No Man’s Valley
Chrononaut Cocktailbar / Flight of the Sloths
Netherland. Psychedelic Progressive Rock and Blues. 2024.

An interesting mixture of vintage, blues, progressive rock and psychedelic reached me from the Netherlands. No Man's Valley was completely unknown to me until I came across the band on Bluesky. And I was promptly given an album. The cover alone is extraordinarily well done and makes you curious.

There are 6 songs on side A and the 01:42 short "Chrononaut Cocktail Bar" gives us a The Cure moment. "Love" sounds like a pinball machine right at the beginning, before turning into a Kafkaesque The Doors rock song. "Creepoid Blues" is beautifully bluesy, with a touch of psychedelic. "Seeing Things" is much more psychedelic and at 05:03 is the longest song on side A. "Shapeshifter" is a blues with a distorted voice. Also much more psychedelic. "Orange Juice" sounds like a lounge song or from a cocktail bar. Although it is a bit dark, the way it is made makes it interesting.

The long track "Flight of the Sloths" comes in at 18:22 minutes and catapults us into progressive rock territory. A bit of The Doors, Nick Cave, Pink Floyd, a bit of guitar from Porcupine Tree. The song skilfully mixes different genres without slipping into insignificance. Vintage prog meets modern prog.

Like so many bands, the pandemic hit No Man's Valley hard. Side A is the essence of the individual, fragmented songs of this phase, while side B shows the band working together again on a long prog song. And this is exactly where the band's versatility comes into play, creating crisp songs on the one hand and playful long tracks on the other. If No Man's Valley can now sound even more independent than they already are, then I can see many more very good albums coming our way.

Jasper Hesselink – Vocals
Christian Keijsers – Guitar
Rob Perree – Bass
Ruud van den Munckhof – Keyboards
Dinand Claessens – Drums

The photos are all from my LP, provided by No Man’s Valley. The rights to all motifs, logos, texts and fonts that can be seen in the photos are of course owned by the rights holder.