Paul Horn - 1968 - Inside The Taj Mahal, Vol. 1

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

Paul Horn was pretty much a second-tier jazz flautist throughout the 50's and most of the 60's. Somewhere around 1968, he seems to have started searching for some kind of enlightenment and found his calling recording ethereal music which is an important precursor to new age and ambient music, yet also manages to feel fresh today.

This album was recorded on a tape recorder that Horn apparently snuck into the Taj Mahal. Now, on the surface this seems to shoehorn this album into the realm of non-produced home recordings, but the recording location provides a trump card. Although we only hear Horn's flute and the Hindi chanting of a guard who just happened to be around, the acoustics of the Taj Mahal are something else entirely. Throughout the album, the simple instrumentation comes under the effect of a 28 second delay, which manages to produce a wide range of overtones and harmonics. This means that we sort of get a third instrument, which is a magical reverberation that even the best modern studio cannot compete with.

The acoustics alone aren't necessarily going to make this one a classic, but Horn's playing does. forsaking the hard bop jazz sound that he'd been working with on albums past, the flute here is extremely naturalistic and restrained. The sound of the echoing flute fades into the chanting seamlessly. The two artists rarely appear in tandem, but the overtones perfectly glue the performances together.

This is an amazing meditation-centered album. It's certainly a beautiful one which far transcends the new age tag that I often consider a minus. This is one of those albums that while it's playing becomes part of your being. Very highly recommended.

Terry Riley - 1967 - A Rainbow In Curved Air

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

In terms of electronic music, A Rainbow In Curved Air is part of the basic elemental code. In terms of classical music, it's a touchstone of the minimalist movement that Steve Reich and Philip Glass would devote their careers to. In terms of psychedelic music, this is a damn fine album to trance out to.

The two sides of this album will lull your brain into a perfect trance. This is music where stopping it before it reaches its completion will make you flinch a little bit - like you suddenly ran out of air. In fact, these repetitive, shifting parts truly are a sort of musical air. It will create a temporary and colorful headspace for the attentive listener.

Each album side consists of a single piece, and the construction of them is similar, with a few simple musical phrases repeating, interacting in different ways, and creating an awesome sonic tapestry. The first side, which gives the LP its title, uses several organs, tape loops, and clicking percussive sounds from early synths to produce a lulling tone. This is one of the first albums to create a serious sonic vocabulary that the electronic music genre would later adopt, in terms of both the krautrock pioneers of the 70's and the more modern dance floor tech heads. It's arguably the first serious electronic album and in stark contrast to the easy listening-infected novelty albums that appeared around this time.

The second side, titled "Poppy Nogood And The Phantom Band,' retains the organ as a backdrop, but adds horns to dance on top of that framework. Although similar in construction, it has a little more of a classically-based sound as opposed to the electronic pulse of side one.

If you've got the attention span for this sort of thing, you'll find this to be an album that is both highly influential and extremely listenable. This is pure trance music.

Buy Me:
Terry Riley - 1967 - A Rainbow In Curved Air

Spacemen 3 - 1989 - Playing With Fire

Quality: 5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.25 out of 5


Spacemen 3 finally live up to the space rock potential of their name on their third album, Playing With Fire. Excepting some programmed sounding drums, the band basically drops all conventional rhythmic structure, building songs of of pulsing, delayed, and droning guitars and synths. Most of the album creates a dreamy pad for the songs to float on, although we do get the buzzsaw drones of "Revolution" and "Suicide" to break things up.

At this point, the band was no longer projecting a united creative front, and it's clear that Sonic Boom and Jason Pierce were veering off in very different directions of psychedelia. Pierce's tracks like "Come Down Softly To My Soul" and "Lord Can Your Hear Me" are very dreamy, but seeped in old school R&B and surprisingly gospel. It's no coincidence that his later band would be dubbed Spiritualized, and the roots of that band are more than apparent here. Pierce's lyrics are surprisingly direct. Sonic Boom goes for a much colder sound, working with cycling drones and dispassionate, surreal vocals. Fortunately, on Playing With Fire these approaches compliment each other well and make the album all the better for it.

Everything on the proper album is quite good. As much as I enjoy Pierce's gospel-psych (which he would majestically perfect in his later band), it's Boom's strange droning that really does it for me here. "How Does It Feel" in particular takes the sound world of the earlier "Ecstasy Symphony" and gives it a little more definition and shape. The lyrics are somewhat cliched, but Boom's distant, unattached vocal gives it a few more layers. It's easily one of my favorite Spacemen 3 tracks. "Revolution" and "Suicide" adds distortion to the drones and basically tries to pummel your brain into a trance state. Once again, "Revolution" includes some strange lyrics, with Boom desperately pleading that revolution "takes only five seconds." It doesn't make any sense, but he sounds damn serious about it.

