A Second Invitation To An Uninterrupted Katabatic Lens is the second and certainly irrefutable invitation to the inimitable artistic world of Decolonise Your Mind Society an exceptional Hungarian band. Following the path on after their widely acclaimed debut Anabatic Prism, the geography and climate has somewhat changed: the playfulness and colorfulness of higher overtones central to Anabatic Prism fall apart and a massive gate instantly opens up to a down-to-earthiness nowhere else to be found. The album follows the group’s first release at NativeDSD – a Pure DSD 256 Stereo album titled A Courteous Invitation To An Uninhabited Anabatic Prism.

Is it an ancient human culture excavated in the soil or rather a fearless survival attempt in a possible near future? Whatever the answer is, as we walk through these immense and diverse landscapes invoked by the record’s stunning compositions featuring different “equal divisions of the octave” tunings and complex meters, one can be sure that this unknown planet seems real and tangible, fierce and muddy, corporeal and with an unattainable antigravitational urge to leave weightiness behind.

Our ears are enchanted by the catchy melodies while they indelibly come back to us over and over again… We are simply hooked on them.

Graphic designer Csenge Csató’s cover art offers a suitably illuminated welcome to listeners who take up the latest invitation from these upliftingly off-kilter Hungarian musicians led by guitarist, composer and instrument builder Bálint Szabó. Mysterious figures climb from their subterranean homes, and move through a lustrously colored landscape, where fried eggs are dotted inexplicably among gigantic plants. A huge serpent emerges from soil in which dinosaur bones are embedded. Strange angular birds flutter overhead. Scaly mountain peaks resemble the caps of psilocybin mushrooms. Cató is providing an orientation, or disorientation, as she did for the group’s debut release, A Courteous Invitation To An Uninhabited Anabatic Prism. The music, like the imagery, skews what is familiar, tilting addictive riffs and infectiously simple melodies to a harmonically oblique angle where a surreal title, such as “How I Learnt To Fly In A Dove’s Dream”, seems entirely reasonable. Unconventional tunings and insistent grooves steer the ear beyond routine horizons, and perform hallucinatory tricks.

Decolonise Your Mind Society are metrically astute, but they avoid unnecessary complication and superfluous flourishes. Their departures from orthodox temperament are often startling, yet consistently purposeful. The world heard through their music’s lens may seem warped in relation to Eurocentric norms, but it never sounds arcane or frivolously decorative. Emphasis during their previous outing fell on ascent (anabasis) towards the light and ecstatic jangle of higher overtones. Here Szabó and his fellow explorers undertake their descent (katabasis), at times moving with dirge-like slowness, but mostly clinging to the funky chop and churn of embodied trance music. In his review of their debut in The Wire 441, Daniel Spicer provided a wide-ranging catalogue of other musics brought to mind by the group’s choice of tunings and global sensibility. On this sequel, Decolonize Your Mind Society are moving persuasively through their own exhilarating territory. – Julian Cowley

Decolonise Your Mind Society
Ernő Hock – Fretless Bass Guitar & Vocals
Gergő Kováts – Saxophone & Vocals
Áron Porteleki – Drums & Vocals
Máté Pozsár – Synth & Vocals
Bálint Szabó – Just Intonation Guitar, Fretless Guitar & Vocals
Dániel Váczi – Glissotar & Vocals