Influences: Bland Bladen "I Grevens Tid" (2003)

While I am working on new tracks for a Surya Kris Peters-album, for some time later this year perhaps, I found a similarity to a band that I almost forgot: Bland Bladen. And here's a funny thing, I never really listened that much to this kind of jam music, long guitar noodling or pretty much anything that Samsara probably became sort of notorious for - LOL ... Well, I may have went through a rather short phase when I liked such stuff and maybe that was around the time this four track-album fell into our hands, and I say "our" because actually this CD mysteriously landed in the hands of former Terraplane singer/bassist Chris Oelke when we played at Stoned From The Underground-festival in 2003. And yes in a way Terraplane already played extended jams occasionally, when pretty much no one had a clue what was going on. Also the ultra-long version of Zepp'lins "Dazed And Confused" always left us with lots of oohs and aahs, but anyways that was pretty much that. Remember the very early 2000s were also a time when streaming, or even decent downloading was pretty much non-existent, so you listened to the CDs you had and for us that was a lot of Zepp'lin, Hendrix, Canned Heat's "Parthenogenesis and then this mysterious Bland Bladen-band from Sweden that went though lots of spins in our Harz mountain-homes.

Early influences: Gas Giant

Gas Giant live 2005 by Scott Heller

I'm recently (re-) discovering the GAS GIANT-discography. They kindly provide us with all their studio releases on Spotify, quite a boss move if you ask me, every band should do that somehow ... and I know not nearly no one earns much at all from that, but at least these recordings don't get lost like so many, but so many from the "early days" of Stoner/Psychedelic-rock. So many 12inches and stuff that no one has ever heard of, yet a lot of cool material. For me somehow much more interesting than what you could find on any kind of virtual 'stoner meadow' these days ;) but maybe that's just some old dude's rambling because not many of the new groups really strike a nerve in me.

Not much hits me like Gas Giant for sure, who were one of these groups that really impressed me a lot while we shared a gig with them so many moons ago in a little town in the middle of nowhere East Germany (read here). And it's actually funny how after so many concerts with so many bands with SBE, many of the bands that I kind of worshipped in my adolescent years, it's still these early memories that shine the brightest. Gas Giant, House Of Aquarius, The Hidden Hand - these shows were so special in so many ways, or am I after all experiencing what everybody does at some point in his life: moaning the lost youth? Well anyways... Gas Giant, man what an amazing band they were!

Back in 2003 while watching their soundcheck I already felt like they were completely another league. Even though from Denmark, they could have easily been among those California heroes of the 90s; Nebula, Fu Manchu, Kyuss - Gas Giant totally belongs into that realm. And it made me a bit sad to see how after their brief comeback in the mid 2010s, it seemed people had almost forgotten or still never heard of them and you found them under the little names of the few festivals they played. But ofc these days it seems more important how many social media followers you have - at times it seems all about numbers - but then how can you not acknowledge these are the kind of forefathers of a whole scene?!

Cool shot of guitarist Stefan Krey who's now playing in Magnified Eye - Scott Heller, 2005

Interesting links

http://aural-innovations.com/issues/gg.html - has even old tour diaries - it's a trip! 

https://www.facebook.com/gasgiantrock - they occasionally reunite

https://thegasgiant.bandcamp.com - you can buy some of their releases

https://www.discogs.com/es/artist/733174-Gas-Giant - has also a brief bio