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Psych collective Mandrake Handshake turn on, tune in and drop out on “Gonkulator”

24 November 2020, 12:00 | Written by Christopher Hamilton-Peach

Freshly signed to Nice Swan Records, home to acts such as Pip Blom and Sports Team, Mandrake Handshake waste no time in continuing their oracular ascent into spiralling state-altering planes of existence on “Gonkulator”.

London neo-psych ensemble Mandrake Handshake draw on the billowing hookah-induced ether of early Pink Floyd coupled with Hawkwind’s cosmic transcendentalism, heady motifs that adorned recent astral-hopping number “Mandragora” as well as the sprawling acid-dropping space-rock of “Hypersonic Super-Asterid”.

The second track lifted from their upcoming debut EP, “Gonkulator” proves a cyclonic tour de force indebted to late '60s bohemia: a direction of travel supported through a dizzying order of gyrating guitars, glitch-tripping electronic pulses and bucolic flutes.

Stereolab’s Andy Ramsay affords an expansive production glint to the collective’s mind-melting mission, spearheaded via the rocketing dual bombast of lead singers Liv Duval and Trinity Oksana, uncannily replicating the supersonic vocal scale of Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick.

Nice Swan Records · Mandrake Handshake - Gonkulator

Highlighting the song’s all-out feel-good intent, the outfit proclaim: “This is our 3-minute party tune, but in swung 5/4 ‘cause who doesn’t love a good 5/4 groove!? It’s a song about sheer joy, happiness and freedom for two-and-a-half minutes - can’t be any longer because it’s too much otherwise!”

"Gonkulator" is out now via Nice Swan Records. Find Mandrake Handshake on Instagram.
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