Rancho Relaxo (Norway) was formed back in 2002, when Inge Kjetil Sandvik Malmedal bought an
old 70s Crumar organ from his neighbor, and with his electric guitar and a 4-track tape machine, he started to make music. Then Martin Schram, a longtime friend, joined in on the organ and they started to tape hours and hours of improvised music. The music was a mix between the noise of Sonic Youth, melodies of Jesus and Mary chain and the drone of Spacemen 3. Droning guitar, monolithic organ and sometimes howling vocals; the style came naturally.
Soon Khalil Olsen, another long time friend of the band joined in on drums. They played in different cellars and barns on the west coast of Møre og Romsdal, Norway. The music developed as
Inge Kjetil started to write and arrange songs for the band, and Martin switched from organ to bass guitar. The new songs approach was now more as Byrds-like harmonies, jangly guitars, tambourines, sitar and shoegaze vibes mixed with a good dose of neo-psychedelia. With 12 strings, lots of reverb, trippy melodies and some occasional fuzz freak-outs, they crafted their new sound. As the songs evolved they got a second guitar player. Ole Kristian Malmedal, who is Martins younger brother, joined in.
In 2007 they released "Look at the Wall", the bands first "real" full-length album. During the year it took
to create "Look at the Wall", they moved out of the cold, drafty cellars and barns,
and into a room at a local gun range. However, after a dispute with the redneck landlord, they were kicked out. Then, they moved into an abandoned house owned by a relative, and freedom was upon them in this house…simply known as the Tilla house. With the freedom of Tilla, they got busy and recorded three new, full-length albums that were released in 2009
Norwegian rock sensation Rancho Relaxo is renowned for their mesmerizing sound, which veers into the
psychedelic rock category. Rancho Relaxo has made a name for themselves in the rock music world with their own fusion of musical components. Rancho Relaxo's music is infused with mesmerizing guitar riffs, ethereal voices, and mind-altering melodies, drawing inspiration from the 1960s psychedelic movement. Their music explores the limits of conventional rock music while taking listeners on a transcendent journey through the depths of consciousness.
Rancho Relaxo's music has a dreamlike quality that draws listeners into another plane of reality.
The group stands out from its contemporaries due to its aptitude at combining numerous musical influences and atmospheric soundscapes. They have a devoted following among rock fans thanks to their mesmerizing performances and contagious stage enthusiasm. Rancho Relaxo's music, which combines elements of folk, blues, and experimental rock, is evidence of their artistic diversity and willingness to venture into uncharted musical realms.
Their superb musicianship is evident in their ability to shrewdly meld genres and weave an
emotional aural tapestry. It is impossible to overestimate Rancho Relaxo's influence on rock music, particularly psychedelic rock. They have created music that is a testament to rock's enduring influence and its capacity to lull listeners into a state of musical exploration and reflection.
It's very rare to find bands whose albums are all of such high quality. I think only the Brian JonesTown Massacre has managed to do that.
01. LOOK AT THE WALL 2007
This stuff is really great – strongly recommended. Guitar chords repeated over and over, never too
fast, never too excited, but atmospheric.The tracks are very much in some kind of song format, but nevertheless somehow dreamy and a little bit strange, with vocals merging very well with the soundscape.
[Homemade LoFi Psych 2008]
Rancho Relaxo – Look At The Wall
Label: Trout As Lubrication Records – none
Format: CD, Album, Reissue Oct 20, 2014
Country: Norway
Released: 2007
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Shoegaze
TRACKS
01. Intro 2:15
02. Blue Bucket Blues 4:26
03. Monition 4:20
04. Get Go 4:01
05. From The Hip 2:58
06. Like A Light 4:09
07. Quebec 3:07
08. Just To Get A Gun 3:39
09. Twin Reel 3:17
10. Outro 7:16
Flac Size: 233 MB
02. NEON TWANG HOUSE 2009
Rancho relaxo manage it with the greatest of ease to make you feel as if you were lying there surrounded
by opium paraphernalia.
