If you’ve been lucky enough to catch a Black Snake Whip live set over the past few years, you’ll know that they’re purveyors of enigmatic psych-rock, powered by a more-is-more attitude that means every wild idea they conceive finds a place in the mix. And although their string of singles from last year did begin to reveal the depth of their craft, it’s only with an extended release like 2000s that fully highlights the band’s scope on record. While broken into four separate tracks, the EP is made to be played in full, forming a 14-minute long journey across their shapeshifting sound, with every idea warping into the next until you’re transported somewhere completely different from what you’d expected.

Kicking off with ‘2001’, we’re welcomed in by Black Snake Whip at their most blissful - built around a tangle of delicate guitars alongside a restless bass and simmering backbeat, it’s a moment of dazzling psychedelia that eases us into BSW's world. While frontman Sam Dore’s raspy voice does give the track a little grit, it’s not enough to make the soundscape feel any less ethereal. That is, until the track shifts into a hiccuping groove built around spiralling polyrhythms and fully erupts into a fiery outro section that shoots the song into space. It’s a fitting way to introduce next track ’Spaghettified’, with its sleazy funk swagger that morphs into another explosion of fuzz, before ‘Wormhole’ picks up the previous track’s slinking groove but adds an otherworldly edge with some cosmic bass work.

Finally, Black Snake Whip reach the other end of the tunnel and burst into EP highlight ‘Everything’s The Same (But Different)’, a track that wrangles all of the band’s conflicting tendencies into a monstrous psych extravaganza. Packed with a flurry of ferocious riffs, plenty of haphazard tempo shifts and enough mood-swings to bamboozle the most even-tempered of people, it’s an apt way to round out the EP, as a celebration of Black Snake Whip’s versatility and prowess in one final hurrah.

There’s a lot to take in over those chaotic 14 minutes, so the band have been kind enough to walk us through the EP one track at a time.

2001

‘2001’ is an ambiguously timed, progressive, psychedelic experience with interchanging melodies, harmonies and riffs that meld together eventually reaching a vast polyrhythmic climax. Floating lyrics are psychedelic and vague in nature, but make direct reference to an Arthur C. Clarke’s book. 

Spaghettified

Written as a contrasting outro to the peak of ‘2001’, a lazy jazzy vamp turned fuzzed-out stinkfest. The lyrics focus on the theory of spaghettification, by which an object (in this case myself) is stretched into a thin noodle by the gravitational force of a black hole. 

Wormhole

Originally the drumbeat from ‘Spaghettified’ quickly sped up into ‘Everything's The Same (But Different)’. However, we decided to extend out the drumbeat on the day of recording to add ideas to it later. During the recording session, the rhythm section was feeling it and some impromptu bass licks and kit stank were squeezed out like a wet slug. The rhythm section was all tracked live in one 14 minute take, so this could have very well turned into a colossal mistake! If you like big booty envelope filter bass and deep pocket drums this could be the track for you.

Everything’s The Same (But Different)

Everything is very much not the same in this heavy jam, sporadically switching between riffs like that one bloke at the pokies. This track features eight million snare drum ghost notes, a bossa nova style verse, psychedelic riffage and a horrid but catchy hook following the title of the track. Lyrically this track is set on an eerily earth-like planet. Is it all the same?