San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
-based quartet which has a
psychedelic
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary states of consciousness (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips").Pollan, Michael (2018). ''How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of ...
"mindbender"
space rock
Space rock is a music genre characterized by loose and lengthy song structures centered on instrumental textures that typically produce a hypnotic, otherworldly sound. It may feature distorted and reverberation-laden guitars, minimal drummin ...
sound. The group is notable for performances characterized by "transcendent live video projections" and having "incredible visuals", according to one music critic. One critic described the band as "Oakland's prize pony in the
Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...
gloom-folk horse race". The sound has been compared to
Krautrock
Krautrock (also called , German for ) is a broad genre of experimental rock
Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments ...
with overtones of
1960s music
This article includes an overview of the events and trends in popular music in the 1960s.
In North America and Europe the decade was particularly revolutionary in terms of popular music, as it saw the evolution of rock music, rock and the begi ...
.
History
The band was founded by Tyler Green, Marc Melzer, Jason Miller and Chris Musgrave in 2006. Multi-instrumentalist Luis Vasquez joined in 2008. Early rehearsals and recordings were produced in San Francisco, but the group has since relocated to Oakland. They have their own recording studio in a converted church in
Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
. The band's sound was influenced by groups such as
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City, formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of the b ...
,
Krautrock
Krautrock (also called , German for ) is a broad genre of experimental rock
Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments ...
Neu!
Neu! (; German for "New!"; styled in block capitals) were a West German krautrock band formed in Düsseldorf in 1971 by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother following their departure from Kraftwerk. The group's albums were produced by Conny Plank, w ...
, and African and South American ''Psych'' music from the 1960s and 1970s. In mid-2011 Vasquez left the group to focus on his project
The Soft Moon
Luis Vasquez is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and producer credited for creating The Soft Moon in Oakland, California, The Soft Moon has been described as post-punk, darkwave, minimal wave and industrial rock.
History
The band was fo ...
The Lumerians have worked with vocalist Rebecca Coseboom. Coseboom and the Lumerians did the track ''Separate Half'' on the EP entitled '' The Answer EP'' by Unkle. They performed in 2010 in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
with the
Butthole Surfers
Butthole Surfers are an American rock band formed in San Antonio, Texas, by singer Gibby Haynes and guitarist Paul Leary in 1981. The band has had numerous personnel changes, but its core lineup of Haynes, Leary, and drummer King Coffey has been ...
.
Lumerians released their first full length LP, Transmalinnia in March 2011. In July 2012, Lumerians released their second LP, a collection of instrumental spontaneous compositions titled "Transmissions from Telos Vol. IV." "Transmissions" was released as a limited 300 edition transparent vinyl by French label Hands in the Dark in Europe and an edition of 500 (150 transparent sea blue and 350 Bone) on Permanent Records in the US. In late November and early December 2012, Lumerians completed their first European tour, ending the year with the release of the Horizon Structures EP on Knitting Factory Records. A limited 500 edition vinyl of Horizon Structures is packaged with "4D Transdimensional portal viewing glasses" for viewing the video for "The Bloom," shot in ChromaDepth.
Lumerians released LP
The High Frontier
''The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space'' is a 1976 book by Gerard K. O'Neill, a road map for what the United States might do in outer space after the Apollo program, the drive to place a human on the Moon and beyond. It envisions large huma ...
in May 2013 in the UK and Europe, supported by performances in UK, France, Netherlands and Belgium. The album was released August 2013 in the US, coinciding with a series of dates supporting My Bloody Valentine on the second half of their US tour, followed by a series of UK and European dates in 2014, culminating with them closing out the
Roadburn Festival
Roadburn Festival is an international music festival held in Tilburg, Netherlands every April since 1999. It was set up as a spin-off from the Roadburn music blog founded by Jurgen van den Brand and Walter Hoeijmakers. Originally focused on stone ...
's Afterburner in
Tilburg
Tilburg () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, in the southern province of North Brabant. With a population of 222,601 (1 July 2021), it is the second-largest city or municipality in North Brabant after Eindhoven and the seventh-larg ...
, Netherlands. Lumerians ended 2014 with the release of Transmissions from Telos Vol. III, in December. In 2015, Lumerians supported Vol. III with select shows across North America, UK, and Europe, including Levitation Chicago, Levitation France and Liverpool Psych Fest.
