A fifth coronation rite, this time celebrating the endurance of the sun however it might spring from the twelve-handed dripping deliverance of Brussels, Belgium-borne collective NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM explores an entirely new rhythmic realm and point of delivery for their variously high-conceptual and improvised sonic exploration. A fifth full-length album as well as an imposing triple-album to the tune of nearly two hours ‘Le Sacre du Soleil Invaincu‘ doesn’t seek to distress or tax the mind so much as enrich it with stellarly performances, imaginative dirge, and amp-exploding heft in delivery of its three-course mantra. It’d take a will of stone to sit through these hundred plus minutes of ambitious spiritual droning muse and not be moved, or at least wildly entertained, to some degree.

Neptunian Maximalism is perhaps the best noticed output directed by artist, musician, designer and producer Guillaume Cazalet (Aksu, CZLT, Sol Kia, Homo Sensibilis Sounds, et al.) who’d formed the group with saxophonist Jean Jacques Duerinckx (Föhn Ensemble, ZAÄAR) back in 2018 though each release and live recording features a different collective of suited musicians which only consistently includes Cazalet as the director and often vocalist, guitarist or bassist. While we can consider their work “experimental” it does not arrive in fumbling states of learning but rather alchemically stirring improvisation into set forms and often highly detailed conceptions, the result is something more like droning chess played with world-class musicians emboldened under psychedelic supervision. In fact drone/doom and jazz fusion applied to ritualistic psychedelia is as close to an umbrella of description outright. In the interest of finishing this review this month and not becoming lost in the wealth of live performances and such I’ll suggest that every recording from this collective (live or otherwise) is distinct, dependent on the brains and hands holding the instruments.

For the first three albums an emphasis on esoteric use of percussion, droning movements and ever-spiraling use of improvisational soloing amounted to a trip through their ideation of kosmische free-jazz yet for my own taste this did not yield anything texturally unique, or, exciting at all ’til ‘Éons‘ (2020) a sophomore 3XLP that’d exploded their containment of said forms into more distinct and cohesive tonal/harmonic language. The main feature of that album was the marriage of amplified baritone saxophone alongside bigger, nastier “world metal” droning guitar and bass voicing. The standard was set there in terms of detail, movement, performance and heavy spiritual inspiration taken from pan-Asian music prompts unto psychedelic jazz-“rock” music. The easier to digest ‘Solar Drone Ceremony‘ (2021) changed the format from incredibly detailed studio album toward a live recording via nine-piece ensemble which was clearly meant to be a full audio-visual experience. I rarely have the patience or interest to sit with a discography of hourlong improvisation and live experience but in doing so for a short review of that third LP I’d appreciated Cazalet‘s high level of constructed improv-warmed curation enough to only approach in the future when I’d had the time and attention span. This meant the reprisal of the nonet arkestra for their fourth LP (‘Finis Gloriae Mundi‘, 2022) couldn’t have fit on my schedule during the intensely busied month of November that year, though I did circle back when Cazalet‘s black metal oriented project Ôros Kaù (along with a few other projects) cropped up in the meantime as Neptunian Maximalism made room for all else to seep through.

‘Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu‘ is once again a live recording, this time at St. Johns on Bethnal Green church (London, England) as part of the avant-garde/heavy music gathering The Judgement Hall Festival. Their performance was both intensely prescribed and freely built, comprised of three ragas (Raga Marwa, Raga Todi and Raga Bairagi) each of which is explored within its own LP length composition with ~3-4 parts each. In this state Neptunian Maximalism set parameters for their craft via Indian classical music attuned to improvisation, an expansion of possibilities via modes and scales which allow for broader, freely arranged rhythmic expression set within a specific root notes (re: modal guidelines) which encourage the avoidance repeating notes. This has been an enlightening choice in coloring interest and emotion into performances via improvisational artists in progressive, jazz and rock music for ages and typically for the sake of being less restricted by major and minor scale usage… You’re not getting any more of an in-depth discussion of music theory from me in this regard as my interest in some of these methods is limited to Rudra‘s discography and I dunno, John Coltrane in the 60’s (‘Ascension‘ esp). That said I would encourage learning some of the basic rhythmic language of Indian classical music to help determine what is exceptional and simply exploratory found within these works which are clearly presented as performances, prompts to generate emotion and perhaps a broader sense of surrealistic awe.

The thing to note here on this recording (and I believe the ‘Set Chaos to the Moon‘ live performance at Roadburn festival as well) is that Duerinckx did not perform at this event and instead instruments relevant to Indian classical oeuvre such as the surbahar (bass sitar, essentially) as well as some broader-use instruments such as the electric saz, zurna, and daf drum are used to add color and shape to apices of activity. This reduction from a nonet to a sextet means that certain portions of this three-part event are dominated by enormous guitar tones, a different sound from Cazalet which is most prominent on the first set of movements: ‘At Dusk‘. While I will prattle on about the structure of this work for the sake of illustrating its shape beyond emotional reactions and loose adjectives the experience of performance is just as important as the methodology of its curatorial hand.

Glenn Branca-esque droning exposition and stoner-doom clubbed guitar tones found herein eventually surge all the way out into left field toward head-spinning neo-psychedelic rock spirals as the moment-to-moment action of ‘Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu‘ divides itself into ~three acts within each of its three main chapters as each LP-length raga (‘At Dusk‘, ‘Arcana XX : The Fury Ov Judgement Horns‘, ‘At Dawn‘) explored has a defined beginning, mid-set passion, and charged ending. At roughly half an hour per LP the listening experience is a daunting ~101 minutes when scourging through all three parts in a row… but not so psychically demanding when taken in one section at a time with some pause for reflection in between. I would consider this listening experience an “evening” which ideally begins at peak sun and finds its esoteric wrinkles by sunset. It certainly isn’t a casual spin and might be best suited for folks seeking immersive, room-filling psychedelia and not popular music variant on drone or jazz-metal infusion.

