Velvet Cargo

Velvet Cargo play heavy psych at the volume it was written for. The four piece is built around a bass player who writes the songs, which explains the shape of them: the riffs sit low, the guitars answer rather than lead, and nothing resolves in a hurry.

They started as a covers band and were bad at it, which they credit with teaching them what an audience will and will not sit through. The originals came out of a refusal to keep learning other people's material, and the first of them are still in the set.

Their records are cut live to a room microphone with overdubs kept to a minimum, and the band mixes them itself, because two attempts with outside engineers produced records that were cleaner and worse. What arrives on tape is close to what arrives in the room, including the mistakes they chose to keep.

The live show runs long and loud and has no gaps in it. Songs run into each other through a held drone, and the set has been known to reach two hours without anybody in the band noticing.

They tour in a van they own outright, which is the reason they can play the rooms they play and still come home even. A third record is written and will be recorded the same way as the first two.