The opening track "Honey," is the only one that even tries to combine Pierce's and Boom's visions. With the vocals practically backshifting through time and an echoplexed sound, Boom's contribution is apparent. But unlike his other tracks on the album, Pierce's undercurrent of soul is also present. I guess they were playing nice that day (as they functioned mostly as bitter rivals by this point), and it resulted in one of the album's best tracks.

This disc is probably not the best introduction to this band, the Perfect Prescription is still a better place to start. Once you've attuned yourself to the sonic sphere of Spacemen 3, you may find that Playing With Fire is the band at their very peak. The kind of recent reissue includes a plethora of live tracks, demos, and a couple of random tracks. There's a Pierce-led version of "May The Circle Be" unbroken that is fun.

As a little note, the 4.25 Trip-O-Meter rating is basically averaging about 3.5 for Pierce's tracks along with the full 5 for Sonic Boom's tracks. The quality is obviously very high throughout.

Buy Me:
Spacemen 3 - 1989 - Playing With Fire

Os Mutantes - 1968 - Os Mutantes

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

Even at it's best, world pop often sounds like it using too many western (read American and British) sonic ideas, and fails to have much ethnic identity. Brazilian pop has always been a happy exception to this rule with distinctive percussion, melodies, and touches of bossa nova and samba making this music quite distinctive. This was never more true than with the tropicalia movement of the late 1960's, of which Os Mutantes was practically the house band.

Having already appeared backing Brazilian luminaries such as Caetano Veloso and GIlberto Gil, Os Mutantes came into their own flowering on this debut album. Although still relatively obscure outside of Brazil, this album is easily the equal of A-list offerings from folks like The Beatles and The Stones. In fact, the psychedelia here as a fair sight wilder than those bands managed, while still maintaining a great sense of melody and artistry.

"Panis Et Circensis" (Bread And Circuses), the album opener, is a production tour de force which is the peer of other psych production masterpieces such as "Good Vibrations" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." Impressively, where the Beach Boys and the Beatles spent weeks to months perfecting their iconic tracks, Os Mutantes (with the help of Rogerio Duprat) got "Panis Et Circensis" down in a day. Starting with a short fanfare, the tracks shifts through several worlds of sound. It's very much in the 'pocket symphony' mold with seemingly unrelated parts actually working together. For me the highlights are the strange mid-song tape drop out and the almost too busy horn parts punctuating the melody.

Os Mutantes focused more on covers than originals, but unlike many other South American psychedelic groups, the band is outsourcing and collaborating on songs with their countrymen. Jorge Ben shows up in a guest spot to help out on his fabulous "A Minha Menina" while the afore mentioned Gil and Veloso contribute several tracks, including the amazing opener and the tribal rave up of "Bat Macumba."

The bands not-so-secret weapon is the ghostly vocals of Rita Lee. Think of a more emotive Nico or the obviously Mutantes-inspired vocals of Stereolab. Her best showcases are on the almost scary "Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour," in which Lee songs accompanied by the odd choice of the sound of ripping paper, and "O Relogio," which starts mysterious but picks up some definite steam halfway through.

With other highlights like "Trem Fantasma" hanging around this album, we find that Os Mutantes is an extremely focused collection. It's simply a matter of taste which separates the classic from the merely 'above average' (for me "Baby" and "Senhor F" mark the slight mid -album slump). No psych listener should go without at least hearing this one.

Buy Me:
Os Mutantes - 1968 - Os Mutantes

The Moles - 1991 - Untune The Sky

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

The Moles' Untune The Sky is simply one of the unheralded peaks of neo-psych. This Australian group, headed by the exceptionally talented Richard Davies, managed to eke several new angles out of shopworn psychedelic influences while throwing a few new curveballs of their own. According to the liner notes, the band recorded this with the help of copious amounts of beer. This may be true, but judging from the warped recordings found on the disc, they very well may have spiked it with something a little stronger.

The first two tracks of the album establish the band's battle plan. "Bury Me Happy" opens the disc with a hazy Byrds/early-REM 12 string riff and some happy monks sort of harmony. Davies' top rate pop songwriting hits this one right out of the park and the somewhat lo-fi recording quality adds in a cloudy atmosphere that works perfectly for the song. The entire album is pretty lo-fi for that matter, but it gives the impression of hanging out in a really kick-ass basement club.

