Warning - 1983 - Electric Eyes

Quality: 3.5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4 out of 5

Here's an album that will give you nightmares. It's a distinctly early 80's synth pop affair, so it doesn't really fit into our regular 'psychedelic' heading, but it will certainly twirl a few of your brain cells. I've never been to a German bondage club, but I would expect that this album would make a fine soundtrack for that setting. Along with the icy-yet-still-very-analog synths, we get a vocalist who sounds like he really wanted to be in a death metal band, but was kicked out for sounding too much like a satanic Cookie Monster. There's also an occasional disturbing female vocalist chiming in.

The first two tracks on here pretty much give you a feel for the best of the album. "White Camels" is certainly a fun one with an introduction to our demented Cookie Monster vocalist, especially when the song's chorus attempts to brighten up the tone a bit but with no change in the growling vocals. "Dark Crystal" pummels the beat along nicely too and we get a taste of the really creepy female vocals. She comes out sounding sort of like Charlotte Gainsbourg in "Lemon Incest," which is a whole new can of worms in and of itself (the video of that song show pre-teen Charlotte in bed with her daddy Serge). "Journey to the Other Side" and "Night Crossing" start off with cool dark ambient sections in their first halves before devolving into crappy Euro-pop tracks.

Yeah, when all is said and done, this is a pretty disturbing album. It earns points for some sterling synth pop, proto-industrial sounds, and scary Cookie Monster vocals, but I don't think I'd really get caught listening to it too much. I'd call it a guilty pleasure, but it's too freakish for me to apply the word 'pleasure.' Delve in if you dare.

As a side note, this is the second album by Warning. The first one is supposedly just as insane, but features some large slabs of distorted guitar that are mostly absent on Electric Eyes.

Mark Fry - 1972 - Dreaming With Alice

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

Mark Fry seems to have been a man slightly unstuck in time. He cooked up one of the better acid folk, Donovan-influenced LPs of 1968. Unfortunately. this album came out in 1972. I'm sure that at the time in seemed like Fry was guilty of a anachronistic sin to the general home listener who had Tarkus blasting on the hi-fi. But with all of these decades now in the distant path, we can focus simply on the fact that this is a very groovy album. The Donovan comparison is certainly apt - one version of this album boasted a straight rip of the Barabajagal as cover art. Nevertheless, Mark Fry stakes his own ground with a darker, more tranced-out folk sound. There are actually plenty of moments where Fry matches or even surpasses the sounds of the Scottish bard.

"The Witch" comes out of the gate, instantly pegging this as an album to pay attention to. It does a fine job of evoking a creepy, misty forest at dusk, with the sound of pagan drums primitively pounding away somewhere in the background. "Song For Wilde" is a nice, compact bit of acid folk, while "Roses for Columbus" comes across almost like a Pink Floyd demo for More. "Mandolin Man" actually manages to work itself into a full-fledged psychedelic rave-up before settling into a groove for the coda. The title track is pretty fine, but it is annoyingly chopped up into pieces and used as segues between the longer tracks. I also imagine that Fry must have been hard up for one more track as the closer is just an earlier track backwards.

This is one album where the production, or lack of, really works well to create an atmosphere. Many of the songs here don't seem very far past demo-quality, but they are still slathered with warm, fuzzy reverb to give things a hazy sound.

Hey, a lot of the indie kids are going for this sound here in 2010, an Mark Fry nails the freak folk aesthetic pretty much on the head. Feel free to cross-reference these sounds with those of Donovan and/or the Incredible String Band - they hold up pretty well. The only shame here is that Mark Fry didn't manage to continue on and record more music.

The Music Asylum - 1970 - Commit Thyself

Quality: 3.5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 3.75 out of 5

What we have here is an album that nicely straddles the crossroads between psychedelic rock, jazz and prog rock. Many of the longtime readers here may know that I'm pretty skeptical of the general 'prog' vibe, and the wankier side of that genre does rear its head here. If you are a prog head, you will likely enjoy this more than I do. Still, there are several stand-out tracks hanging out on this album, and it's a reasonable diverse sounding affair.

