Electrick Sages -2017 - Substance of the Ceremony (video)

If you are reading this, you only have but three options:

#1 Stay F#^king asleep.

#2 Initiate yourself through years of disciplined meditation (we do not necessarily frown upon this option).

#3 Play this video and ride upon the bull with us, stampeding towards Valhallah.

Glaze of Cathexis - 2017 - Dreaming of Forgotten Stars Video

We created this video for you specifically for you. I don't always like the Youtube preview thumbnails, but I like this one. If you dig it, you will want to watch the video soundtracked by our own un-Crowley-ed fusion of Buddy Holly and Joy Division.

Rocket Man and the Dotards - 2017 - F#"king Up the Oldies

This is our political statement, y'all.

Yeah! Make America Great Again? 

Rocket Man and the Dotards are relocated Aussies and Yankees coming your way from the mountains of Japan to old-school rock and to F#"k the Power! 

F#"k the Power! 


Muddy Waters – Buddy Holly – Howlin’ Wolf – Eddie Cochrane – Little Richard – Chuck Berry 


You know all them. F#"k the Power! 


Donald Trump – Pepe the Frog – Kim Jong Un – Kim Jong Funn 


You know it! Yeah! F#"k the Power! 

Glaze of Cathexis - 2017 - Bohemian Groovers

This is the final Glaze of Cathexis album.  We will still be making music over here at the garage, but it sounds different now and we'll be putting that out under the Electrick Sages name.  Here's our press release and the links for this one.

GLAZE of CATHEXIS

...are  announcing  the  release  of  their  new  album,  Bohemian  Groovers.

Ueda / Tokyo - Japan.  Roving  Sage  Media  are  thrilled  to  be  releasing  the  latest  album  from  Glaze  of  Cathexis,  titled  Bohemian  Groovers.    

What you will hear is a pulsating strain of psychedelic rock, first incubated in the Kanto Plain of Japan in 2004; now reaching its final iteration here in 2017.  Visions were seen, channels were heard – the Creators have just made a quantum bounce into a different direction:  what you get is an aural photograph of a time and place unique to them.  Glaze of Cathexis are a duo embedded in the Land of Mu doing their sterling utmost to strike the right vibration of The Gong.  Dig the “Deep Forest Bells,” riding a Pixified Jesus and Mary Chain wave of mutilation cresting on Beach Boy melodies.  Dig the alternate dimension John Lennon pulse of “Pretend That We Begin.”  Or, maybe find yourself in an earphone-to-ear performance of, what seems to be Ian Curtis and the Crickets, in “Dreaming of Forgotten Stars.”  Reverberate along to “The Holy Mountain” while surfing the psychic jetstream of Alejandro Jodorowsky.  They’ve got that something special to resonate with and the psychedelic soul to drive it all home.  Beaming out to you the Bohemian Groovers.

Glaze of Cathexis are Matthew Comegys (Atlanta, USA) and Scott Atkinson (Brisbane, Australia), a collective who source and derive their creative inspiration and psycho-spiritual resonance from dwelling in Japan. 

And the EP that preceded the album if you missed it:

Glaze of Cathexis - Deep Forest Bells video

Here is a trip for you to take.  The final psychedelically rockin' Glaze of Cathexis album, "Bohemian Groovers," will soon be coming your way soon.  Have an aural hors'd'oeuvres with this video, the sound candy-coated with Beach Boy melodies and spiked with Jesus and Mary Chain vitrol.

Alan Watts - 1969 - The Flow of Zen

Alan Watts is always worth your time.  He might just enlighten you.  He is some Alan Watts to trip out to:

Glaze of Cathexis - 2017 - Deep Forest Bells EP

This psychedelically rockin' (and shoegazing) EP and video clip are here to herald the final Glaze of Cathexis LP coming in August.  Join us for one more run through the Glaze's soundworld of crackling fuzz guitars, unhinged drumming, and celestially trippy lyrics from their base in the mountains of Japan.  If you are groovy enough to dig our sounds, we're not closing shop - just changing gears to the Electrick Sages project.  That is what comes out of my current workflow and it sounds different than the Glaze.

Anyway, what you are getting here is one tune from the upcoming album, an alternate take of another tune from it, and several alternates of the past.  I think the alternates are all the first versions of the songs.  I like some of them quite well.  I rerecorded Lotus Pond for the front slot on an earlier EP and decided I wanted a more driving take.  'Cadmium Glow' ended up on 'The Amorphous Infinity' LP in a slower version because this electronic drum pulsing take just didn't make sense on that album.

