Stream: EFG (Electric Flower Group), ‘Singing Bridges’

Kevin Bronson on March 27th, 2014

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There are psych-rock bands, and there are psych-rock bands. And when Electric Flower – now going by Electric Flower Group, or EFG – appeared out of the ether in 2011, the duo of Imaad Wasif and Josh Garza laid the framework for some next-level guitar-and-drum music. Since then, EFG has released two EPs, while the landscape has become littered with bands doing varying degrees of trippy. “Psych-rock is a pretty loosely defined genre,” Garza says. “In L.A. especially, you hear a lot of Velvet Underground and 13th Floor Elevators. We can’t bring ourselves to pretend that those bands don’t exist.”

A year ago, guitarist Wasif (who has three solo albums and the bands Alaska!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the New Folk Implosion and Lowercase on his resumÃ©) and drummer Garza (ex-Secret Machines) added Grammy-winning producer Tom Biller to the lineup as bassist. “He thought we were interested in him as a producer or engineer, but it was like, ‘No, we’d like you to play bass,'” Garza says. “Now we’ve developed this special chemistry … It’s a [unit], but it’s also what these three guys specifically sound like – the [uniqueness] of how Imaad plays, how Tom plays and how I play.”

The trio has an album completed – it’s titled “Amorpha,” and for various reasons they are not ready to share. But the demo of “Singing Bridges” might give you an idea of the direction. We expect to need earplugs for the finished version.

||| Stream: “Singing Bridges”