You'll basically find three kinds of tracks here: the lengthy, prog-influenced epics; some shorter single-ready tracks; and several oddball, brief instrumental throw-aways. I'm most attracted the the poppier stuff on this one. "Star Dreams (Nebulous)" is a fine piece of sunshine pop, of course featuring harmony vocals along with some nice West Coast style guitar and bass parts that occasionally veer into Frank Zappa territory. Near the end of the album we find "Million Dollar Bash," which channels in a touch of freakish garage rock into the fold. The long form tracks don't completely hold my attention, but those with an affinity for the jazzier side of prog will dig them. I would tag "In My World" as the best of that bunch as it sort of resembles a sunshine pop prog epic, if that makes any sense.

I don't think I'm quite in the key target group for the Music Asylum. There is a good amount of quality music present here (the short and annoying "Tube Along With Me" excepting), with crisp and clean production helping out considerably. I would have liked for them to explore the sunshine pop vibe a little more, but I'm sure plenty of you out there will find much to appreciate with the proggier approach. As much as I hate to say it, there are more than a few moments here that make me think of the "Jazz Oddysey" from the Spinal Tap movie when they're playing at the zoo in the wake of their lead guitarist quitting.

Condello - 1968 - Phase One

Quality: 3.75 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 3.75 out of 5

Ah, Condello (be you the vocalist/guitarist Mike Condello or the Arizona band in general). Why start your album with an out-of-tune clunker of a track when there are plenty of fine sounds to hear? Oh, well. There's a healthy dose of contemporaneous San Francisco rock lurking about here, especially with Grateful Dead-like harmonies (or go with the Band if you can't deal with Deadheads). These psychedelic popsters were definitely cranking the White Album repeatedly as well, as a few of the better tracks come across like something George Harrison would have plopped down on tape during that period. As my opening comment implies, the album sequencing here is a mess, but a bit of trawling will bring out a few gems.

Condello isn't a particularly groundbreaking band, but they manage some pretty groovy facsimilies and change up their influences just enough to keep it from being a rip off. Still, I think I've got their number for what they were reaching for. Of the better tracks, "Oh, No" and "Dr. Tarr Professor Feather" tend to resemble the aforementioned Harrison tracks, complete with warbling guitars and vocals phased into eternity. "Charming Sitter" and "See What Tomorrow Brings" straddles the fence between the psychedelic Byrds and the country-rock Byrds nicely. "Keep It Inside" and "He'll Keep Waiting" feature Workingman's Dead sort of harmonies, although this is two years before that Dead album, so score one for Condello. "It Don't Matter" makes me think of something the Small Faces would have done for Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, while "Guess I Better Go" could have passed off pretty easily as something Curt Boettcher would have produced.

I feel like I'm being a little lazy when my reviews include this many direct comparisons to other artsts, but Phase One is truthfully a somewhat derivative affair. Fortunately, the band made up for a lack of originality with a few really great songs. You may not need this entire album, but you will likely find three or four songs that you can't live without.

Michael Stearns - 1980 - Planetary Unfolding

Quality: 3.75 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.25 out of 5

Michael Stearns earned his stripes as an electronic pioneer, although I've always associated his name with the soundtrack to the film "Chronos." This album was made entirely with the Serge synthesizer, a modular beast of a machine whose interface consists of a series of metal pads rather than a keyboard. Stearns uses the washes and bleeps of the synth to try and create the most cosmic sounds possible, although he sometimes teeters a little closer to new age music than I'm comfortable with. Regardless, you're sure to find sounds here to invoke the call of interstellar space.

Typically, I like to give a bit of a track rundown, but there really is not much variation with this album. Every track consists of huge synth pads with little modular flourishes here and there. Your job as the listener is to appreciate the way that the different patterns and tone interact. The only variation of note is that "Something's Moving" start with some percolating sounds similar to fellow synth user Morton Subotnick. I suppose that "Wherever Two or More Are Gathered" picks up a little steam in the early 80's Tangerine Dream sense of the word, too. On a side note, I'm sure that more than one planetarium uses this disc to fill up aural space before the show.

There's plenty to appreciate on Planetary Unfolding, but I wouldn't quite rate it as top shelf material. If you're a synthesizer geek, this is a must hear simply for the not-often-heard Serge. But for those that really want to reprogram their brains through ambient sound, I will first direct to the recordings of Gas or Coil.

Spacecraft - 1978 - Paradoxe

Quality: 4.25 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.75 out of 5

I've spent the past few months brainwashing myself with this album on a pretty regular basis. This guitar/synth duo hails from France, but I'd say they're pretty well in cahoots with your krautrock superstars. There's plenty of early Tangerine Dream synthetic iciness and Manuel Gottsching-style guitar insanity lurking in these tracks. They also seem enamoured with the drum machines of the era, which is pretty fun in a retro future way.

