*** Bardo Pond

SET AND SETTING

(Matador)

A helicopter hovers high overhead at the start of Bardo Pond's third full-length, the rotary blades churning pockets of air that turns to sludge 50 seconds later when the turgid guitars of brothers John and Michael Gibbons stagger into view. It's an 11-minute lurch called "Walking Stick Man," and it's a challenging way to kick off an album.

Of course, Bardo Pond have never been bashful about sonic ruminations. They've always favored a cosmic-slop sprawl of sound as an end unto itself rather than as dressing around the edges of standard verse-chorus-verse rock. And the results have often been compelling. Although their second album, Amanita, remains a high-water mark in terms of cohesion, variety, and start-to-finish listenability, this is Bardo Pond's most defining statement. The songs here are mostly instrumentals, though vocalist/flutist Isobel Sollenberger does drop in and out of the mix from time to time. What gives the band its power is its amalgam of miasmatic, post-rock noise, brooding, acid-fried psychedelia, and dinosaur-heavy slabs of squall.

-- Jonathan Perry