Paul Haslinger - 1998 - Planetary Traveler

Quality: 3.25 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 3.75 out of 5

I don't know, I guess this is where the Berlins school road of electronics comes to a dead end.  Paul Haslinger is an alumni of Tangerine Dream, and the results do peek out on this soundtrack album.  There's just enough of the old school and shades of engroovied darkness to catch my attention, but there's a lot of digital new wave and orchestral blunderbust gumming up the works as well.  Still, Haslinger is keeping it more real than the Dream themselves have since something like 1986.  Maybe this all works better if you're hearing it while gazing at 90's CGI on a massive Imax screen over at the local science center.  You pick up the high chrome-based cassette tape in the gift store and it sound noticiably worse in the tape deck (sorry, I'm dating my analogy).  Unfortunately for the travelers, it seems that this was actually one of those gift store VHS 'trip' videos, but it looks like I was spot on about the Playstation 1 quality CGI.

The shorter tracks fair the best and will more likely appeal to the psychonauts out there.  "Lhodwi (frozen Chaos)" and "Dilgan (Burning Life)" are reasonable sound paintings in miniature, while the closing "The Remains of Time" fairs well with a few extra minutes.  I guess "Entropy" is like the new-jack funk that they play in discotheque.  There are a few tracks that make me want to instantly de-rez the digital orchestral. Tracks like "Traces of Infinity,"  "E'iah" pounds you over the head with that damned 'orchestra hit' sound.  It may very well be a real orchestra, but it's still that damned 'orchestra hit' sound.  "Dharmok (Bridging the Gap)" suffers from a touch of that as well, but the other 80% of the track is gliding ambient soundscapes.

I'm not quite sure why I'm reviewing this to be honest.  It's right at the tail end of that period when every musician with some cash in their pocket was going as new and as digital as possible, and just before folks figured out that the analog stuff actually sounded a lot better (I believe Moog Cookbook was just starting to make that point on an indie label in 1998).  I probably just have science center nostalgia.  We have this in Atlanta:

Fernbank Science Center

And I've been trying to take my daughter to the science dome recently, but circumstance keeps getting in my way:

Saku Children's Science Dome for the Future

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

Tony Scott - 1968 - Music for Yoga Meditation and Other Joys

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

Tony Scott was a bop artists throughout the 1950's but he seemed to have lost the plot by the mid-60's. Fortunately, he did so in the best way possible, and stumbled into the sounds of the sitar after a 1964 flirtation with traditional Japanese musicians.  Unlike many of the sitar laden albums of the late 60's, and in spite of the cover art, there is nothing particularly exploitative about this date.  What we get is a great, likely improvised fusion of prime Indian drones and jazz flute skipping a path along more exotic scales.

Featuring only sitar and flute, the general timbre of the tracks are quite similar.  As the cover states, this is meditative music.  Both instrumentalists are masters, however, and the melodic variations speak of a lively duet of gurus on the wild mountainside.  A tabla would have been nice in a spot or two, but these tunes are of a strict duet nature.  I don't know if there's much use going through individual tracks.  I've been listening to this for years straight through and have never really brought my magnifying glass to the proceedings.  All of this flows downstream as a whole.

This album is a fascinating and enjoyable early example of the world's music seeping through Stateside. Tony Scott was a few steps ahead of the game.  This is more Indian than jazz, but Scott's fine flute playing brings just a touch of a midnight, rain-
swept Chicago alley to the proceedings and managed an album that is quite wonderful.

Ton Vlasman - 1970 - White Room With Desintigrating Walls

Quality: 3.25 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 3.75 out of 5

I've never quite been at peace with the acid folk/freak folk scene.  On the surface, it seems right up my alley - the idea of uber-trippy lyrics and warm acoustic instrumentation warped through recording sounds fantastic.  The execution, however, doesn't always do it for me.  I still need to be spoon fed the Incredible String Band, which is a key influence for this Dutch fellow.  Ton Vlasman's sort of a farm team player for the pastoral hippies, however. His voice echoes Dylan and the aforementioned ISB, but he lacks the control that those musical A-listers brought to their otherwise idiosyncratic vocals.  The instrumentation is pretty minimal, but Vlasman knows his way around a ramshackle acoustic a few of the embellishments ended up getting my attention.  Still, if you're a aficionado of the acid folk scene, you'll find a few things to groove into on this LP.

I'm all for the music journey, and the epic-length "Flight With a Circular Course" takes us on a weird minimal journey through the stratosphere of the ancient gods.  The tracks is based around picked acoustic patterns, which flip backwards for a few segments, and is augmented by the occasional strange delay and some single organ lines beaming in from Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets."  "Mithrandir the White Horse Rider" opts to journey through the Welsh countryside of the Britons instead with a bellowing flute to keep the guitar company.  There are some relections of Robbie Basho, whim I covered last month, although Vlasman can't touch his level of folk guitar genius.  "To Sell," "It's Alright With Me," and "Story of Too Many Prisoners" come off like second-rate Dylan, although I guess that's still better than the hordes of third- or fourth-rate or worse pretenders to the throne that even today proliferate the music scene.  Meanwhile, "Walking in a Country Lane" and "The End" have more to do with the ISB and "Pale Blue Eyes" is not a Velvet Underground cover.