This album really slides on through as a single entity of trippiness, but if you break it down, there are basically two kinds of tracks. "Lumiere de Lune" and "Ananda" are distinguished by huge stoic walls of ambient analog synth; I'd say the quietr parts of Tangerine Dream's probably serve as a good reference point. "Pays de Glace," which I understand is a modern day bonus track recorded a few years after the rest of the album, is somehow both more ambient and threatening. Think of Tangerine Dream's Zeit sped up an imbued with the chiming qualities of the Om album you'll find in this blog if you hunt around. The other tracks fall in the category of "Logan's Run-on-crack." Here the primitive drum machines are everpresent and the guitar breaks out of the box. Basically, this is what something like the Moog Cookbook is aiming for, although the novelty value is replaced by sonic schizophrenia.

I'd say this album deserves a fair sight more attention. It compares pretty favorably with something like an early Popol Vuh album, and definitely earned its Trip-O-Meter rating. This is a fine collection to explore the thin rings of Neptune with. It would also work well to subtly scare everyone home if you played this in Tomorrowland around closing time.

Thundertree - 1970 - Thundertree

Quality: 3.75 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 3.75 out of 5

Thundertree does a pretty fine job performing a balancing act among several different styles. Their actual playing is firmly rooted in garage band aesthetics, but the use this to explore the then-burgeoning hard rock genre (think Steppenwolf specifically), psychedelic pop, and prog, especially on the 16 minute closing track. Even on the lesser tracks, they tend to shift gears into groovy trippiness. While this is not a great album, there are some fine moments that deserve your attention.

Things don't start well with "Head Embers," which unfortunately manages to spew out the "What I Like About You" riff several years before its creation. It's not Thundertree's fault, but it still annoys me. The hazy coda is still worthwhile, though. Fortunately "At the Top of the Stairs" is an awesome psychedelic pop song somehow getting Syd Barrett, Steppenwolf, and a groovy breakbeat all in one track and capping it of with some insane sound effects. "Summertime Children" also rates well as a ballad in the psychedelic pop sweepstakes. The other shorter tracks on side one acquit themselves well, although they don't stand out quite as much in my mind.

Side two throws us into a prog fantasyland with "1225 (in 6 parts)." I would probably equate Thundertree's brand of prog with Van Der Graff Generator. These guys don't have the instrumental prowess of your better-known proggers, so they focus on providing power. Truthfully, the 'six parts' would have done just as well as separate songs, but that means there is plenty of stylistic change. I doubt the accapella and glockenspiel section would have made the cut as its own track, not that I really needed it on the album anyway. I suppose that they may have been aiming for a side two of "Abbey Road" sort of thing, but there's no McCartney among this bunch.

There are some joys to be found on Thundertree's album (for me tracks two, three, and some bits and pieces of side two). Those of you with an ear for the transition between acid rock and heavy metal will dig this a little more than others, provided you can deal with some psychedelic pop as well. If it helps, I'd say that the cover art is a pretty perfect fit for this collection.

Buy Me:
Thundertree - 1970 - Thundertree

Dr. Schluss' Best of 2009

Sorry for the long absence from posting. It may be a day late and a dollar short, but here are my top ten albums of 2009. There were certainly some tripped out albums appearing this year, with many bands looking to the dark side of psych and sporting a tripped-out buzz. As I did last year, I stuck a few of my own tracks on (Damaged Tape and Glaze of Cathexis) at the end of this compilation, although I wouldn't have the presumption to actually consider them the best of the year. Anyway, here goes the list:

10. Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms: This promising debut sounds like a tape of top forty radio circa 1986 that has been left out in the sun on a summer's day far too long. Although it is annoyingly short, the key tracks are some of the best warped pop songs that reared their musical heads in 2009.

9. Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years: After a few albums that left me lukewarm, this psychedelic welsh institution managed to deliver another winner. Although "Crazy Naked Girls" is a poor opening track which pays tribute to Grand Funk Railroad for some reason, "Cardiff in the Sun" may be my favorite track this year and "The Very Best of Neil Diamond" will not gt out of my head.

