II (2020) - Lucid Planet
In this day and age of AI crap, it's good to find a human artist in the sea of synthetic fakery. I get constant reminders of this scouring Bandcamp looking for new-to-me underground music that fits into my specific wheelhouses. In this particular instance, I was looking for something progressive metal flavored (which is no surprise to anyone who knows me), as well as something tinged with world music tendencies. Thanks to Bandcamp, I can look through bands fitting this genre combination, but I still have to do the legwork myself. By some act of providence, I found a band that would deliver in spades.
Lucid Planet is a band from Melborne, Australia that only has a couple of albums from 2015, including one that just released in 2025 (which is mostly a reimagining of previous songs from a live performance). I've gone through them a few times, and II stands out to me as a really good representation of what the band offers. It's a supremely well built album, with plenty of jumps between psychadellic synths and groovy guitars. There's something deeply nostalgic about the whole thing to me, especially with the percussive instruments. It's such a ridiculously easy listen that it will loop over without me noticing that the album has concluded, but don't mistake this for an absence of substance. There's plenty to hear in the album, with a few motifs that reward attentive listeners.
The first three songs on the album, Anamnesis, Entrancement, and Organic Hard Drive are the standouts to me. They follow a throughline that tickles a region of my brain, with a moody blend of guitars and electronics, slipping into a tribal chant before going back to a more tradtional prog guitar riff. The atmosphere! It's perfect to me, and I fear this band has become a new obsession for me. It's been a while since I've been excited for a new band, and the fact that I caught one early in its career is good luck indeed.
As an aside, I wanted to mention the album art. It's very detailed, and offers a good look at what you'll be hearing. On Bandcamp, it's much easier to judge a book by its cover than to do any background research; if an album's cover is made by AI, it's either AI itself or not worth checking out anyway. However, I am also a little biased on how albums present themselves, so usually I will check out albums with interesting covers first. Sometimes it backfires, but most of the time I get winners like this album.
My only complaint is that there's not enough of Lucid Planet out there, and I want MORE. The live album is very good, but if their track record is any indication, I might have to wait a little while before I get anything new from them. If the time they take leads to another album like this, they can have all the time in the world. In the meantime, give their three records a listen. The Lucid Planet's dreams beckon...
