Transformations, Visions, Incarnations, Ascensions is a rare record with ‘throwback gazed-out psychedelic garage rock‘. Terrapin Gun‘s new full-length record, released November of 2025, authentically reinvents the sounds from that special time in the late 80s when a new wave of edgy garage rock collided with noise ridden shoegaze and alternative rock. Fans of bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Wooden Shjips and Spacemen 3 will enjoy this new album.
The songs on Transformations, Visions, Incarnations, Ascensions are ornamented with analog mono synth, modulated vocals, shuttering phase shifts, whirling gated synth oscillations evoking the psychedelic quality in each composition. The music has a hint of a lo-fi home recorded style like their first album Relax Your Mind (2022). On several tracks there are notes of avant-garde folk from the early 2000s.
The latest album was recorded from 2023-2025 with all songs written and performed by Scott and Sterling DeWeese with drums and keys performed by Matt Abeysekera on ‘Can’t Get Love For Nothing‘ and ‘Won’t Wait For You‘. The album was mixed by band member Sterling DeWeese.
The vinyl release is “strictly limited to 125 hand-numbered copies on ‘fox fire’ vinyl” from Infinite Spin Records. Terrapin Gun‘s location has varied over the years from St. Louis, Missouri to New York and Boston.
Terrapin Gun opens the album with ‘Queasy‘, their first single from the album complete with a music video. It begins with a dark brooding vocal reminiscent of A Place To Bury Strangers. The instrumentation builds tension with cooing synth, dark understated bass and growing percussion. The two guitars enter with gritty chainsaw distortion split between the guitars in the right and left stereo field. The interaction between the lead instruments is walls of fuzz and sustained guitars that climax in a glorious fuzz-static crescendo. ‘Queasy‘ is the heaviest song on the album just ahead of the album closer ‘Deh Deh Deh‘.
These heavy, dark songs are a new direction for Terrapin Gun and stand in contrast to the mellow vibes on their debut album. This heavier sound could be inspired by band member Sterling DeWeese, who played in the band Heavy Hands, a fuzzed-out motorik-garage-rock band from 2008. Heavy Hands’ only album, Smoke Signals, is unfortunately overlooked.
Matt Abeysekera, another member of Heavy Hands, also appears on two songs on Transformations, Visions… on keys and drums. Sterling DeWeese has a solo musical project known as Ambassador Hazy which has released four psyched-out albums since 2022 and is still active today.
The opening song insinuates that Transformations, Visions, Incarnations Ascensions is all dark music with mind-blowing fuzz guitars. However, there is much more to this album. It spends time with clean guitars, mellow vocals and organs in short comfortable song structures. Terrapin Gun‘s strength is in their songwriting, which is on display in these slower songs.
Their steady song structures set a melodic foundation, creating the opportunity for wistful exploration of experimental sounds. The guitars, keyboards and vocals are all subjected to layers of audio effects. They put effects on the vocals with reverb, delay, phaser and chorus giving the vocals a warm tonality that adds important melody to the tapestry of instrumentation.
‘Candy Coated Telekinesis‘ exemplifies their mellow side with a sun-drenched hazy track with acoustic guitar and an electric lead with ever present tambourine, shakers and wood block for percussion. The vocals take on a familiar catchy melody with a perfect early 90s downer vocal style. The cooing lead guitar and vocal create interweaving melodic lines that draw the listener’s attention away from the droning background instruments.
‘Turiya‘ takes the acid folk vibe of ‘Candy Coated Telekinesis‘ and spins it with eastern world instrument drone that drips with 60s psychedelic spiritualism. This song goes the furthest into the drone and world sounds. ‘Sideways‘ also embraces the drone but with a modern sound created primarily from keyboards and extra effected vocals. The recorded voice has reverb and echo so heavily, the lyrics become wholly unintelligible and the vocal notes melt into the heady atmosphere.
The other side of Terrapin Gun is their 80s shoegaze styling. Several songs feature The Jesus and Mary Chain influence on the vocal tone and arrangement. These tracks are charming with memorable and well done vocal performances. Songs like ‘Get Fucked’ with its grinding guitars and humming keyboards. ‘Holy Operator‘ and ‘Ultra Queasy’ keep the fun going with the brooding vocals, synths and cosmic sounds.
Transformations, Visions, Incarnations, Ascensions released on November 25th 2025, is the second album from Terrapin Gun. Their debut, Relax Your Mind, set the table for the sonic feast that occurs on the latest album. The music from their debut is gentle folk oriented with an experimental shoegaze twist.
The debut Relax Your Mind, was released in 2022 with a highly limited vinyl pressing. Each song is a nostalgic Polaroid with faded and bleached scenes with places, feelings and friends that each carry emotional meaning. The music on Relax Your Mind was stripped down based on acoustic guitars, psychedelic garage rock and a hint of early 2000s freak-acid-folk-avant-garde. The songs are raw with discordance and far-reaching creative aspirations. The mix of songs feels like loosely connected snapshots of a grand vision. Relax Your Mind taken as a whole is a beautiful album and its lo-fi and improvisational feel add to its authentic expression and home-recorded aesthetic.
All the writing, experimentation and creative exercises captured on the first album find their satisfying resolution on Transformations, Visions, Incarnations, Ascensions. The new album retains the art-house feel while progressing toward a late 80s alternative-shoegaze-garage-psychedelia.
Their music contains a blending of conventional songwriting and ‘far-out’ sounds that push into an abstract atmosphere. The band has a drive to find unconventional tones and combinations of effects. This undeniable urge is balanced with their songwriting and firm song structures. They are sonic investigators seeking harmony and dissonance between multiple instruments. Often, those instruments are on the verge of disintegration due to audio effects set to an extreme perimeter on all sliders and knobs. These blown-out instruments come together to make a unique moving texture of sound. Those textures are different on each song and blended more or less with clean instruments to find a psyched-out sound.
Terrapin Gun has their best album to date with Transformations, Visions, Incarnations, Ascensions. They found a sweet spot in the crossover of genres and pulled together an album that is wonderful to listen to. The arc of the album has a dynamic pulse with lighter songs interspersed between dense tracks. The vocals are memorable and feel right at home with the instrumentation. The electric guitars are black leather cool and the lo-fi warmth of the album evokes a timeless nostalgia.
Terrapin Gun is one of the best kept secrets in the shoegaze garage scene. They are a band that avoids being any specific thing and maintain a low key mysterious persona. It’s unusual for album this good to have a pressing of 125 copies and at the time of writing there are copies available. I get the feeling that something Sterling DeWeese is involved with will break through someday because it’s well deserved. This album could become a collector’s classic, limited and underground, or will be reissued again and again and overtime people will be exposed. Either way, Transformations, Visions, Incarnations, Ascensions has been blowing my mind for many hours now and I look forward to the vinyl landing on my doorstep to dive deeper. I highly recommend you do the same.
