Showing posts with label The Nirvana Sitar and Strings Group. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Nirvana Sitar and Strings Group. Show all posts

31 May 2011

The Nirvana Sitar and Strings Group - 1968 - Sitar & Strings

Quality: 3 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 3.5 out of 5

I'm always up for a psychsploitation album early in the morning (oh crap! it's 11:30am), and this one can certainly fill in for the cheese missing from my eggs. Just as the title sort of suggests, we've got a bunch of late 60's hits with the melody lines played on a sitar while 101 Strings-style orchestrations lumber on in the background. You're either in for this ride or you're not.

There's not a whole lot to say about most of this album. These aren't going to replace the revered versions of "House of the Rising Sun" or "The Letter," but they'd make for a wonderful bit of ironic film soundtracking. They did throw the sitar player a bone, however, and let him run wild in the studio for a few original tracks. "Crashing," "Mind Waves," and "Head" all ditch the strings, throw in a few tabla, and give us sort of the Whisky A-Go-Go, L.A. Strip sort of Indian meditation. As you probably know, I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, and those tracks kick up my appreciation of this monstrosity a bit. They actually sort of, kind of match the very groovy cover art, which you can't really say for the rest of this album.

This is a sort of a 'for connoisseurs only' type of release. If you're on the fence about it, you'll find far groovier things hanging around in the Psychedelic Garage,' but I know a few of you are going to dig this (even if mostly ironically).