River Flows Reverse

When River Flows Reverse

Hungarian Haunting Folk

NEW 2LP

 
When River Flows Reverse
by River Flows Reverse

SEALED DOUBLE LP

GATEFOLD

credits

 digitally released January 19, 2021

Vocals: Krisztina Benus
& Lőrinc Sántha
Trumpet: Nico Delmas
Other instruments: Bence Ambrus
Banjo intro on 'Ripples' : Lőrinc
Some noises: Gergely Gadolla
Drums on 'Karnevál' : Tibor Kovács
Cover art: Tamás Tóth (explainwithtart.com)

A side
Leaving Shades Ahead 06:07
At the Gates of The Perennial 09:37
El Sendero 02:41

B side:
El Sendero II & III 10:12
Final Run 08:51

C side:
Rain It Rages 11:02
Oriental Western 02:58
Ripples 08:32

D side:
Woodman Woo Wily 04: 49
Karnevál 18:12


Special Thanks to Dimitris Karytsiotis
Dedicated to Kallia and Chris

Distributed by: Vinylkiosk.com
this is a Psychedelic Source Records &
a Twisted Flowers release collaboration

c 2021 all rights reserved
Produced & enginered  by Bence Ambrus
Twisted Flowers

REVIEWS

"This is a truly lovely work of wyrd folk coming from Hungary.  There is almost zero information out there about the mysterious River Flows Reverse, as they appear to be a loose aggregation from the underrated psychedelic source collective.  Certainly, this appears to be their debut album.

Fans of Beautify Junkyards will find a lot to like here, as ‘When River Runs Reverse’ reminds me in some ways of the wonderful band from Portugal.  And at an hour long, you get more than your money’s worth of their haunting music.  I’ve mentioned this before, but I love artists who create their own little sound worlds within a record, as River Flows Reverse does here.  What you get, as with Beautify Junkyards, is their own form of folk, buttressed by massive loads of atmosphere and style, and reflective of their ethnic heart.  And they do it with great economy, often with spare arrangements of, say, an electric guitar, banjo, bass, drums, woodwinds, an occasional trumpet, and some gorgeous vocals.

Like the titular river, the album flows along in a meandering fashion, giving the listener a warm sense of tranquility.  You, the listener, never get the sense of where a song is heading, nor will you really care, so calming is their style.  The album is about 80% instrumental.  Songs may go on for long wordless stretches, giving you the impression that the track is an instrumental, then vocals will finally appear several minutes in, only to drift away again.  The enchanting vocals, with their off-kilter harmonies, are mostly by Kriszti Benus (Lemurian Folk Songs).  Most of the vocals are in English, but there are a few instances, as with “At the Gates of the Perennial” and “El Sendero II and III,” where a man utters a few sentences of spoken word in Hungarian buried deep within the middle of an otherwise lengthy instrumental track.  These lines hail from Lao Tzu, from the Tao Te Ching, and translate to “the gates of heaven and earth open and close” and “Behold, it was born of ancient chastity, born before heaven and earth, how peaceful, how empty.”


The album is hypnotic, mesmerizing, and full of quiet, pastoral beauty.  Besides the aforementioned Beautify Junkyards, the tracks can remind me of Pentangle, or Miles Davis, incredibly within the same song.  Kriszti Bensus’ vocals really shine on “Final Run,” “Rain It Rages,” and “Oriental Western,” sounding both icily indifferent and bewitching.  For an album its members claim was “recorded in a cold shed in the middle of the muddy forest of Hungary” it sounds weirdly magnetic and beguiling.  ‘When River Flows Reverse’ gets my highest recommendation."

(Mark Feingold,Terrascope)

"This is one of the most beautiful and impressive albums I’ve heard this year. Because I follow Lemurian Folk Songs on FB, I was alerted to it when it was released, and I’ve been loving it ever since. Despite being a combination of musicians from Hungary’s psych and post rock scene, When River Flows Reverse sounds very little like the normal sounds of any of the bands. The psych is still there, but very much in a more folk manner, and largely due to the vocal style of Kriszti Benus more than any of the instrumentation. Indeed, take away her vocals, and the album’s opening number is almost a simple acoustic folk number. The Bandcamp pages states that “all instruments [were] recorded in a cold shed in the middle of the muddy forest of Hungary”, and it’s easy to believe that.