There are a few sparks of inspiration, especially in the longer tracks, but for the most part Ton Vlasman was simply up for a pleasant freak folk journey down already trailblazed roads.  If you're already attuned to this kind of music, this deserves your ear.  The rest of you may as well flip a coin over it.

Ariel Kalma - 1977 - Osmose

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

Keeping up with the mystics, we have one Ariel Kalma, who has provided a blend of 70's analog electronics, environmental sounds, and, uh, saxophone on this LP.  It's sort of like Vangelis getting lost deep in the Amazonian rainforest 35 years ago.  Maybe the Greek one did at some point as this album is a touch reminiscent of Vangelis' "Soil Festivities" from the early 80's.  Anyway, the tones range from nice and calming droplets of water, to "Oh, Sweet Vishnu! There is a saxophone shaped spider going for my carotid artery!"  Yeah, on paper the sax sounds like a bad idea, but Kalma provides the sound of this instrument in strange squiggles which works well.

Those woodwind-laden tunes are clearly delineated by the two tracks starting with the word "Saxo."  They're not the best ones here, though.  We hear massive cathedrals of vine growth with "Message 18.10.77" and the closing "Orguitar Soir."  "Planet Air" and "Manege" sound like they're being influenced by Boards of Canada twenty years two early, but with a stronger flow of gliding 70's space prog synth.  Things go monkey industrial on "Gongmo."  I guess the song title pretty much spells that out if you're looking for it. Meanwhile, "Osmose Chant" returns your astral form to the core of the upper Peruvian-Amazon ayahuasca ceremony as the shaman birdman chants you through the rooms of the soul.

Y'know, synthesizers were dang expensive in the 1970's, but that's when they sounded the grooviest!  As a result, it can be a little tricky to unearth electronic treasures outside of folks like Vangelis, Jarre, or the krautrockers.  Still, sometimes stuff like Iasos comse spewing out of the aether, and Ariel Kalma definitely deserves a seat at the round table of the high priests of electronic, ambient sound.

Explore Osmose here:
Ariel Kalma - 1977 - Osmose

Robbie Basho - 1966 - The Grail and the Lotus

Quality: 4.5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.25 out of 5

A few months ago, we visited some 'contemporary' guitar (circa 1967), and I lamented the difficulty of tracking down recordings by fingerpicking wizard Robbie Basho.  Well, I finally hit the payload and found 1966's "The Grail and the Lotus" to be one of his golden nuggets of sound.  Sporting some fantastic mid 60's mystical pop art on the cover,  the disc features only his guitar for the entire album (except for a short spot of whistling on the final track).  Granted, we're talking the mainline of transportative, transcendental guitar.  Later on, the man would add touches such as piano and some vocals here and there, but let's just say that his guitar playing stands out as his superlative talent.

I hope that you'll buy into Basho's sound, but you either will or you won't.  Basho's not aiming for stylistic diversity, but rather the sound of the mystical minstrel passing through your muddy, Black Plague-ridden town square.  It seems that he has a 12-string guitar in place of a lute, but the man has traveled.  Perhaps he set off on a latter day crusade, forever changed by his experiences signified by the title track.  He'll re-appropriate the sounds of the Indian courts on "The Dharma Prince" while amplifying the echoes of China he caught on the silk road with "Chung Mei."

This is music simple in execution, endlessly complex in the guitar stylings, and exploring the limits of infinity.  Basho's a prime case for the misunderstood genius.  His music never has and will probably never end up on a commercial radio station, and it's too intentionally ragged and weird for the BGM or new age crowd.  I imagine you're here for psychedelic adventures in music, though, and this presents that aesthetic it one of its most raw and pure forms.

The Striped Bananas - 2013 - Lady Sunshine

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

"Lady Sunshine" is a fun reconstruction of the pop-psych sounds blossoming out of L.A. in the late 60's.  It's not quite all the way there, but the songwriting and arrangements are pretty much spot-on.  The other elements come enviously close as well.  The production is crisp and clear - maybe even a touch too clear.  A little more tube-blasted, echoey warmth would have made this sound completely authentic.  The vocals, as well, are quite good with some girl/boy minor key harmonizing, but lack the full-on West Coast bombast and confidence that we often hear on the real thing.  Actually, in a lot of ways, this disc feels a lot like the Essex Green's early recordings.  It's ninety percent of the way to 60's sunshine bliss, with a few pit stops in the land of contemporary indie rock.

The group's at its best when in slathers in some sleazy garage rock grit into their wide-eyed sound.  This vibes in mostly on "Black Velvet" and the Electric Prunes influenced "Mistress of Existence."  The title track, "Dark Piece" and "Oasis of Time" do the best job of achieving the sound of Peter Fonda tripping through the hallucinated, medieval forest of the mind in, uh, "the Trip."  I should also note that there is a bass note in the title track that makes me think my phone is vibrating every time I hear it.