[KK, Cosmiclava (Sep 01, 2010)]
Rancho Relaxo – Neon Twang House
Label: Trout As Lubrication Records – none
Format: CD, Album
Country: Norway
Released: 2009
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Shoegaze
TRACKS
01. Tilla Raga 2:18
02. Morning Light 3:17
03. Into Is Bad 2:46
04. D.D.D 4:47
05. At Your Door 7:17
06. Rest Your Case (Escobar) 2:57
07. Majka`s Dead 4:11
08. Like A Light (sitar ver.) 3:21
09. Y.D.F 3:09
10. Investigation Of Time 5:53
11. Jackals 3:21
12. Evolver 4:26
Flac Size: 325 MB
03. INTO TROUBLE 2009
Will win fans of the Brian Jonestown Massacre or anyone else that likes their tunes drugged out and
noisy!
[jimmy, Sounds Better With Reverb (Feb 21, 2012)]
Rancho Relaxo - Into trouble
Label: Trout As Lubrication Records – none
Country: Norway
Type: Album
Released: 1 June 2009
RYM Rating: 3.50 / 5.0 from 1 rating
Genres: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Shoegaze
TRACKS
01. Mirror (Fast & Bulbus) 04:01
02. To Fall 07:19
03. Highway Through Your Brain 04:20
04. Radiating Sunshine 02:17
05. Alone On DMT 02:07
06. Cactus, A Desert Pillow 02:54
07. Dream Or Dance 02:57
08. Savourine 01:40
09. Unite Fight Revolution 02:54
10. Untitled No 1 05:34
11. Going Blind 02:27
12. Set Me Free (Lou Reed) 02:58
Flac Size: 290 MB
04. HEAVY THIRD EYE 2009
Rancho Relaxo are quite simply one of the most exciting guitar bands on the planet right now. They
are responsible for some of the finest psychedelic drone rock in recent years!
[Jonny, Nugazer: The shoegaze blog (May 27, 2012)]
Rancho Relaxo – Heavy Third Eye
Label: Trout As Lubrication Records – none
Format: CD, Album
Country: Norway
Released: 2009
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Shoegaze
TRACKS
01. Intro 1:15
02. Mirror 2:47
03. Walking With Napoleon 2:20
04. Celestial Take-Away 5:15
05. Harmony & Rockets 3:30
06. Mandela Rope 3:48
07. Amen 2:58
08. Celestial Give-Away 5:28
09. DMT 3:11
10. Hillman Nightmare 2:50
11. Sugar For The Devil 4:20
12. Tape Jam #2 6:21
Flac Size: 506 MB
05. NEW KIND OF ORCHIDE 2010
Catchy melody, shoegaze guitars, an hypnotic echo from a sitar, a clever taste in music being the
soundtrack of the sexiest, vintage, lysergic video ever
[Mark Zonda - Sleepwalkingmag]
Rancho Relaxo – New Kind Of Orchide
Label: Merlins Nose Records – MN 1001
Format: CD, Album
Country: Germany
Released: Apr 30, 2010
Genre: Rock
Style: Shoegaze, Psychedelic Rock
TRACKS
01. Black Nectarine From The Simian Heart 4:00
02. I Love You So 2:53
03. Freuds God, Spaceman 3:52
04. Road Raged The Fuck Out 3:09
05. New Kind Of Orchide 2:33
06. Velvet Heartattack 2:51
07. Wisdom Blackout 4:40
08. Die Robot 2:38
09. All You People 5:36
10. Hate Reversed Is Kind 3:12
11. Let It Glide 2:22
12. Hard From Heaven 3:45
13. Plan Your Revolution 5:00
14. The Pain Slows You Down 4:37
15. Electronic Orbital Roadmovie 4:09
Flac Size: 398 MB
06. HAPPY FRIDAY EXPERIMENT 2011
Who knew Norway’s greatest export was drug music? Happy Friday Experiment is 12 songs of
jangly fuzzed out pop drenched in layers of acoustic/electric strings and pulled along by hypnotic grooves, sitars, and tambourines.
