intuitive understanding born in the immediacy of the original 48-hour session.
“Waves of Love” provides contrast, opening with spacious harmonic gestures from Harrington and Bauer, allowing Carlson’s muted feedback and Fujioka’s textural percussion to shimmer. The track balances the album’s heavier moments with an almost reflective lyricism expressed entirely instrumentally, emphasizing the group’s dynamic range.
Finally, “Blue Eyes, White Fangs” closes the record with controlled intensity. Carlson’s guitar roars, harmonizing with Harrington’s ambient layers while Fujioka drives forward with precision. The track encapsulates the album’s central ethos: music born from encounter, improvisation, and collective momentum, capturing a sense of discovery that feels larger than its roughly forty-minute runtime.
Throughout ‘Hyloxolos,’ each musician’s distinct voice is evident, yet the record thrives on the collision and coalescence of those voices. Harrington’s ambient pyrotechnics, Carlson’s doom-blues authority, Bauer’s harmonic grounding, and Fujioka’s kinetic drumming produce a document that is both raw and fully realized. It is a record of a group of strangers forging an immediate, resonant universe of sound, a debut that feels like both the inception of something and a fully formed statement in itself.
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