8. Sonic Youth - The Eternal: The band was finally reunited with their long-lost guitars (apparently they were stolen more than 10 years ago) and managed an album that is practically a guide to their musical DNA. If I had to get super specific, I'd say the basic flow of this album is a "Goo" sound with "Dirty" songwriting. The band may be comprised of folks around 50 years old, but their playing is still very youthful.

7. Prefuse 73 - Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian: The ultimate short attention span record. Prefuse 73 continues to make compelling sound sculptures with lots of samples and wild electronic sound. Compared with previous Prefuse 73 albums, there isn't as much hip-hop stuff present, but I think the current paradigm is better for zoning out.

6. Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship: Tortoise continues to stand out at the vanguard of the 'post-rock' heap, whatever that means. Although the album eventually evens out into some enjoyable and quintessential Tortoise jazzy grooves, the album is at its best with the innovative first half where the band finds new ways to electronically mangle their music.

5. Thee Oh Sees - Help!: Fun, scrappy, sort of lo-fi Nuggets style rock. The playing and the songwriting are both spirited enough to put this one a cut above the rest of the garage rock heap.



4. Oneida - Rated O: Practically unclassifiable triple album opus. I sort of feel like this is a modern sort of 'Tago Mago' by Can. There's a disc of experimental insanity, a more conventional indie rock one and the middle, and a fine drone-rock album closing out the set. This is one of those records that you can move into for a few weeks.

3. Atlas Sound - Logos: Bradford Cox continues to hit them out of the park both with Deerhunter and with this solo project. The psychedelic grooves of his dreamlike work tend to grab hold of your brain and not let go.


2. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion: The folk/psych gurus released their best LP this year and managed to accrue all the acclaim they deserve (and probably a little more). Panda Bear's vocals continue to be a perfect channeling of 1966 Brian Wilson and Avey Tare's singing is far smoother than usual. These fine vocal would be nothing, however, without the awesome soundscapes and hypnotic songwriting that these guys have worked up to perfection on this disc.

1. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic: Just when everyone had pretty much written off the Flaming Lips to 'dad' band status, they show up with their most out there album of the past twenty years. This is mostly dark, trance-inducing psych that brings in some of the best of both kraut-rock and fusion-era Miles Davis. Not everything here is great, but like the best double albums, it's always interesting. For some extra fun, download their cover of the entire Dark Side of the Moon (also released last year), where they manage to top pretty much every song from the original. Granted, I've probably heard the original 762 too many times due to radio overplaying the damn thing.

Listen to Me:
Dr. Schluss' Best of 2009

A Quick Update

Holidays and moving out of my apartment all at once! Although I might get inspired and make a December post, chances are that I won't be back until January.

Alan Watts - 1967 - The Sound of Hinduism

Quality: 4.5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.75 out of 5

On this album, spiritual scholar Alan Watts' limits his focus on Eastern religions to the sphere on Hinduism. To be perfectly honest, there's not a whole lot of music of note here. Basically the album features a drone in the right channel, Watts' spoken word in the left, and some percussion taking up the entire sound field here and there. I'm not sure how accurate or not Watts' thoughts about Hinduism are (I'm assuming that he is not full of poo), but these recordings are perfect to put your mind in a meditational state.

The first track, "Om," consists of Watts' treatise on the basic tenants of Hinduism. The man definitely has a fine way with words, and I'd say the artistic/poetic component here is several notches higher than your typical spoken word performance. "Readings From Hindu Scriptures" is pretty self-explanatory, but once again Watts' spoken word stands out. Sandwiched in between is an instrumental track where we get a touch of sitar melody. It's not up to the standards of Ravi Shankar or anything, but it serves its purpose in allowing the listener to zone out.

I suppose that this is one of those albums that I feel becomes more than the sum of its parts. There is some nice, if a bit light, Indian instrumentation for those of you that dig that, and I feel that Watts' presence is of significant note. It's a fine way to turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream with.

Alan Watts - 1962 - Is This It

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

Alan Watts was a British proponent of Eastern religions, and not so much of a musician. He nevertheless managed to release a few albums of tripped out instrumentals and spoken word to try and increase awareness of Eastern traditions. This one is a pretty abstract affair of throat singing, chants, drones, and percussion. Only with Watts spaced out spoken words does the music peak out of the transcendental aether. Like some of Sun Ra's work from the early 60's, this music is true psychedelia years before popular music began to explore similar avenues. Unfortunately, some of this album also shares the questionable recording quality of some of Sun Ra's recordings. Still, it's perfectly listenable and a fine soundtrack for your backroom opium den.

