Seven Metal Mountains

For fans of Khruangbin and Snapped Ankles. Seven Metal Mountains is the second album from rural Norfolk musician John Johanna, a unique artist whose inspiration is drawn from studies in borderless folkways, mystical scripture, psychedelia and gospel blues. The album takes its title from the Ethiopian Church’s Book of Enoch, where seven metal mountains represent the world-empires that have successively oppressed and controlled humankind.

Built on the bones of recent reel to reel tape sessions in his woodland IMZIM studio, Johanna’s signature drum machine, pure guitar tone and polyphonic synth is then worked up alongside producer Capitol K at Total Refreshment Centre. Additional drums by Betamax (The Comet is Coming) and backing vocals by Karina Zakri (Seafoxes). The album’s cover art is from artist Chris Bianchi.

Children of Zion sets the tone with a loose garage production that rides over Dick Dale surf rock drums. Song of the Three tells a legend about the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. The stately electronica instrumental In the Court of King Solomon evokes a magnificent royal court of the ancient world, and wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Radiophonic Workshop score.

In Standing at the Gates of Love, John Johanna relates a meditation on the ancient, mystical belief that the gates of Paradise are guarded by an angel with a flaming sword. Deep River is the setting of words from the African-American gospel tradition to an original song by John Johanna. Prodigal Son has a rich vein of retro disco in an Arthur Russell style. Album highlight is the euphoric, mantric proto Krautrock epic Parker Tallis Version, which features rendering of Elizabethan composer Thomas Tallis’s translations of Archbishop Matthew Parker’s sermons. A suitably epic crescendo, before the album title track Seven Metal Mountains brings the album to a close with a blissed out, droning electronica motif. Musically and thematically classics such as Let England Shake by PJ Harvey are certainly reference points, reflected by a certain parochial sentimentality mixed with abstract mysticism, for the production a vein of Cocteau Twins / Jesus and Mary Chain comes to mind with the clattering drum machines and esoteric textures.