Norwegian psych outfit Electric Eye premiered their kaleidoscopic “Mercury Rise” video yesterday. “Mercury Rise” will appear on Electric Eye’s forthcoming second album Different Sun, out February 5 on Jansen Plateproduksjon.

Electric Eye previously shared Different Sun track “Bless,” spawning from the heat and desolation experienced during their wanderings of America’s great southwest, and taking form during a hurricane in Bergen, Norway (which is reported to have shaken the walls of their studio), ‘Bless’ exists in a gorge of dark atmospherics and unsteady ambiance.”

January, 2015: A new year’s hurricane is ravaging Bergen. Its aftermath rips and tears into the Western Norwegian town for a week. In Broen Studio, where Electric Eye are plugged in, the walls constantly shake from lightning, thunder, violent downpours and wind. It probably isn’t a coincidence that Different Sun, album number two from the quartet, is a record full of fickle and dramatic energy. It’s veritably crackling from fuzz guitars and psychedelic organs. Electric Eye have definitely landed. In the eye of the hurricane.

Through 40 minutes the listener is taken on seven journeys, all drenched in tape echo, sitar sounds, backwards guitar solos, bongos and monotonous fuzz bass; a dynamic rollercoaster where the landscape fluctuates between open and calm desert moods, and then suddenly ignites the rocket engines and leaves the atmosphere once and for all. The Bergen-based group, consisting of Øystein Braut (guitar, vocals), Njål Clementsen (bass), Anders Bjelland (keyboards) and Øyvind Hegg-Lunde (drums), are thus following up their 2013 debut album Pick-up, Lift-up, Space, Time in a brilliant way.

That the phrase “the journey is the goal” may seem tired doesn’t make it less truthful. For Electric Eye, this is the fundament for their musical existence. Long musical journeys in wide landscapes where the moods and the overwhelming, absorbing and repeating themes play a key role. As a listener you have two choices: either you’re with it, or you leave it. With Different Sun on the turntable, the choice is easy.

It’s fully possible to hear traces of the golden psychedelic reveries of the 60s and the lyrical and scenic progrock of the 70s in Electric Eye’s music. A dose of motoric, German sounds must be mentioned, as well as Indian drone music.