Though DOOMSQUAD may have started life as a tongue-in-cheek, inside joke between the Blumas siblings, with their second full length, Total Time, the band has morphed into a mystical, semi-religious, multi-sensory experience that’s garnering devoted followers with every beat and note of music they produce.
The soundbite story around Total Time is that Trevor, Jaclyn and Allie Blumas decamped to the New Mexico desert to write and record the initial tracks, a set of hypnotic, sun-kissed hymns to devoted donkeys and the joys of nudism, inspired by the likes of Genesis P-Orridge and Tanya Tagaq. The bigger, wider story is that DOOMSQUAD’s goal was to make a timeless (in the sense that time ceases to exist), genderless, and conscious-liberating transcendental experience, one that can’t easily be distilled into a 140 character tweet.
Though birthed in that desert setting, Total Time is a rich, multi-terrestrial road trip through the mind, space, and time. Songs with more traditional pop structures like “Solar Ass” and “Eat the Love” guide you through the more psychedelic experimentations of “Collective Insanity”, a structure-free monolith that builds towards “It’s the Nail that Counts, Not the Rope”, one of two songs that form Total Time’s spiritual centre. The second, “The Very Large Array” features the distinctive vocals of Mary Margaret O’Hara, who brings the quiver-quotient to the Blumas’ throbbing world-beat techno blueprint.
Total Time more than exceeds the Blumas’ goal of transcendence. Their eyes and minds are turned heavenward, but DOOMSQUAD has their feet planted on terra firma, and constantly moving to the beat and grinding to the groove. That Total Time is an irresistibly danceable record is the key to its success; DOOMSQUAD knows that true spiritual awakening comes when spirit, mind and body connect.