Lumerians played few live dates in 2016 or 2017, taking time to focus on writing and recording, but closed out the last night of the 2016 Desert Daze festival in
Joshua Tree
''Yucca brevifolia'' is a plant species belonging to the genus ''Yucca''. It is tree-like in habit, which is reflected in its common names: Joshua tree, yucca palm, tree yucca, and palm tree yucca.
This monocotyledonous tree is native to the ar ...
, Calif.
Psychedelic performances
The band received positive critical attention not only for its "psychedelic sound" but for achieving "intense psychedelic projections" using a vast array of synchronized equipment during its public performances. Marc Melzer explained:
A report in ''SFGate'' described the band as "masked and draped in monastic cassocks" with performances that were "hypnotic" using "spirarling psych drones", according to music critic Michelle Broder Van Dyke, who elaborated that their "keyboard-driven rhythms" evoked "lost relics, like the mythic underseas continent its band name references." A music reporter described one performance:
When asked in an interview how the group chose their name, Miller said:
Some music critics have described the music as
space rock
Space rock is a music genre characterized by loose and lengthy song structures centered on instrumental textures that typically produce a hypnotic, otherworldly sound. It may feature distorted and reverberation-laden guitars, minimal drummin ...
. When asked whether the group was described as a "space-rock" genre, Melzer elaborated that the group loves 1960s psych bands, revivalism music, and Krautrock but that they were not trying to be one of those types of groups; rather, the aim was to create "trancelike music or ecstatic music" that "takes the listener to another place."
Knitting Factory records
In 2010, the band was approached by
Knitting Factory Records
Knitting Factory Records is an independent American music label that is notable for promoting a variety of artists, including the music of deceased Nigerian political activist Fela Kuti. The label promotes a variety of music artists including ...
after listening to their music on MySpace. Their debut album ''Transmalinnia'' was released in 2011 on the Knitting Factory Records label and featured nine tracks. According to Marc Melzer, the band took many years to record their first full-length because they wanted to have a coherent album sound. The cover art of the album ''Transmalinnia'' was done by the outsider artist
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910–1983) was an American self-taught artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over the course of fifty years, from the 1930s until his death in 1983, Von Bruenchenhein produced an expansive oeuvre of poetry, photography, pain ...
. The group released the new song ''Atlanta Brook'' in 2011.
Reviews
Reviews have been positive for their albums and live performances.
* Music critic Daniel Levin Becker of ''San Francisco Weekly'' wrote that their song ''Gaussian Castles'' on the album ''Transmalinnia'' was a "hallucination unto itself complete with cavernous room, ominous reverb and far-off galloping drums" and commented that the accompanying video "scans like the unholy lovechild of an iTunes visualization algorithm and a year's worth of footage of the Serengeti compressed into five minutes."
* Critic Ian S. Port in ''SF Weekly'' described the band as "stunning Oakland psych-rockers" and described the band as a "force––live especially" and commented that their album ''Transmalinnia'' was "entrancing" and "captures some but not all of the obsessive linearity and pounding drive of the band's live show." Port highly recommended ''Transmallinia'' in a review in 2011.
* Music critic Carla Selvin in ''SF Weekly'' described a live performance in which the bass guitar sound "reverberated so strong it felt like a
seizure
An epileptic seizure, informally known as a seizure, is a period of symptoms due to abnormally excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain. Outward effects vary from uncontrolled shaking movements involving much of the body with los ...
" and that the beat was "intoxicating" from the Congo drums with an "over-saturated synth-drone" which created a "trance-like lull" on the dance floor.
Knitting Factory Records
Knitting Factory Records is an independent American music label that is notable for promoting a variety of artists, including the music of deceased Nigerian political activist Fela Kuti. The label promotes a variety of music artists including ...
* "Transmissions from Telos Vol. IV", 2012, Hands in the Dark (EU), Permanent (US)
* ''
The High Frontier
''The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space'' is a 1976 book by Gerard K. O'Neill, a road map for what the United States might do in outer space after the Apollo program, the drive to place a human on the Moon and beyond. It envisions large huma ...
'', 2013,
Partisan Records
Partisan Records is an independent record label with offices in London and Los Angeles, as well as in New York City, where the company was co-founded in 2007 by Tim Putnam and Ian Wheeler. The label, initially run out of Putnam’s South Brooklyn ...