Another project of Haare mastermind Ilkka Vekka, Sutra draws out a more psychedelically minded blueprint, sketching out a drone dialect that is far more concerned with free floating forms than fastened fidgets. The opening track, named after both artist and album, combines raga style sitar loops on clacking snare drum patter and heavily handed strummings that chunk along like Robert Johnson on cigar box. Behind all that is ample electronic perversion, shimmying up and down in muted derangement over the course of the track. Parts of it almost read like one spaced Hawkwind moment looped on top of itself, frozen in immobile stasis. The cut does move though, layering on a heavy hit of fuzz for its latter half before lightening up a bit and increasing the weird quotient, switching between free-folk fuckery and fumed out sun-splotching.

The second track—“The Howling Sun,” as it would turn out—sticks with the more crucified sound for the most part, drilling holes in drills drilling holes in Teflon. Eternal damnation guitar/vocal bellows glide over the grinding, gorged out backdrop, providing it with just enough of the human element that it’s alarming to one’s personal sense of safety; clearly, whoever’s in there does not belong down there, so near the molten coal, but they keep singing something sweet anyhow. Does come up to breathe for moments though, picking up intangible meter as it works its way through spider webs down in Indonesia, but the end result is a one way trip back down to the brine. Savage and quite beautiful. 7/10 -- Henry Smith (5 August, 2009)