You can be forgiven for not knowing that psychedelic spell casters Verma have a new album coming out tomorrow. Because they’re a Chicago band, you’d expect to be alerted to such a development by the appearance of a release party on the calendar of a local venue—but Verma don’t have any shows lined up at all. The reason for that is pretty simple: late this summer bassist Rob Goerke moved to Los Angeles, where former member TJ Tambellini has lived for a few years now.
Johnson tells me the aerial desert footage in the video for “Elil.Sa.Ursag / Hero’s.Theme” was shot by a remote-controlled drone near Joshua Tree. Tambellini (who also contributes to Mul.Apin) and Goerke collaborated with filmmaker Mike Ruggirello on the clip. I’m especially intrigued by what appears to be an enormous hillside glyph made from a mosaic of large flat stones. As befits the work of a band trying so hard to create a pure and total emptiness—a sort of meditative stillness in the midst of frenzy—the glyph looks a lot like one of the symbols for the null set.
