EP.4O | Mr. Bison on "The Garden of Forgotten Dreams" & Recording With Richard Behrens

The band that recorded their first two albums with no bass and now makes some of the most expansive psych rock in Europe. Mr. Bison — the Italian four-piece from coastal Tuscany — join The Sonic Road Podcast to talk about their new album The Garden of Forgotten Dreams, out September 25th on Heavy Psych Sounds. The conversation traces the whole arc. The band formed in 2009 as a trio, lost their bass player after a year, and spent two or three years playing as two guitarists using an octave-split solution — a setup built for the Clutch and Fu Manchu influences that shaped their early sound. A lineup change about a decade ago brought in members with different backgrounds, and the band grew out of straight stoner rock into the heavy psych and progressive territory they work in now, closer to bands like Elder. Mr. Bison get into the mythology concepts behind past records — the Tyrrhenian Sea legend of the seven pearls on Seaward, the Norse idea of non-linear time on Echoes From the Universe — and explain why The Garden of Forgotten Dreams steps away from a storyline concept toward something more intimate and mood-driven, using the garden as a metaphor for refuge and for the things we keep hidden until we're ready to share them. They break down the first singles "The Cosmic Tide" and "Bright Shadow," and the meaning of going with the flow when the world feels like it's running over you. The back half digs into the making of the record: recording live from jams at their own studio in Tuscany, tracking drums first, and working with Richard Behrens at Big Snuff Studio in Berlin — the same engineer behind Elder's Through Zero. Behrens pushed them to track with no reverb, delay, or effects for a clearer, more defined sound, and re-amped the bass line through his vintage amps. Carl Saff mastered the record, with Adam Ayan mastering the single "Bright Shadow." They also talk about the reality of the scene in Italy, touring Europe from tiny smoky clubs to festival stages, cutting long songs to fit festival sets, acoustic sets for small rooms, hopes for a return to America and a KEXP session, and the underground bands they think deserve more attention. 🎧 Full episode & newsletter → thesonicroad.com
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