While I’d happily score a few thousand words in the moment to moment buzz of the entire hour and forty minutes on offer here I’ll emphasize three key pieces which’d characterized the peaking highs of the experience starting with the already suggested stoner-doom level drone-in of “Raag Marwa – Vilambit Laya Alaap” which is the molten core of ‘At Dusk‘ per its roaring guitar tone and slow-kicked doom metal reveal. The meandering lead guitar exposition, feedback scrambled tension and I believe extra distorted bass guitar heft was a black hole for my brains upon initial attendance, a force that could be physically felt pushing air at high volume. One of my favorite pieces along these lines is “Chant” from Glenn Branca‘s hundred guitar ‘Symphony 13: Hallucination City‘ and while this is something entirely different in most respects it’d hit me with a similar profundity and with a menacing (rather than playful) buoyancy pushing through the extended drone of the piece.

One could make a much more convincing argument for “Raag Todi – Alaap On Surbahar” as the crux and the most stunning apex of ‘Arcana XX : The Fury Ov Judgement Horns‘ thanks to the loud and mind-bending use of the surbahar in its lower range alongside grand electric bass gilded bends but I’d naturally gravitated toward the burst into flames that comes beyond its clangorous meditation. “Raag (Raudra) Todi – Drut Laya, Chaotic Polyphonic Taan Combinations” is almost labeled rather than titled as the primal chaotic wrath of the whole listening experience, a tangled mass of cables all surging with their own self-important thread matched with the trotting momentum of the drums. Yes, there are far more “musical” and fixated portions of this very long and locked-in recording but this is the wide-eyed, drooling portion of the show where the brain begins to burn under the weight of maximal sensorial overload. It lends itself to a repeatable apex at the very least. The leve of guitar noise scrabbling its way through the first two thirds of ‘Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu‘ was enough to hold my focus through several full listens, probably more than I’d needed to manage any sort of commentary.

The hardest part of ‘Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu‘ to select a highlight from is its final act ‘At Dawn‘ and largely because it all flows more seamlessly than the prior two-thirds. What’ll most likely standout in mind for every passing ear is the roaring and bellowing declarative vocalizations which tower over “Raag Bairagi – Rite D’Ovairture, Badhat Unisson” as a short but impactful escalation of the ritual groove introduced on “Raag Bairagi – Vilambit Laya Alaap” before it. This is for me the peak of the performance’s statement though we have to include the pieces before and after for the sake of them all being part of the same river with one of the solos even carrying through for a significant portion of “Raag Bairagi – Sthayi, Antara Composition”. The jammed chaos at the endpoint isn’t completely my favorite part of the experience but all rivers must lead somewhere and the pool at the end is at least fittingly intense.

It is important to emphasize that while this is a performance first and foremost, both improvised and original material in a regimented vision, it is worth mentioning the sonic lustre allowed this performance especially as the folks involved (mixing from Cazalet, mastering from maestro James Plotkin) bring a level of quality/precision detail which builds upon past experience. For my own taste a level of detail and co-habitation worthy of ‘Éons‘ is and important baseline and this album achieves this while bringing in some additional warmth beyond the graven tones of ‘Finis Gloriae Mundi‘ before it. Ringing feedback, amplified/electrified traditional instruments, etc. all require a different render than the shared space between saxophone and guitar on prior releases. While I’d missed the baritone saxophone as part of Neptunian Maximalism‘s sound the trade-off is of course a sort of interesting guitar saturated burst of droning sonic excess which allows stringed instruments to flex and solo throughout the heaving breath of the experience.

Naturally one can expect the highest standards for packaging from the majority of I, Voidhanger Records curated releases and ‘Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu‘ is particularly fine in its most deluxe first issues (both 3XCD and 3XLP) being housed in a box with individual sleeves for each alongside a large booklet. While I’m not sure it’ll fit on every collector’s shelf I much prefer this form compared to any sort of gatefold solution which tends to be too tightly packed and/or likely to resort to a loose LP in sleeve and stressed spines over extended use. In terms of the imagery itself the expressive, colorful medium and brilliant sense for special pigments via artist Kaneko Tomiyuki once again characterizes the worldliness of Neptunian Maximalism‘s aesthetic and pieces from Cazalet’s own body of work as a painter further stylize the album deeper in the realm of psychedelia as well as experimental/avant-garde performance.

I’ll avoid overstating the profundity of ‘Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu‘ as an audio experience here without having viewed the live performance from any angle yet, though I will say that there is more here than busied hands fretting away across a couple of hours. The vast majority of the instrumentation and curation of sounds/performances here offer worthy fixation, connective entertainment which is largely instrumental yet wholly evocative in its coloration outside of the lines. What I don’t fully get here across the board is an emotional interpretation from each raga, though I’m not about to fault the spectacle of sonic excess for stealing away interest/focus. For the existing fandom it should be refreshing that Neptunian Maximalism have morphed their palette to suit the performance, worked with entirely different sounds (and some signature touches) to create a work that is equally brilliant in its ambitious, exploratory vision. Otherwise I’d found some remarkably repeatable listening here that’d been easy to delve back into and even memorable within equal points of rest and high vigor. A high recommendation.

---