[Sleepover, Record Of The Week Club (Jan 18, 2012)]
The listener is taken on a hypnotic, soothing trip to finest 1960's-influenced psychedelic music with dense sonic textures that generate a feeling of spiritual salvation
[KK, Cosmic Lava (Aug 08, 2012)]
Rancho Relaxo – Happy Friday Experiment
Label: Trout As Lubrication Records – none
Format: CD, Album
Country: Norway
Released: 2012
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Shoegaze
TRACKS
01. I Want You 3:20
02. Make You Mine 3:56
03. Cry Over You 4:15
04. Take A Walk With Me 3:22
05. Intermission (green) 2:32
06. Dead and Gone 2:30
07. Diamond Black 3:22
08. See What I Have Seen 3:47
09. My Heart My Mind 3:52
10. Intermission (blue) 1:54
11. Gandhi Is My Gun 5:10
12. Into The Night 7:32
BONUS
13. Take A Walk With Me (alt.ver) 3:00
14. Gandhi Is My Gun (acoustic demo) 2:43
Flac Size: 372 MB
07. WHITE LIGHT FEVER 2016
From heavy psych-rock adrenalin kicks ("Dead Space") and hot'n'dirty grooving energy pills ("If
You Want To") to mid-tempo jewels with a melancholically sparkling, romantic twist ("Strange Vibrations", "Stars") to noise-pop tinted ballads with a bittersweet acoustic fragrance ("Taken") and psychedelic-driven, extraterrestrial-atmospheric soundtrack trips (“White Light”).
Rancho Relaxo – White Light Fever
Label: Trout As Lubrication Records – none
Format: CD, Album
Country: Norway
Released: Jul 19, 2015
Genre: Rock
Style: Shoegaze, Psychedelic Rock
TRACKS
01. Strange Vibration 4:58
02. Who Married Jane Fonda 3:50
03. Stars 4:45
04. Who Says 3:34
05. What You Want 3:35
06. I'm Crying 4:51
07. It's All A Dream 3:40
08. If You Want To 6:21
09. Dead Space 3:55
10. Clean Eyes 6:37
11. Desert Talk 4:25
12. Taken 3:40
13. Fake Human 8:10
14. Now It's Dark 3:10
15. White Light 8:43
Flac Size: 534 MB
08. SOFT LUXURY 2018
‘Love You Baby’ bounces into the sonic arena on the hum of bass frequencies as shakers and the drone of electronic sequencing beef up the sonic attack. Rancho Relaxo surf the outer edges of sonic
experimentation here, adding swirling electronics into the mix to coalesce with those meandering lines of bass as the track builds into one swirling tempest of beautiful noise and those sporadic off beats catch the ear. The vocal line seems to skirt the sonic melee completely, floating independently from the main body of instrumentation, lightly tethered to it at different times by intimate strands of melodic reverb. It’s a fascinating track that stands head and shoulders above anything else"
Rancho Relaxo – Soft Luxury
Label: Trout As Lubrication Records – TALR 3-A
Format: CD, Album
Country: Norway
Released: 2018
Genre: Rock
Style: Shoegaze, Psychedelic Rock
TRACKS
01. No Shadow No Sou
02. Igjen
03. You Know Her Name
04. Love You Baby
05. Mouth
06. Det Sku Ikkje Skjedd
07. Oh Me
08. Out The Door0
Flac Size: 320 MB
09. SPIRIT OF ECSTASY 2022
Rancho Relaxo`s 11th album is the real deal!
"Spirit of Ecstasy" are here, there, everywhere. It permeate, irradiate, subsume and consume you. The
album starts out as drowsy, dozy heaven-scented shoegaze that seems to be about hovering over the beloved, made dizzy by the share vulnerability. In the end it is almost too much- like staring into eyes whose pupils are so dilated they`re like blackholes pulling you to your doom. On "Spirit of Ecstasy", Rancho Relaxo are the same as before, only more so - more lustrous, languorous, inchoate, phantasmic.
Rancho Relaxo – Spirit Of Ecstasy
Label: Trout As Lubrication Records
Format: CD, Album
Country: Norway
Released: 2022
Genre: Rock
Style: Shoegaze, Psychedelic Rock
TRACKS
01. Alone With You 6:10
02. Colour the Stars 4:34
03. Night Turns to Day 4:50
04. Across the River 4:10
05. Spirit of Ecstasy 7:21
06. The Sky Fell Down 3:18
07. Constant Deja Vu 2:46
08. Black Soft Death 4:00
09. In the Void 4:01

















































What a rare and expensive band.
ReplyDeleteI don't see any good deals ( D. Trump? haha ..) anywhere. I envy you your complete collection. I still need to figure out what to do ?
Get some rest for at least a week...haha...after so much work.
You can get the cds cheaply on bandcamp.
ReplyDeleteRight 👍
DeleteAnd since the USD is weak against the EURO, i'll take advantage of that.
ReplyDeleteThank you for letting us know about thes guys.
ReplyDelete