Concrete Playground

Bardo Pond make huge washes of explorative sound, using noise elements of distortion and drone to carve out space and time. Does that description make me sound like an acid casualty? So be it, because I'd be well at home in the Bardo family. Any band who, since they formed in 1991, have released albums with wink-wink drug references in their titles (um ... Dilate, anyone?) should be okay with that. Not to mention that the band splinters off into side projects with names like 500mg, Third Troll, Prairie Dog Flesh and Hash Jar Tempo. Truly influential amongst younger psychedelic-leaning bands and their contemporaries, they appear in Sydney at the invitation of Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed as part of the Vivid festival.

Signed between, for the most part, two record labels — Matador and ATP — Bardo Pond aren't a particularly prolific band, but their releases range into the hundreds via furtive bootlegging amongst loyal fans intent on stretching those moments of bliss into an eternity. That's the sound the band is all about, the feedback fever dreams and trip-on-this space rock akin to the music of My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3. To see them hold court in the Studio at the Opera House is something of a small triumph for totally, ahem, jazzed fans.