The album then plunges into lysergic weirdness for the maniacally shifting "Tendrils And Paracetamol." It's quite unique as the parts of the varying parts of the song are almost like something a prog rock band would do, but the punkish acid-soaked playing erases any notions of prog. It takes a few listens to really get this one, but it is yet another highlight, so make sure to give it more than one chance.

Amazingly, almost every track here has something amazing to offer. Davies continues to work out his pop mojo on the groovy "Rebecca" (featuring the strange chorus of "Wonder free fall Rebecca"), and power-pop like "Europe By Car." The groups harmonies are often strange, yet alluring. Check out the demented singing on "Breathe Me In" for a highlight. On "Lonely Hearts Get What They Deserve" and "This Is A Happy Garden" nail the more dreamy ballad-esque side of the psychedelic coin.

Matching "Tendrils And Paracetemol" for disturbing freakiness is "Nailing Jesus To The Cross." Over a background of buzzsaw guitars and hammering percussion is an all-too-happy vocal singing about the title subject. The album proper comes to a fantastic close with the Beach Boys-nicking title "Surf's Up." It has nothing to do with the Smile track, but lives up to its name with cascading waves of guitar and organ.

Added on to this CD compilation is the four song What's The New Mary Jane EP. The title track matches anything on the album, although the other three tracks don't display quite the same level of songwriting. Still, the production values are a little better and there is some wild experimentation, especially on the closing "Let's Hook Up And Get Some."

Buy Me:
The Moles - 1991 - Untune The Sky

Can - 1973 - Future Days

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

Future Days isn't much representative of Can's signature sound, but I'm willing to call it their best album. Here the band completely melds into a single, ego-less entity and conjures a sonic journey along the waves of the cosmic ocean. Can goes even more into the jazz end of the spectrum, finding inspiration particularly in Bitches' Brew-era Miles Davis. "Spray" almost sounds like it could be an outtake from that jazz-fusion masterpiece.

I've often heard Can cited as a major influence on electronic music. On Future Days, Holger Czukay attempts some early sampling on "Moonshake." Even more rudimentary is Can's approach to music. Earlier tracks like "Mother Sky" and "Halleluhwah" provides a repetitive and hypnotic pulse upon which layers of sound were plastered, much like modern electronica. It didn't hurt that Jaki Leibezeit probably keeps better time than a computer. Here Can gives us the flip side to those epic tracks with "Bel Air." Where the earlier tracks focused in polyrhythmic or propulsive robotic percussion, "Bel Air" simply glides upon the clouds for 20 minutes. It's the dreamy brother among Can's epic tracks. Along with Brian Eno and Manuel Gottsching's contemporary efforts, I feel like Future Days is one of the foundation blocks for ambient and chilll-out music.

On the poppier end of the spectrum we find the title track at a, uh, short nine minutes. Damo Suzuki's practically whispered melody continually haunts my mind and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt's slightly out of time churning synth threatens to warp reality. Later on side one we find "Moonshake," which might be my favorite single Can track. "Moonshake" comes about as close to pop as classic Can would get, Suzuki intoning another great melody over Czukay locked single-note bass line (could to "Bel Air" to hear him play something difficult on bass) and Leibezeit's robotic pulse. Karoli and Schmidt add the sunshine to the melody. The sampling in the middle section is innovative, but in an almost comical way. In my alternate universe this was a number one hit, and in the real world it often ends up on mix tapes that I put together for folks.

Future Days is a floating journey for the listener, showcasing an altered Can but one playing at their absolute fused best. It gets my highest recommendation.

Buy Me:
Can - 1973 - Future Days

Can - 1972 - Ege Bamyasi

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

This seems to be Can's concept album about a can of okra; okra destined for soup I suppose. Really, the concept doesn't matter at all. What matters is that this is the second album at Can at their absolute best. This time out Can only went for a single album as opposed to the mammoth Tago Mago, so Ege Bamyasi is a lot more focused too.

Whereas the last album was in large part drummer Jaki Leibezeit's showcase, this one puts vocalist Damo Suzuki front and center. Often there are long stetches of Can's music where we don't necessarily hear Mr. Suzuki for long stretches, but he's definitely splattered liberally across this album. That's not to say you should listen for lyrics. Suzuki continues to sing in a mumbly mixture of English, Japanese, and gibberish, but it's all about the feeling and how he melds in with the rest of the band as basically another instrument.