The best place to start with this album is probably with the shorter tracks featuring spoken word. "Onion Chant" and "Fingernail Poem" both feature Watts' Eastern-tinged poetry. The former matches Watts with some percussion and fierce chanting while the latter includes some abstract jazz piano playing. Once you've acclimatized, take a plunge into the long-form freak-outs of the last three tracks. I've got a soft spot for "Metamatic Ritual," but the creepy laughing in "Umdagumsubudu" and speaking in tongues in "The End" is worth hearing if you're up for wild chanting. The end of "The End" kind of frightens me.

Although this music doesn't really fit into the realm of rock, the sounds are about as psychedelic as you're going to find. The crazed percussion definitely makes me thing of some of the stuff that Sun Ra was doing around the same time, but the manic chants, Eastern instrumentation, and Watts' poetry help to distinguish this as a wholly unique album.

Buy Me:
Alan Watts - 1962 - Is This It

Damaged Tape - 2009/2006 - The Erotic Couch/Cannibal Sisters Soundtrack

I occasionally do soundtracks for independent films makers, most often for my childhood friend Andrew Shearer who writes, directs, and produces films under the Gonzoriffic Films label. These two are probably the ones that I put the most work into (as opposed to Andrew simply using tracks from my albums). I'll write a bit about them separately.

"The Erotic Couch" is Andrew's most recent directoral effort. The idea was to model it after a sexploitation movie from the late 60's. There is no actual nipple footage in the film, distinguishing it from p*rn, but it is of course a sexy affair. Andrew's instructions for me were to make some pre-disco exploitation music. That said, "The Ravishing Recliner" and "The Lecherous Love Seat" have some serious dub leanings, and "The F**kin' Chair" and "Chair F**k" are based off of "Call of the Cosmic Tribe" from the Glaze of Cathexis disc, "The Golden Konbanwa" (although "Chair F**k" no longer contains any of the original track). I'll also note that "The Lecherous Love Seat" is a 'work-in-progress' preview of an upcoming Damaged Tape LP. You'll notice that I've added Moog noise to all of the tracks to approximate a crackly vinyl sound. This was done to match the intentional film defects of the movie itself.

"Cannibal Sisters" is loosely based on a criminal case in Atlanta from about 15 years ago. Since the movie is mostly based in an urban setting (er..., apartment), I tried to contrast it with as many tribal sorts of rhythms as I could. "Boneyard," which also appears on Damaged Tape's "Ship of Lights," was recorded earlier and served as my basic template for the soundtrack along with 70's Italian horror soundtracks (any Goblin fans out there?). I paid close attention to the drum programming, and I felt like the production of this soundtrack significantly improved my drum programming abilities.

To delve deeper into the world of Gonzoriffic, head on over to http://www.gonzoriffic.com. I'm sure Andrew has some DVDs he can set you up with. Check out "Psychovixens" for a glimpse of my own terrible acting as Oscar (the soundtrack for that one is on Damaged Tape's "Electric Ocean"). As a side note, I don't rate my own music, but most of this is probably not very high on the Trip-O-Meter. I think I back off on the psychedelia a bit when soundtracking films.

Listen to Me:
Damaged Tape - 2009/2006 - The Erotic Couch/Cannibal Sisters Soundtrackhttp://www.mediafire.com/?r0xn1vhfykg312p

Damaged Tape - 2005 - Futara

This music dates back to my first stint in Japan. You could see the back of the Futara Shrine in the city of Utsunomiya from my apartment, hence the name of this collection. This music was recorded from January to May 2005, which is the same period of time that I recorded the Glaze of Cathexis "Tokyo Rainbow Bridge" tracks. Although I was still at the beginning of the learning curve of laptop recording, and I only had a MicroKorg and Reason to work with, I'm still pretty happy with these tracks. For a while I had considered rerecording "Jakarta" and "The Flower of Darkness," but I doubt I'll get to that anytime soon, so the originals are here. You'll note that "Before the Flood" has a sample of Neville Chamberlain ranting about public heath. Being that I recorded it in 2005, this track is not meant as any commentary on the U.S. health care debate - I used the sample as it seemed absurd that this was Chamberlain's priority in 1939 as the Nazis were about to provoke World War II. "Chonk" and "Kung Fu Glue" reflect my bad habit of making up stupid file names so I can save my mixes, and then never renaming them (I also have songs like "Nork" and "Floob" hanging out on my hard drive). Musically, the band Air was certainly still at the forefront of my influences, as were Moby's more ambient tracks from the 1990's. I consider 'side two' of the album to have some sort of concept, although you'll have to work that one out on your own (although I did read Simon Winchester's book about Krakatoa while making the album). Enjoy and feel free to repost elsewhere.