Even the guitar of Bence Ambrus, while still recognisably him, is more subdued and reflective. I love his guitar style anyway, but this is the most effective his playing has ever been. It definitely has me feeling like I’m floating down a river, wherever it may take me. It’s lazy and fluid. But while it might initially seem welcoming, Bence still has some tricks up his sleeve, where the river shows it still holds some dangerous currents. Apart from the music being more Slavic than Scandinavian, this album reminds me a little of Ihsahn’s Hardingrock album. There’s really not that much similarity in sound, but in both there’s a sense of tapping ancient sounds, and recreating them in a modern way.

What I find quite impressive is how metal the band can sometimes sound, without ever really coming to that style from any conventional route. River Flows Reverse show that heaviness doesn’t necessarily need to have anything to do with volume or intensity. El Sendaro II & III are simply heavy without trying. And that trumpet is just gorgeous. It sounds so completely out of place with the almost primal beat underneath, and yet fits so perfectly. Just to take the contrast and counterflow further, that folk rhythm takes on an acoustic dub vibe (and yes I realise that acoustic dub is pretty much an oxymoron). There’s so much going on in this album, with no one style dominating. That the whole sounds so cohesive is a true achievement, as it could so easily have turned into a nightmarish mess. If this is the musicians being bored and playing with their instruments (as per the Bandcamp page), then they clearly know each other inside out, because everything flows beautifully. This is indeed their lockdown masterpiece. More, please!

(Nick Hudson,The Progressive Aspect)

This is the first release from a new Greek record label Twisted Flowers and is a double vinyl LP by a Hungarian band made up of various members of Lemurian Folk Songs and the Psychedelic Source Family recorded in a shed in the middle of a muddy forest somewhere in Hungary. The band consists of Kristi Benus: vocals, Lörinc Sántha: vocals and banjo, Nico Delmas: trumpet, Gergely Gerdolla: noises plus Bence Ambrus: guitar and other instruments.

The album which sounds very much like taking a slow meander down some large river, unfolds unhurriedly with the languid strains of opener ‘Leaving Shades Ahead’, and is unusual for a psych folk song in that it features banjo. It has some tasty, sparse electric guitar lead lines and female vocals. Things turn very acid- folk for the following ‘At The Gates Of The Perennial’ in which the sounds of nature are joined by would you believe pan pipes, but also some fine arpeggio electric lead guitar notes peeling off into the atmosphere, again it is unhurried with plenty of space to develop, the lightly marshalled drumming drives the song along as it progresses to its conclusion some ten minutes later.

‘El Sendero’, is a lot shorter and has some fine harmonics, this song ushers in ‘El Sendero parts 11 & 111’, which when all put together run to over fourteen minutes, where mutant jaw harp, found sounds, bells, chimes, drones and fine electric guitar lines build in intensity to create a song to get lost in, again the banjo sounds misplaced, as indeed does the trumpet, but they do make it different from the usual psych album. ‘The Final Round’, greets weary travellers with an invitation to take of your muddy boots and join us for an invocation. A sparse moody murder ballad, enlivened by spiralling slide guitar notes which gradually coalesce, building to intensity by the infinite guitar playing and close-miked female vocals.

The eleven minute ‘Rain It Rages’ again utilises the template of trumpet, banjo and arpeggio electric guitar as it slowly builds, it’s like Miles Davis jamming somewhere in the Appalachians. The song is again the acid- folk bag with female vocals and features some cool electric lead guitar playing off to the side. ‘Oriental Western’ is a strange ghostly tune followed by a slow and mournful ‘Ripples’ is introduced by a clawhammer style banjo, it also has male vocals which come as a bit of a surprise this late in the proceedings, sounding not unlike Terrascope favourites Stone Breath. The LP version adds another couple of songs and has artwork by Tamás Tόth.

(Andrew Young)