The basic sound gets a little jazzier here. While still providing perfect time, Leibezeit loosens up and reveals his original status as a jazz drummer and Michael Karoli manages some languid, fluid lines on guitar. "Pinch" is a precursor to the lighter, spacier sound that Can would explore on their next album, while "Sing Swan Song" does a fine job of reshuffling elements of Can's earlier approach to a quieter sound.

Unlike the majority of krautrockers, Can has an uncanny ability to sound a little loose and funky. Leibezeit and bassist Holger Czukay are still at the top of their game as a rhythm section and the amazing breakbeats of "Pinch," "Vitamin C," and "I'm So Green" are just waiting for a modern hip-hop producer to sample. As an added plus, these songs are much more accessible than a lot of Can's music and makes Ege Bamyasi the closest thing to a pop album that Can would make in their prime (late period Can tries to get poppy to disasterous results).

And one track here actually did have a slight taste of pop success. The closing track "Spoon" actually charted as a single and was apparently added to the album in post production. It's a fine tune, but part of me wishes that "Vitamin C" or "I'm So Green" had even more success on the charts.

Instead of devoting an entire album to insane experimental noise, Can plunges it all into the ten minute "Soup." It's much better integrated into the album than somethng like Tago Mago's "Peking O" and doesn't overstay it's welcome, at least not for me.

If you're new to Can, I'd say that Ege Bamyasi is probably the best place to start. It's a great summation of where the band had been while laying the groundwork for the equally classic Future Days. This is quintessential Can. And just for the record, I totally dig the goofy cover art.

Buy Me:
Can - 1972 - Ege Bamyasi

Gong - 1974 - You (Radio Gnome Invisible, Pt.3)

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

You was my first exposure to Gong and remains one of my favorite albums of any genre. The slightly gaudy, but strangely mystical cover art drew me in (I'm a sucker for Mayan imagery) and the music inside is an accurate reflection of the cover. Gong is very much at the peak of their powers here, even as it is also clear that the band is splintering.

Whereas on previous Gong albums, Daevid Allen was clearly in the driver's seat, You is more of a schizophrenic affair. Allen chimes in with a series of really deranged shorter songs that make me thing of the better songs on Zappa's We're Only In It For The Money. The rest of the band seemed to have some different goals in mind as they go practically instrumental for a completely cosmic sound. Pink Floyd had nothing on Gong for pure space rock. I try not to give track-by-track descriptions of albums, but You provides a musical story (never mind the Radio Gnome elements) and I feel warrants it.

"Thought For Naught" and "A P.H.P.'s Advice" start the album with a creepy carnival atmosphere before the visions take over with the band's phenomenal space grooves. "Magic Mother Invocation" plunges the band into the mystical and mysterious ether as it melds into the fantastic and powerful "Master Builder."

"Master Builder" practically defies description. For one it's a percussion tour-de-force. Pierre Moerlen is basically held in check for the first seven or so minutes of the album (except for some random percussion instruments) before finally hitting the trap set in "Master Builder." On top of interstellar synth and guitarist Steve Hillage's truly great riff, Moerlen proceeds to completely pummel his set while maintaining complete synch with the other musicians. Allen brings in his vocals about halfway through with a possessed chant-like quality. The track spins like a whirling dervish until abruptly ending where we find ourselves on the alien landscape of "A Sprinkling Of Clouds." This purely instumental track recalls Tangerine Dream's work on Alpha Centauri and Atem and compares more than favorably.

Allen and Smyth return to the front for the side two opener "Perfect Mystery." If anything on the album doesn't quite fit, it's this track which would have fit better on Angel's Egg. It's still a fun little intermission from the extended voyages which continue with "The Isle Of Everywhere." It's a space-jazz affair which I imagine prefigures the Moerlen-led Gong, but hits upon an awesome bass groove and some fins sax playing along with a cool spash of etherial synth. Allen's vision finally merges with the rest of the band for the closing epic "You Never Blow Yr Trip Forever." It literally includes everything that made Gong great and ranks as one of their best tracks. We get Allen and Smyth's strange utterances and voice acting along with great playing across the board, a bit of jazz, and plenty of sounds streaming out of the solar vortex. Everyone playing is at the top of their game and focused, providing the perfect climax for the three album voyage.

This is by far the most cosmic of Gong's recordings, and I feel their best. There are clearly some different visions at work here, but they eventually combine and with a little creative sequencing, end up as a cohesive work.

