Echoes Forest, the third full-length from Dutch instrumental psych trio Mantra Machine, is out now, and after a decade-plus of looking skyward, the band is finally pointing the antennae downward, into the dirt and the trees and the older, quieter weather that lives in deep forest. It’s still a heavy record, though. It’s also their most cinematic and inward-looking yet.
If you haven’t crossed paths with Mantra Machine before, here’s the short version. Three Dutch heads — Paul Geerts on guitars and samples, Selwyn Slop on bass, guitars, and Mellotron, and Jeroen Schippers on drums and synths — pulling instrumental psych through the heavy-end-of-Roadburn filter. They debuted in 2012 with a slot at England’s Sonic Rock Solstice festival, dropped their first EP called Stage One, and made their proper full-length statement with Nitrogen in 2014.
A growing rep landed them a 2016 invitation to Roadburn itself — Tilburg’s annual high-mass of underground heavy music — followed by Belgium’s Yellowstock, and runs through Germany and Austria. Their second LP, Heliosphere (2019), was named for the bubble of solar wind that defines our edge of the solar system, and was their most ambitious and well-received yet. The current lineup came together in 2023, and Echoes Forest is the first long statement from the new room.
Where Heliosphere pointed outward, Echoes Forest turns inward and downward. The band describes it as “a more earthbound exploration,” and you can hear that intention in everything from the title to the playing. The riffs feel rooted rather than orbital, while the synth pads breathe instead of beam. Slop’s Mellotron especially does a lot of the heavy lifting here. Those warm, slightly haunted tape-string textures that immediately suggest old growth, fog, and dappled light through the canopy. Schippers anchors the whole thing with the kind of patient, hypnotic drumming that lets a long-form instrumental piece actually go somewhere.
The reference points: think Earthless playing slower and quieter on purpose, or Sungrazer (their fellow Dutch heavy-psych travelers) crawling deeper into the woods. There are passages here that recall Causa Sui’s most pastoral moments, Elder’s mid-period turn toward longer arrangements, and the gentler ends of the Bardo Pond catalog. Cinematic is the right word; these are pieces built to soundtrack something you’re seeing in your head.
In a heavy-psych world that often defaults to the cosmic, Echoes Forest is the rare record that remembers there’s just as much mystery in a damp Dutch forest as there is in the heliosphere.
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