Join us and you may find yourselves down with our trip.

David Bedford - 1972 - Nurses Song With Elephants

Quality:  out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 5 out of 5, I guess - but it's a bad trip

Wow.  I try to avoid getting too negative here at the Garage, but this doesn't do it for me.  I thought I'd dig it.  I can get into some of the avant garde and we've got Kevin Ayers and Mike Oldfield showing up here and there, but no, just no.  It's sort of like the Red Krayola's debut album.  That one is not an easy listen,  but it's a lysergic needle through the head and when that album does coalesce into something like a song, it's intensely groovy.  This one provides wisps of pointless noise, and when those do take the form of something, I'm still annoyed.  Is it my mood?  Give me a good argument that this is not pretentious twaddle and I will dive in for another listen.  Maybe I need to start with a different album?  Otherwise, let this enter history as the day that I first googled the poo emoji.

Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera - 1968 - Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera

Quality: 3.75 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4 out of 5

This one is definitely a funn one, although it runs very hot/cold on the spectrum of taste.  Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera (I'm not typing all of that out again) walks along the razor blade between psychedelic pop and early heavy metal.  The often fall off of it, but the do maintain their balance for some tunes as well.

So, the opening is like the open track of Sgt. Pepper's if that album had been made by Steppenwolf.  This is not a compliment. But the track that the, uh, singer is introducing is actually pretty top notch.  "Mother Writes" sort of falls backwards into punk rock too early in a charmingly Hawkwind-like manner.  It takes until "Flames" for the band to light the afterburners again.  Between that we get groovy psych tunes "Long Nights of Summer" and "Reflections of a Young Man," and several other tunes that don't really work so well.  "Air" falls into the bin if sitar tunes that don't work.  The hit rate stands solid through the rest of the album, with "Talk of the Devil" making the most impression with me.  There are a slew of bonus tracks which I assume are singles, cover tunes, and a few things that sound like they were recorded sometime after the band was actually a going concern (my intuitive assumption).  It's probably not essential for the 99% - as long as we allow that the 1% are all Elmer Gantry fans.  "Raga" is exactly what it says - what the band Can would later refer to as 'an ethnological forgery."  For some reason, "Eleanor Rigby" is now a heavy metal jam.  That's probably worth hearing at least once for kitsch value if nothing else.

This album only has half an ass, but there are a few inspired moments scattered about.  Again, "Mother Writes" will knock your bobby socks off.  If it hasn't already made it to a Nuggets collection, it should have.

The Floor - 1967 - 12 Floor

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

Once upon a time I wanted to name an indie rock band "The Red Curtains."  Y'know, in a Dukes of Stratosphere reference.  Me bandmates thought it was too non-descript, but here we've got Danish psyche-poppers "The Floor."  How deep does this rabbit-hole of strange blandness?  Do "The Socks" exist somewhere out there?  Anyway, back to "The Floor."  This is sort of a realtime Dukes of Stratosphere.  Whereas we have the members of XTC emulating the sounds of 1967 in the early 80's, The Floor did it right smack in the middle of 1967.  So, get ready to gulp down several spoonfuls of sugar on this one.

I guess "Turn It On" takes the groovy crown here.  But that's because it straight up grabs the Beatles' "Taxman" bassline.  Still, they've got the Jam's Paul Weller beat by a good baker's dozen of years on that one.  "Hey Mr. Flowermann"  comes across like flower power Spinal Tap, although I suppose the Floor aren't joking.  I mean. for the most part, everything here is gonna sound like something else.  The Moody Blues really have one straight on baroque pop album, so there is room in the universe for a tune like "Moonbeam."  The Floor does not get points for originality.  That is clear from their name.  The strength is in their execution - their is a steady hand on the tiller for production, songwriting, playing, and singing.

Apparently, this one sports a reissue from a few years back which includes early renditions of a couple of Dylan's Basement Tapes songs.  Those are probably worth your ear.  As for the album proper, it is you insulin injection of psychedelic pop for the day.  You hang around sites like this and that is probably what you need, yeah?

Initiation- An Audio/Visual Third Eye Meditation

I'm a happy feller.  But I've had issues with Internet connectivity and some potent issues on the homefront that have kept me away from the blog.  But I do have this for you.  It's something to watch and latch you mind to.  It's something to listen to and let it seep into your brain.  It's keyed in to have a direct conversation with your pineal gland.  Y'know, take a chance with us.



Anyhoo, I've got a clutch of groovy albums coming your way soon.  We do what we must.