Album: Wooden Shjips, Dos (Holy Mountain)

They may hail from San Francisco, but trance-rockers Wooden Shjips have clearly left their hearts elsewhere – in the mid-70s Germany of Krautrockers Neu! and Can, and in the New York of Suicide and the Velvets.

This second album is a muscular improvement on their 2007 debut, its five tracks each wasting no time in setting up a churning whirlpool of sound and letting it spin until you're sucked right in. Opener "Motorbike" swiftly assembles its psych-rock motorik groove, a jerky Can-ish beat aswirl with organ and distorted guitar, with indecipherable vocals lurking like the ghost in a machine. Elsewhere, the singer's haunted murmur resembles either a subdued Jim Morrison ("For So Long") or the echo-vocals of Suicide's Alan Vega ("Down By The Sea" and "Fallin'"). "Fallin'" is a first cousin to Neu!'s "After Eight", but less aggressive; "For So Long" takes the Neu! influence and crosses it with their hometown legends Quicksilver, the bass and drums rolling on implacably while hot-wire threads of lead guitar pursue a serpentine course of their own. It's not an original formula – fans of Loop and Spacemen 3 will revel here – but rarely has trance-rock's hypnotic heart beat as persuasively as it does on Dos.

Download this: "Motorbike", "For So Long", "Down By The Sea"