Mildlife

Unlike Antipodean compadres Tame Impala and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s own take on late 60s/early 70s inflected rock disco-lysergic energy thrill-pills, Melbourne quartet Mildlife adopt a more laidback groove.

Having released debut LP ‘Phase’ earlier this year the band are currently touring with Cumbrian freak-trippers, The Lucid Dream and US fuzz-drone-lords Wooden Shjips.

This gig was at Liverpool’s Invisible Wind Factory, a repurposed cavernous space situated in the reviving and thriving dock areas of the city. A suitably fitting arena for a mind-amending cerebral cortex-flexing.

Trading acid for placid and channelling such British progressive titans as Camel and Caravan, Teutonic motorik pioneers Can and another fellow Aussie, the late Daevid ‘Gong’ Allen, the ensuing experience is a blissed out trance-dance.

Veering from the lunar-sea of tranquilities on ‘The Magnificent Moon’ to the ruminative meditations of ‘Im Blau’ the foursome tightly control and dictate the pace, finely tuned mellow hellos from afar.

With Phase 1 complete the band have now embarked on ‘Phase II’, released on 14th September, it’s an-other eleven-minute space-rock hypnotic knob-twiddling free-form wave-formations designed to seduce and reduce the listener to a passive receiver. Absorption is mandatory in a transmission (im)possible.

These mild beasts capture and enrapture. Catch this Mel-bourne Legacy whilst you can.