Track List:
1. The Flower of Darkness
2. March to the Moon
3. Temple of Zoul
4. Titan
5. Kung Fu Glue
6. Chonk
7. Martian Cowboy
8. Before the Flood
9. Jakarta
10. Nightmare
11. Volcano Ballroom
12. A Meeting of Minds
13. Last Night

Listen to Me:
Damaged Tape - 2005 - Futara

Kim Fowley - 1967 - Love is Alive and Well

Quality: 3.5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 3.75 out of 5

I've sometimes heard Kim Fowley referred to as a psychedelic huckster, grasping at straws to churn out freakish records of bubblegum psych. This record will do nothing to dissuade that viewpoint, but I kind of like it anyway. There is a distinct cheezy charm as Fowley never quite hits the vocal mark even though he seems to be trying really hard, and the production pretty much throws out every psychedelic pop cliche that it can. It's very much a sell-out of its era, though, and this entertains me at least.

There is admittedly not a whole lot of originality here, but there is plenty of a fabricated Summer of Love sound. "Flower City" is an almost cringeworthy re-appropriation of "Ode to Joy," but it does feature a groovy beat and a short rave-up. "This Planet Love" manages to rip off "Who Do You Love?,' complete with a rabid Bo Diddley beat, and "Reincarnation" nicks the "Pushin' Too Hard" beat, which the Seeds themselves admittedly reused themselves about 57 times. "Super Flower" is a completely useless 'interview' section. You'd think that on a 21 minute album they would be able to avoid that sort of track. My favorite here is "War Game," which is a completely insane bit of orchestrated spoken word which would fit nicely on a 60's Zappa album. I will say that "See How the Other Half Love" is a fine psych-pop rocker that doesn't seem to have a specific antecedent (not that it brings anything particularly new to the table).

This isn't a good album, but it has a lot of charm. It's sort of like listening to a distorted, demented version of 1967 pop radio. If you aren't already familiar with cult stars like the Chocolate Watchband or the aforementioned Seeds, by all means explore that first. This odd Kim Fowley album is really just a little sugar for the already initiated. Half the fun is figuring out all of the things he's sonically stealing from elsewhere.

Dennis Olivieri - 1968 - Come to the Party

Quality: 3.75 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 3.5 out of 5


It certainly is an odd party that Dennis Olivieri has invited us to. There are components of bad trip lyrics, jazz rock, blue eyed soul, and a touch of psych rock wafting around the grooves of this record. Olivieri's voice does tend to be somewhat warbling, but he keeps it under control just enough that it usually works in a 4am bar sort of way. This doesn't always add up to musical nirvana, but there are a few winners lurking about as well as a couple tunes that will leave your jaw hanging bemusedly.

The first couple tracks serve up some jazz rockers that chug along nicely. Although "Opportunity" has a jaunty, jazzy beat, Olivieri seems to be going on about something significantly more depressing. After a few minimalist tracks like "Mama's Funeral Song" and "Walk Rite Out," "I Cry in the Morning" gives us an eerie psych ballad. It's tremeloed organ is enticing, although the production does seem oddly muffled in this one. Olivieri seems to be trying to channel Astral Weeks period Van Morrison as much as he can on "Lady Fair" and the title track, while he comes across as drunker-than-hell on the closing "Yesterday Wan Nuthin' Like Today." I guess it's supposed to close the album in a similar manner to the Stones "Something Happened to Me Yesterday" on Between the Buttons, but Mr. Olivieri doesn't really have that level of songwriting chops.

This isn't the most wacked out thing that we've come across at the Psychedelic Garage, but there are a few oddball moments to be found. Dennis Olivieri's disc can be quite amusing should you have an affinity for jazz-rock and don't mind a few copied Van Morrison moves. That said, you won't quite get the psychedelic freak out by way of Kenneth Anger that the cover suggests.