Somewhere in Chicago, a band sit quiet and meditative. This band is REZN and they are pondering where they go next. Producing sublime records is second nature to them so the contemplation is absolutely no hardship. It’s the reason they are on this earth. They may even be thinking about their sixth album, ‘Cycles In The Infinite Dream’, which has only just floated into the airwaves of the earth. Probably not though.
The band have an uncanny knack of writing music that you can utterly lose yourself in. The psychedelic wash that isn’t far from Elder, combines perfectly with some Mastodon-esque riffing, and then all gets rolled up in an Alice In Chains style wrap. The latter is key to my enjoyment of this record. The ‘stoner’ tag is thrown about far too easily and this fits far more neatly in a Jerry Cantrell sized, grunge hole.
You only have to listen to tracks like ‘Escher’, ‘Aerial Birth’ and the riff-lord that is ‘The Vessel’ to understand exactly what I mean. Crunching riffs sit so perfectly under a hallucinogenic and haunting vocal, and the band have a knack of hinting at every change and twist from within far before it happens. This is expert musicianship – in a Boss Keloid kind of way – it is designed to make the listener feel and not just hear.
Carrying on the Alice In Chains analogy, it is ‘Cloudfall’ that grabs me the most. This could have fallen straight out of Cantrell’s ‘Degredation Trip’, and he poignantly said at the time ‘Part of the healing process is sharing with other people who care.’ This sums up exactly what REZN have achieved here and ‘Cycles In The Infinite Dream’ is an album that will dwell in the psyche, rent free, for many months to come.
Best Paired With: Interesting Cloud Formations, Acknowledging the knot deep within your soul, and chilling the fuck out.
reviewed by jaff.
rEZN – Cycles In The Infinite Dream is out now on sargent house.
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