Buy Me:
Gong - You (Radio Gnome Invisible, Pt. 3)

Manuel Gottsching/Ash Ra Tempel IV - Inventions For Electric Guitar (1975)

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

OK, let's get one thing out of the way straight off. Worst. Album. Cover. Ever. I really don't know what Mr. Gottsching and/or his promoters were thinking of with this gag reflex worthy cover image, but I'd be more than happy to throw this in the lot with the likes of Tino and Devastatin' Dave (go here straightaway if you don;t know what I'm talking about: http://salamitsunami.com/archives/91). But, fortunately we can't always judge a book (or album) by it's cover and the contents here are spectacular.

I'm not sure quite whom to credit this to. The original Ash Ra Tempel had pretty much split by this point, and the only artist we hear on this disc is Manuel Gottsching, whose name is bigger on the cover than the band's. After this Gottsching would reduce the band's name to Ashra, but I'm gonna call this one a solo album.

This is in fact a solo album in the strictest sense of the word. Every sound here is created by Gottsching's enviable guitar. In an Eno/Fripp-like fashion, he has layered many delayed and echoed bits of guitar, occasionally punctuated by an acid-style lead. Also like the Eno/Fripp recordings, the compositions here represent a major precusor to ambient music.

Ash Ra Tempel was one of the leading kraut rock bands, fusing the experimental side of the Can along with the electronic glide of early Kraftwerk and Neu!. On this disc the sound has been distilled to it's essence, and it's truly a propelled glide into space. As well it should be with song titles like "Echo Waves," "Quasarsphere," and "Pluralis."

"Echo Waves" and "Pluralis" work on the dame modus operandi, with slowly shifting delayed guitar patterns serving as a foundation for some strange processed guitar sound effects and an occasional lead. The much shorter "Quasarsphere," sandwiched in the middle, is an even more ambient exercise missing the delayed framework of the other tracks.

This is a perfect album to zone out to, and heralds a major stylistic shift from the more rock (if avant garde, freak rock) sound of Ash Ra Tempel. Gottsching continues to mine this vein of more electronic music to this day, but on Inventions For Electric Guitar he managed to hit upon a ripe vein which continues to sound ahead of its time.

Buy Me:
Ash Ra Tempel - Inventions For Electric Guitar

Slowdive - Holding Our Breath (1991)

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

Although only an EP, Holding Our Breath stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Slowdive's masterful album, Souvlaki. I find Slowdive's music to be a narcotic, and this disc is truly addictive. I think it's a prime example for anyone trying to validate the shoegazer trend in the early 1990's. In fact, I'd play this for some one before the Bloody Valentine's Loveless.

Kicking of the EP is one of my favorite songs, "Catch The Breeze." The song is basically the definition of the word "dreamy." Unlike many shoegazing bands, it's not too difficult to make out the lyrics here, and they're not half bad. Of course the real hook here is in the atmospherics. I always felt that guitar effects were a bit of a crutch, but they really are used as their own imaginative instrument throughout this EP. Slowdive also makes the most out of codas on this recording. Even after they've delivered on "Catch the Breeze," they blast into a truly heavenly burst of noise.

An even better coda comes in the cover of Syd Barrett's (and James Joyce's I suppose) "Golden Hair." Flirting with blasphemy, I'm going to say that I prefer this to Barrett's version. Rachel Goswell's vocal are beautiful, yet almost disembodied sounding and truly creepy. And they one up the original with an original coda that once again climbs to the heavens. Perhaps they overuse this trick, but they do it so well.

The band continues to ride out this groove on the happily floaty "Shine," befor plunging into complete darkness on Albatross. The raging (yet still strangely beautiful) guitars and tribal percussion takes the listener straight into Dante's Inferno. The tom drums in particular never fail to send a cold shiver down my spine.

I really can't recommend this one highly enough.

Buy Me:
Slowdive - Just For A Day (EP included on a bonus disc)

Tangerine Dream- Alpha Centauri (1971)

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

Ok, let's try and assume Electronic Meditation never happened and consider this Tangerine Dream's debut. In a way it is since Edgar Froese is the only member remaining from the last album. Joining him is Chris Franke, who was hired as a drummer but would be the Dreamer to dive head first into the electronic waters and match Froese's influence in the band for the next 15 years. We also have organist Steve Schroyder who would vanish in a drug induced haze following this album.

