Aufheben

Named for Brian Jones, the founder of the Rolling Stones and his influence with regards to incorporating Eastern instrumentation with Western sensibilities, the earliest Brian Jonestown Massacre (BJM) material certainly wore the band’s major influence and namesake on its sleeve. The rockin’ blues and raw sexuality associated with Brian Jones era Rolling Stones was embodied by BJM frontman Anton Newcombe and releases like 1996′s Take It From the Man! with its mid ’60s era Stones rock & roll feel and 1967′s Their Satanic Majesties Second Request, where the Eastern influences are more obvious and out front of the band’s trademark psychedelia.

As the band’s career progressed, the obvious Stones’ influence would ebb and flow, always present but sometimes taking a backseat to other influences with releases like 2008′s My Bloody Underground and 2010′s Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? Many of the fluid grooves found on Aufheben, BJM’s latest, can be heard on Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? through tracks like “This Is the First of Your Last Warning (Icelandic)” and “Super Fucked”. Both albums also begin with an obvious tip of the hat to the influence of the Subcontinent on the band’s music; however, where Sgt. Pepper was BJM’s psychedelia sifted through a shoegaze filter, arcing back to the band’s debut Methodrone, Aufheben is a far more relaxed and hypnotic trip, with the shoegaze exchanged for a transcendent haze.

Taking its name from a German word with seemingly contradictory meanings, when most often used, it means “to abolish” but also “to preserve”.