Aaron Coyes, one half of Californian psychedelic explorers Peaking Lights, has a new solo LP out via Pinchy & Friends. Assuming the alias Exotic Gardens, the record contains 8 Morning Dubs. The spirit of pioneering Jamaican producers, such as, and especially, Lee Scratch Perry, has always been at the core of Coyes’ music (1), but as the album’s title suggests here it’s pushed to the fore.

In there with his Korg, Moog, Roland, and Benidub, Coyes creates a woozy, world of echo and some slow, spacey skanking. The reverberations of Roland’s TB-303 might court comparisons to Om Unit’s Acid Dub Studies and Noda & Wolfers’ Tascam Space Season, but a perfect prescription of sonic sedation and mixing desk mediations, Exotic Gardens is actually far closer to Richard Norris’ reggae-influenced Oracle Sound project. Super chilled out, but it’s groove too tight to be anything like The Orb.

These deep dubwise drifts / dreams sound like they may well be improvisations. Unhurried, unfurling, largely beatless, but boy, are they bass heavy. Their Hoover-ing hums and LFO drones harbouring small acidic twists and covered with cosmic synths. Bashed bongos and congas rattling in reverb and delay like a narcotic nyabinghi. Track by track the set gets more and more way out. So it might start a little straight forward but by the end of side 1 it’s sizzling with sound effects, some of them very similar to those used in the early 90s by Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson. Bionic bubbles, robotic ricochets, spaghetti western whistles and sonar signals, sometimes stretched into something resembling whale song, these steadily increase in frequency, fizz and effervescence, so that by the final foray they represent an almost constant shape-shifting shower. The volley of one after another amounting an, all-be-it severely stoned, sense-shaking, hallucinatory  auditory attack.

(1) All of Peaking Lights’ early work contained elements of “leftfield” dub. Someone (can’t think who) once described their album, 936 as “The Shangri-Las meet Lee Scratch Perry.” They were remixed by Adrian Sherwood, while Aaron delivered a totally deranged take of “Disco” Tom Noble’s House Of Spirits. Their long-player Lucifer was partnered by a complete “In Dub” set. They also later worked with Perry on his Life Of The Plants E.P.

Exotic Gardens’ Morning Dubs is out now Pinchy & Friends. A big thank you to Lighthouse Records for my copy. Tom Dubwise also has the vinyl in stock. Watch out for a forthcoming collaboration between Peaking Lights and Is It Balearic’s Coyote.