The band's trademark sequencer patterns are still nowhere to be found here, and there is still plenty of conventional instrumentation. In fact, Alpha Centauri is very much a "space rock" album. But we do start to hear experimentation with electronics, particularly the VCS3 synth, which Pink Floyd would also use extensively (no Moogs yet though). The band was from a rock background, and didn't really know how to properly program the synth (although Brian Eno suggests that synth players throw away the manual anyway), but they still conjure up some awesome sounds here.

The band is a lot more mellow here. They occasionally whip up some noise, but it's much more controlled than on the last album, and performed with purpose. The players are actually playing off of each other here. Most of the music is minimalist, but arranged and playing with maximum effect.

Once again the band has a concept, which I think is a space voyage to a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. Honestly, I'm not sure if that was the band's intention, but it's what I visualize and what's better than a concept conveyed completely instrumentally? There are only three tracks present here, and each of them create a ton of effective imagery. I see the album as such:

"Sunrise In The Third System" is shortly after takeoff, drifting around the earth. The organ tones have no trouble evoking an orbital sunrise. With the 13-minute long "Fly And Collision Of Cosmos Sola," we launch into hyperspace, with VCS3 patterns streaking by. Eventually we enter the Alpha Centauri system, and make a tricky landing through a turbulent atmosphere. The side long title track would be a tour of this distant planet.

Alpha Centauri is an early masterpiece by the Dream. In fact, they'd continue making stylistic changes, and never really return to this sound. There's a great mix of space rock and early avant garde electronics here in a perfect balance.

Buy Me:
Tangerine Dream- Nebulous Dawn (includes Alpha Centauri)

Chrysalis- Definition (1967)

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

For those of us plunging through endless piles of esoterica, we often have to concentrate on the diamonds in the the rough found on otherwise unimpressive collections. With Chrysalis' Definition, however, we really do have a top-tier album of American psychedelia that has yet to recieve it's due.

Chrysalis was a university-incubated band hailing from Ithica, New York. They built up a local following, and armed with some praises from Frank Zappa's circle of cronies, set about making Definition in New York City. The making of the album was a rough road as the band went through several producers, including Zappa himself. Strangely enough the problem didn't reside with the typical "creative differences," but instead with the horribly abrasive attitude of the band's managers. Even with these issues, the finished album is a unified-sounding product.

The band's leader and almost exclusive songwriter was a strange fellow by the name of Spider Barbour. He is apparently best known as the subject of Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy, which is a shame as he was also an exceptional songwriter. The tracks on Definition create a very distinctive and detailed niche of psychedelic folk rock. Barbour references many different sounds, including San Francisco rock, British psych pop like Donovan and Pink Floyd, The Incredible String Band and Zappa, while creating an extremely distinctive sound. I've heard this disc likened to Zappa a bit too much. There are a few dashes of Zappa's vocal approach and instrumental flourishes on the opening track "What Will Become Of The Morning," and the closing Dr. Root's Garden employs some Zappa-style humor, but 98% percent of the time the band is most certainly doing their own thing. The almost unbearable melencholy of "Cynthia Gerome" and complete insanity of the bouncing "Baby Let Me Show You Where I Live" are wholly original.

Barbour's work as a lyricist is also of note. Many of the songs are in the form of stories, but remain conscious of word placement and sound for maximum effect. The imagery is quite strong, but avoids pretty much every cliche of psychedelic rock in 1967. Plenty of snippets of lyrics will bounce in your head long after listening. Barbour's voice is also of note, often lilting like a troubadour, but intimating some kind of hidden madness. This isn't to say I think Barbour was some sort of acid casualty as he always sounds completely in control and has a strong vision for his band.

Part of that vision includes a intensely trippy undercurrent of insect references. In fact it seems that songs like the aforementioned "Baby Let Me Show You Where I Live" and "Dr. Root's Garden" are written from an insect's perspective. In fact Barbour apparently eventually entered a career as an entomologist. The words are often a little unsettling, but always fascinating.

Every great band needs a secret weapon, and Chrysalis has two. Vocal Nancy Nairn comes across like an institutionalized Grace Slick and really tears the roof off of tracks like "April Grove" and "30 Popular." It makes me think a little of the Fiery Furnaces work almost 40 years later.

Also taking Chrysalis' music to the next level is percussionist Dahaud Shaar. His beats bring a lot of color and variety to the songs present here. While nothing here classifies as world music, Shaar seems to understand plenty of world rhythms and brings a touch of that to highlight, but not overwhelm the tracks.

