Motorpsycho’s Apocalyptic Sounds and the Fall of the Tower of Babel at Channel Zero (2018)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: Ljubljana / Channel Zero / Slovenia
Concert date: 08.03.2018
Attendance: 150
Ticket price: €8.00 (advance) / €10.00 (day of show)

It was the eighth of March, and it was well worth popping over to Metelkova, where Channel Zero was happily rumbling along with the thunder and all the fog drifting around. It could also boast a seriously nice turnout of young folks hungry for a good musical feast. Young folks? Not just young folks, but a solid bunch of graying uncles who’ve been following Motorpsycho for a very, very long time. Like I said. So this night the Norwegian veterans of psychedelic, progressive and post-rock »godlessness« Motorpsycho landed in this space. The band has a hefty fan base and we got to see that two years ago too, at their show in Pordenone. Back then the author of this piece wrote that the band was made for a gig at Kino Šiška in Ljubljana, if it ever came to that. The prophecy came true in less than two years. Okay, it was at Channel Zero, but the Kino Šiška crew co-produced the show. The considerably smaller stage at Channel Zero brought out certain emotions that only a club stage can conjure, where the contact between crowd and band is that much more intense. And that’s exactly how it was at Channel. The club was packed with a crowd hungry for grabby, hypnotic loops built on the thunderously hyperplastic and rudimentary sound of guitar phrases.

For support, Motorpsycho invited Hungary’s Dope Calypso. A hugely agile and ambitious outfit from Budapest, active for four years with as many albums under their belt. The freshly released »Chaka Chaka« got the most attention. A quartet that uses no bass guitar, just two furiously sharpened guitars, with a stripped-down, primal rock’n’roll drive, a compactly garage-bound exposé. Two guitars, drums, and keyboards in a supporting role. So: garage, raw, bold, hot-blooded and mildly lucid. The band of »top less« guys sweated themselves silly in a good half hour. The crowd didn’t stay indifferent to all that commitment either and sent the band off with thunderous applause at the end of the set. A very likeable overture to what awaited us next.

Motorpsycho have a long career behind them, yet it was only at the turn of the millennium that they began to stretch out artistically and fold other genre elements into their primal, raw, rocking-out selves. People started pinning labels on them like psychedelic, progressive, post-rock, though their trademark thunder and oscillation often leaps into noise territory. The songs kept getting longer and longer, and the band’s music more and more hypnotic and trippy. “Floydisms” are no surprise here. Rustic gear all around, from mellotrons to old-school brands of guitars and basses. Depends on how fat a sound you want. In that respect Motorpsycho by no means skimp on decibels, not even with two guitars going on stage at once, with the Gibson SG, of course, as the guarantor of Black Sabbath-style concrete-mixer riffing.

More often than not, watching a band like this is downright grotesque. It’s incredible how they use minimalist tricks to build such a predatory, mocking atmosphere that strings heavens together, then in the next moment ruthlessly slams you into hell. Thundering sound. The load-bearing walls of Channel Zero shook like thunder. Motorpsycho were insanely loud that night. Surrounded by a whole pleiad of effects pedals, memorizing sonic ornaments, stacking sound panels on top of each other. A solemn sound full of gloom. Hypnosis and trip. The crowd was spellbound in an instant. And never woke up from that sweet stupor. Two hours and fifteen minutes flew by in a flash. Motorpsycho put you into such a state of rapture that you need a few moments of post-gig sobering up to bring you back to reality. The thundering sound, layer upon layer, and the soundscape built out of repeating motifs is definitely the real address for hypnosis and a »trip«.

Those two great musical adventurers, Bent Sæther and Hans »Snah« Magnus Ryan, took new drummer Tomas Järmyr into the band last year, and he did a superb job. Especially as the link that enriched the musical fabric with inventive touches in the moments given over to droning repetitions of motifs. There Tomas found loads of room to show off his drumming chops and talent. The new album, the »biblical« The Tower, is considered extremely inventive and, alongside a heap of releases and even soundtracks for film and theater, proves that Motorpsycho, within their concrete-poured, homegrown and peculiar vocabulary, can still find room to push their artistic starting points into a new evolutionary quality. A double album, an incredibly ambitious piece of work, which made up half of the entire set played that night. This time the band mostly played »younger« material, meaning post-millennium, which artistically linked up extremely well with the energy and vibe of the latest The Tower«.

No two ways about it. Blasphemous apocalyptic devastation and the fall of the Tower of Babel. From the first second to the last. In all its peculiarity and musical uniqueness. In the essence of live performance power, Motorpsycho remain unique musical tailors and preachers who enchant and seduce the music consumer with feather-light ease. Seduce with forces of magnetic attraction into a one-of-a-kind world of homegrown musical adventure that will soon fill thirty years of existence!

Setlist

MOTORPSYCHO:
1. Year Zero (A damage report)
2. Bartok of the Universe
3. The Cuckoo
4. Ship of Fools
5. Pills, Powders + Passion Plays
6. In Every Dream Home
7. Heartattack Mac – Back to Source – Heartattack Mac
8. Greener
9. Spin, Spin, Spin (orig. Terry Callier)
10. Go To California
11. Rock Bottom (orig. UFO)
12. You Lied
13. The Tower
—encore—
14. Vortex Surfer