Nectar of the Moon - 2013 - Self-Born in the Lotus Flower

Quality: 4 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.5 out of 5

Out here in the Psychedelic Garage I believe that the Damaged Tape tunes have touched on nectar, the moon, and lotus flowers, so it's pretty much a given that this one would catch my attention.  We've stepped through the mirror into tiny worlds of sound curled up in it's own dimension - there are no songs here to speak of.  There are coursing waves of sound - echoing the electronic experiments of the 70's and those glistening synthesizer trails similar to what Tangerine Dream managed right at the dawn of the 80's.

Side one start with an analog bubble bath, with the verdant patches of tropical alien jungle working its tendrils through the mind.  Around the seven minute mark the drones step up the pace, like the sun blasting the ground with equatorial heat.  Finally the intensity of the drones wither away and envelope the listener in moonlight.  Side two is a touch thinner sounding, with the focus often on high cutoff synthesizer spirals.  It's the early morning awakening of the jungle moon.  Eventually, we come full circle to the dripping banana leaves that began the musical journey.  With the loop of a day on this tropical moon charting a mere thirty minutes, you can spin around in sonic circles, especially if you're ignoring the controls on your media player as I often do.

With just the right images coming through and echoes of some of the better tones of early electronica, this is a very groovy platter for the astral journeyman.  Although not quite up there, this music is a least withing spitting distance of oblique sound voyages such as Tangerine Dream's "Alpha Centauri" or Vangelis' "Beaubourg."

At Bandcamp (but lacking this partuicular album)
:
Nectar of the Moon