The CD reissue includes eight bonus tracks, including six that don't appear on the album proper. The sound quality is a step down from the album, but seeing as such a great band has no other releases to their name, these still great tracks are invaluable. The writing and playing maintains the same amazing level of quality, even if thing get a little more hissy. According to the liner notes, Rev-Ola has plans to secure and release demo recordings for an aborted second album. I hope that these soon see the light of day.

Definition is truly a psychedelic classic. I would easily rate this with a "pick-up-as-soon-as-possible" status. Chrysalis were a completely original band with new ideas that still sounds innovative today.

Buy Me:
Chrysalis- Definition

The Hollies- Butterfly (1967)

Quality: 5 out of 5 (mono)
4 out of 5 (stereo)
Trip-O-Meter: 4 out of 5

Although the Hollies were one of Britain's biggest pop bands in the 60's, they would remain relatively obscure in the States until the 70's, by which time Graham Nash had left the band and the remaining members had converted to a rather schmaltzy soft rock band. Butterfly is a prime piece of British psyche pop which has never really been noticed in the US. In fact, I'm not sure if it has had a proper American release to this date. I'll be reviewing the 2004 Japanese reissue which includes the mono and stereo British release plus the "King Midas In Reverse"/"Everything Is Sunshine" single.

One of the unfortunate conceits of British psych is that band's ideas and intentions often surpassed their recording capacity. Butterfly escapes this fate as the Hollies had recent hits such as "Carrie Ann" and "On A Carousel" and benefitted from a A-list recording budget. Thus, Butterfly features plenty of exotic instrumentation and full, live orchestration. Much of their experimentation on the album reflected other prominent releases of the past year (Sgt. Peppers, The Byrds' Younger Than Yesterday, etc.) but these ideas had not yet passed their freshness date and the phenomenal songwriting of Clarke-Hicks-Nash more than compensated for any redundancies.

Apparently, the band as a whole was not too excited about the dive into psychedelia that they had begun with Evolution and continued here. But it was the prevailing style of 1967 and Graham Nash was gung-ho about taking that direction. This caused creative strain and Graham Nash would depart for America shortly after this album, but on Butterfly the tension provides a perfect balance between pop and psychedelia.

Butterfly starts with "Dear Eloise," a lurching number that provides sort of a manifesto for the rest of the album with it's tripped out mellotron passage shifting into a full blast pop-rock section rivaling even some of the better Lennon/McCartney singles. Nash would also specifically reference The Beatles on the sitar-laden "Maker," which is not as complex as George Harrison's sitar excursions, but has more of an immediate pop edge.

The band scores a couple of should-have-been singles with the soaring "Would You Believe," which is my personal favorite on the album, and the poppy "Step Inside," which recalls prime 1965 Brit-invasion pop. On the other side of the spectrum, the band tries to search for the astral sounds of the day on the one-two punch of "Try It" and "Elevated Observations?" In full disclosure, their "experimentation" here is rather tepid when compared with Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, The Soft Machine, or a host of the edgier psych bands, but their pop instincts save the day and make the songs enjoyable, if a bit dated. The one major misstep is the silly lyrics and goofy orchestration on "Pegasus." This song has missed most US Hollies compilations, and it's not really worth searching out if you don't already have it. The closing title track is a much better bit of orchestration, and sound of a piece with contemporary Moody Blues efforts.

"King Midas In Reverse," which may be The Hollies' best psychedelic number, includes amazing vocal harmonies and what starts as deceptively simple production morphing into a huge orchestral wall of sound. "Everything Is Sunshine" is an enjoyable but run-of-the-mill B-side.

My release includes the mono and stereo versions of all of the tracks. As is common with British 60's pop, the mono mix was intended as the definitive mix while the stereo was almost an afterthought. This is especially true here as the mono mixes are finely textured and provides a punch in all the right places. Unfortunately the stereo mix suffers from pointless separation anda poor balance that weakens the sound and immediacy of many songs. I only listen to the stereo version as an occasional curiosity and in fact rate it a full point lower than the mono.

Butterfly is a somewhat neglected release that I believe is one of the definitive psychedelic pop albums. You may recognize "Dear Eloise" and "King Midas In Reverse" from airplay (or not, they don't get played that often) but there are plenty of other tracks here to match the majesty of those songs.

