Bardo Pond

In 2000 a deep love for Bardo Pond provided the inspiration to establish Three Lobed Recordings. Fourteen years later, Bardo Pond and Three Lobed Recordings are proud to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the band’s initial releases with Refulgo, an epic double LP collection of the band’s earliest 7” singles, split 7” tracks, and compilation appearances. This collection, the first of a series, compiles these essential Bardo Pond tracks in a manner to augment their enjoyment by long- time fans while also introducing this material to those who do not yet possess an encyclopedic knowledge of these modern psych rock pioneers. The material presented on Refulgo all comes from long out-of-print releases (which have also been largely unavailable digitally) and the entire content has been remastered. It has never sounded better. Bardo Pond has stood alongside psych rock peers yet unmistakably alone over the course of the twenty-plus years as a band. While their catalog is vast and spans a virtual wheelbarrow-load of albums, singles, splits and compilations, what is perhaps most remarkable is just how quickly as a band they developed their unique sound and voice. Refulgo presents as compelling an argument for that thesis as its two LPs worth of music present a band whose collective vision emerged effectively fully formed. Their first 7”, “Die Easy” / “Apple Eye” (first released on Compulsiv in January of 1994) is a primordial ooze of swampy, sludgey psych blues that clearly demonstrated the essential DNA that has become Bardo Pond’s multi-decade calling card. Track those building blocks through the subsequent releases and the sound is there in full bloom quickly, really by “New Drunks,” but really stretches out in full within the twenty- minute triumphant, genre-defining victory lap which is “Sangh Seriatim” (first released on Drunken Fish’s “Harmony of the Spheres” compilation in November of 1996). The temporal gap between the tracks from that first single, the first two presented on Refulgo, and “Sangh Seriatim,” the compilation’s concluding track, is shockingly small at less than three years. Most bands never fully realize their potential; this compilation demonstrates that Bardo Pond did it with remarkable speed as well as a high degree of maturity.