There hasn’t been an official release from Ttotals since 2014 (with Let Everything Come Through). Despite that lack of recorded output, the band has been consistently playing shows and building a live set that is both visually and audibly engrossing.
The introduction to Skyview Drive is written as such:
Skyview Drive, is Ttotals singing the blues. Their take on the blues-The Outer Blues.
The Outer Blues is a blending of the traditional and experimental. It’s born of an idea that the blues is more than just particular notes or rhythms or emotions. It’s an all encompassing, existential release through sound. That sound, as found here, is sometimes buried deep in the spaces between notes where you may not notice it at first.
Listening to the record, one would not assume that The Blues, or The Outer Blues, were being channeled but with that knowledge in mind, the experience is colored even deeper. Vocal lamentations and wide open musical spaces allow for inner contemplations and a zen-like release of the self as you immerse yourself in the soundscapes. That may sound a bit over the top for a psych rock record but try listening to “World Geometry” at full volume and tell me you’re not carried away to some other place.
Overall, Ttotals has created a record that manages to involve all the standard tropes you’d hope for and expect in a psych rock record – some western sludge, some foreboding lyrical delivery, large walls of guitars through spaced out reverb – but also flexes quite a bit of diversity well beyond that with the inclusion of horns, some serious space for songs to breath and, dare I say, some pop sensibilities.