Buy Me:
The Hollies - Butterfly

The Millennium/The Ballroom- Magic Time (1966-1968)

Quality: 4 out of 5 (5 for Begin)
Trip-O-Meter: 3.5 out of 5 (4 for Begin)

The Millennium was a short lived project headed by the master sunshine pop producer, Curt Boettcher. This 2001 Sundazed collection includes the Millennium's sole album, Begin (1968), along with the previously unreleased album from one of Boettcher's previous acts, The Ballroom (1966), and some odds and sods from these acts and Sagittarius, a project headed by producer Gary Usher and involving Boettcher's input.

We'll work through this set backwards, as the strongest material here is the Begin album on disc three.

Although the Begin album is Boettcher's baby, it is also very much the work of a functioning band. In fact, the members make up a sort of an obscuro 60's supergroup. Ron Edgar and Doug Rhodes joined in from the Music Machine ("Talk Talk"), and Sandy Salisbury was a holdover from the Ballroom project.

Begin is truly a lost classic that has not yet received it's due. The basic sound of the disc harkens back to Beach Boy Brian Wilson's 1966-1968 productions. In fact, many moments of Begin stand up well to Pet Sounds and surpass the sunshine pop of later Beach Boys albums. Like Wilson's productions, Boettcher, along with co-producer Keith Olsen, created difficult to pick out instrumental combination, and use potential dissonance to create a wall of sound. The band also uses many other sounds, such as raga singing, steel drums, and sound effects, to create amazing atmospherics.

The opening medley of "Prelude" and "To Claudia On Thursday" (the latter of which makes me think of 90's psych poppers The Olivia Tremor Control) reveal production that was state-of-the-art for its time, including compressed drums and full use of stereo range. The tripped out folk sound is similar to The Byrds The Notorious Byrd Brothers (produced by Usher), but to my ears surpass even that enviable achievement. "I Just Want To Be Your Friend," "5 A.M.," and "It's You" all stand out as should-have-been singles, but the full impact of The Millenium can be found in the tracks "The Island" and "Karmic Dream Sequence #1." Both of these songs have stellar hooks, but are far too weird even for singles. "The Island" creates a tropical lysergic sound. The songs seems as much a threat as an invitation. The band pulls out all of the stops for "Karmic Dream Sequence #1." Starting off as a hazy ballad similar to Crosby's songs for The Byrds and Jefferson Airplane, things start to collapse into a wild sound collage, even sampling "Prelude" from the start of the album.

Unlike most sunshine pop concoctions, the lyrical content of Begin holds up to scrutiny. Many tracks, especially "The Island," "It's You," and "There Is Nothing More To Say" have almost a strange cult-like ambiance. As "There Is Nothing More To Say" admits, "There is something that you hear in so many of our songs, but it's something that we want you to know." The album slowly reveals it's spiritual convictions, but the details of their philosophy is never quite ironed out. It's an interesting precursor to the modern psychedelic cult pop of The Polyphonic Spree.

Although this set is worth it for a well remastered Begin, disc two is interesting only as a curiosity. Most of the tracks are demos, instrumentals, or alternate takes of Boettcher's various projects. Of note are the tracks "Milk and Honey" and "Too Young To Marry," which was a more straight forward sunshine pop single produced by Boettcher for the act Summer's Children. There are also a few inferior but interesting versions of Millennium songs recorded by The Ballroom two years before Begin, and a brief sampling of the great Sagittarius.

Disc one serves as the home for The Ballroom's rejected LP. It's a not-bad collection of sunshine pop with a few slight hints of psychedelia. Think of it as a second rate Mamas and Papas. The first two tracks, "Spinning, Spinning, Spinning" and "Love's Fatal Way" are worthwhile am radio style pop, and there is an interesting version of "Would You Like To Go," which Sagittarius later re-recorded. Another Sagittarius track present here is "Musty Dusty" (in fact Sagittarius just used the Ballroom's recording), but this ultra-syrupy ode to childhood was by far my least favorite track on Sgaittarius' Present Tense, and it remains so here.

Just as a fun fact, the cover of this set (which is a slight variation of the Begin cover art) was designed by Arni Geller. Geller's other album art was for the similarly styled, but more colorful Friends by The Beach Boys.

If you haven't already heard it, I can give The Millennium's Begin my highest recommendation. The version here sports much better sound than the Columbia Records CD from the early 90's, but the first two discs here are far from essential. The LP is still occassionally in print (I bought a new copy on vinyl last month) and would be worth seeking out. Still, if you're willing to spend a few more bucks, there are some interesting tracks from the earlier project, and the set serves as a valuable musical history lesson.

Buy me:
The Millennium/The Ballroom- Magic Time