Mr. Bison — the Italian four-piece from coastal Tuscany — join The Sonic Road Podcast to talk about their new album The Garden of Forgotten Dreams, out September 25th on Heavy Psych Sounds.
In this episode:
How the band formed as a trio in 2009, lost their bass player after a year, and spent two or three years playing as two guitarists using an octave-split solution — a setup built for the Clutch and Fu Manchu influences behind their early sound.
The lineup change that pushed them out of straight stoner rock into the psychedelic and progressive territory they work in now, closer to bands like Elder.
The mythology concepts behind past records — the Tyrrhenian Sea legend on Seaward, Norse non-linear time on Echoes From the Universe — and why The Garden of Forgotten Dreams steps away from a storyline toward something more intimate and mood-driven, using the garden as a metaphor for refuge and the things we keep hidden until we're ready to share them.
The singles "The Cosmic Tide" and "Bright Shadow," recording live from jams at their own studio in Tuscany, tracking drums first, and working with Richard Behrens at Big Snuff Studio in Berlin — the engineer behind Elder's Through Zero — who pushed them to track with no reverb, delay, or effects. Carl Saff mastered the record, with Adam Ayan mastering "Bright Shadow."
Plus the reality of the scene in Italy, touring Europe from tiny smoky clubs to festival stages, cutting long songs to fit festival sets, hopes for a return to America and a KEXP session, and the underground bands they think deserve more attention.
Order The Garden of Forgotten Dreams: mrbison.bandcamp.com/album/the-garden-of-forgotten-dreams
Mr. Bison: @mrbison_band | facebook.com/mrbisonband | lnk.bio/MrBISON
The Sonic Road Podcast: thesonicroad.com | @thesonicroad on all platforms
