Out now on Exag Records, Leopard Skull’s Welcome Home is a surprising slab of psychedelia that may just well be one of the best of the year. Expertly produced, beautifully conceptualized, and cleverly written, Welcome Home is one you need to listen to right now.
Leopard Skull is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Harm Pauwels (Ghent, BE). With influences ranging from the late Beatles to early Brian Eno and Foxygen, Leopard Skull brings an eclectic psych sound that is both captivating and estranging. With only three songs released in 2014, he was invited to play his debut show at Incubate Showcase Festival (NL). Ever since, Leopard Skull has been continuously active and successful in the local garage/psych scene, as well as been performing at international music festivals such as Lugano Buskers Festival (CH).
In 2017, his first 7’’ EP was released on Belly Button Records.Today, Leopard Skull is working on a new chapter with a new live set and a new home recorded album. For all performances, Leopard Skull counts on a mind blowing live band called The Hunters.
Welcome Home draws a bit from psychedelia past, bringing to mind The Pretty Things and some late Beatles, as well as some more modern sounds like Ty Segall and Jacco Gardner.
The album is atmospheric all throughout, from the opening tack “7 Nights At The Weak” with it’s stilted clavichord and bird calls, to the closing and titular “Welcome Home”, an entirely instrumental track with the sounds of winds and rain mixed in with the reverbed out electric piano.
Side A ends with the nearly 8 minute long “House”, a beautifully composed track that takes us through a musical journey- beginning almost hymm-like, before getting into a real 60s groove tinged with synth leads, then veering into bossanova psychedelia [man, bossanova psychedelia needs to be a band name], then getting back to the groove. There’s some other random weirdness in there- clarinet? bassoon? Whatever it is, I’m all about it.
Side B features opens with “People I don’t Know”, very Beatle-esque and absolutely lovely- a bit like if Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back in Anger” dropped acid. I dig it.
I’m going to go ahead and make a bold statement here: this album is quite a masterpiece. Everything from the writing to the arrangement to the production level is just so good that I can barely believe it’s coming from 1 man recording at home. Welcome to the future, I suppose. Or, rather, Welcome Home.
Get The Record: https://leopardskull.bandcamp.com/album/welcome-home
Follow Leopard Skull: https://www.facebook.com/leopardskullband/
@leopard.skull
