Photos of Photos

Although Carlton Melton’s 2012 EP has six tracks, the running time of one hour and 10 minutes makes *Photos of Photos* play more like an album. As with the band’s previous recordings, these songs were recorded from inside a big, wooden dome hidden deep in the Northern California woods. The 12-minute opening song, “Nor\' Easter,” gradually builds from sleepy drums, droning analog synthesizers, plodding bass, and hypnotic guitars into an elevated mantra of sonic waves. Awash in gauzy guitar effects that have more in common with late-\'80s British space rock (Spacemen 3) and early-\'90s shoegazing (Slowdive), the title track is a perfect instrumental to be played in zero gravity. Fittingly, “Space Treader” follows with similar spacy effects, this time played with more menacing minor chords in a downward strumming pattern that slowly melds with psychedelic six-string freakouts. An exercise in minimalism, “Wingspan” has backmasked guitar leads delicately layered over wispy strumming as a keyboard murmurs softly in the background. “Adrift (Full)” plays like Hawkwind by way of Pink Floyd.

On their third album, Carlton Melton stake out their own space in the drone/stoner/psych/zoneout wing of things ever more clearly -- if the field is at this point a very familiar and full one, they actually make the effort to show why they're worth paying attention to across six often lengthy tracks.