This is a rather shortish album as well, clocking in under thirty minutes.  I guess that is a perfectly reasonable period touch, along with the absolutely fantastic stained-glass drawing cover art.  The Striped Bananas clearly have no interest in living in the musical present, and for the most part they have constructed a valid time machine of sound.  Again, I would wholeheartedly recommend this platter to those who have grooved to the tunes of the Essex Green.

Listen over heyah:
The Striped Bananas - 2013 - Lady Sunshine

Bird People - 2013 - Water Buffalo

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

I think I've said it before, but there is a razor thin edge between transcendental synth drone music and treacly new age vapidness.  There is some great value in successfully approaching the line without actually crossing it.  Subterranean manages it,  Jorge Reyes and Steve Roach have a pretty good run of it, and Iasos batted about .500.  We'll add Bird People to the list with this release.  Yeah, you've got meditative flutes of the highland bouncing around, but it's nicely balanced by some growling drones and wide open plains of meditative sound.

There are only three line pieces here, and they are nice and varied journeys to walk your mind through the universe beyond the veil.  "Lord Yama" would work well as Ming the Merciless' court music on one of his average days, with Indian approximated sound competing with writhing synth tones and some guitar tones that Brian May might spew out while tripping in the observatory.  Are we all getting these references? - the 1980 "Flash Gordon" film? - Queen soundtrack? - Brian May is also an astrophysicist?  I don't want to be condescending, I'm just making sure that I'm not writing completely up me own arse.  Then "Oya's Dance" sort of borrows a bit of Sun Ra's 1963 delayed percussion tones and throws it over the new age crystal pyramid for a fun recast.  Things then melt away with "Lao Tsu On Han Gu Pass" throws out any sense of melody for pure atmosphere as any waves of thought drift away into mists of the Chinese highlands.

I'm a sucker for these long sound odysseys into the aether and this is one of the best I've come across this year.  I can't say I know anything about the Chinese variety of bird people that these folks seem to be going for, but I read a groovy book about the Peruvian variety a few years back, so I'm keeping that in mind while listening.  It was sort of a travelogue where the writer delved deeper and deeper into the Peruvian Amazon on a search for ayahuasca shamen who were disconnected from the civilized world.  Here's a link for that one:  Trail of Feathers

Oh, yes.  And the music.  That's here:
Bird People - 2013 - Water Buffalo

Howdy Pardners

Be back soon.  I sprained my hand in a bicycle accident after a rainshower, so I haven't felt much like typing recently.  It's almost healed, though, and I have a few choice albums queued up for your listening pleasure.

Glaze of Cathexis - 2013 - Prophecies of the All-Seeing Sage

Riding on the waves of shoegazing guitar, mid-60's jangle, and an electric rock n' roll shock to the brain comes the newest Glaze of Cathexis album.  With this new set of original music from the Garage, we're continuing the metaphysical Journey to the Center that we started mapped out on the two EPs released in the previous few months.  Some folks on the mind while recording include the Bloody Valentines, Sonic Youth, Can, Marc Bolan, raga, and of course a healthy dose of the psychedelic Beatles.  I put a special focus on the guitar tones for this one and I hope they make fuzzy fireworks of warm electricity in your mind.   Psychedelic rocking in the astral garage.  I'd love for you to pass around this music and share.

Scott had this to say:

Beyond the rolling canyons of soaring, rippling water,

on The Beach of Volcanoes foam shines, bejeweled 

as dewy tiaras of rainforest princesses. Meanwhile, in

in the ever-now and forever-more, bright tawny sand 

sighs and squeaks under the cosmos-questing shamen,

breathing in and out whole worlds; with benevolent 

twinkles in their mind`s third eye, on their eternal pilgrimage 

for the illusion-penetrating, ever-engroovied boon to all beings

You can have your listen and download over here at Bandcamp:

Glaze of Cathexis - 2013 - Prophecies of the All-Seeing Sage

Give another listen to the lead up EPs over at these links:

Glaze of Cathexis - 2013 - A Lotus Pond in Winter EP

Glaze of Cathexis - 2013 - Journey to the Center EP

Damaged Tape - 2007 - Entoptic Visions

I must admit that I've been completely focused on rocking out on my Glaze of Cathexis recordings so far this year - I haven't delved into the electronic world of Damaged Tape for months now (but I feel it's coming on).  I didn't really get around to compiling my recordings into albums until late 2007, so a fair number of tracks ended up getting shoved straight under the rug.  These are eight of the better ones that began showing up after 2005's 'Futara' (2005) on through to outtakes from the 'Stone God' (2007).  It a different, and more digital approach than the one I take these days, but there's a shimmering psychedelic glare that still comes through nicely.  At this point, I was still going completely maverick with my music and everything you see and hear on this release can be traced back to myself.  Fortunately, I can still groove to the sounds I created here, and I hope that you will as well.  I still dig the compressed electro-pop vibe I was aiming for on "Olympus Mons" and "Slaarg" as well as the duality of more epic tracks like "Building the New Machine" and "(Re)Creation." My only real regret is that I didn't have the vacumn tubes to toss the sounds through at the time (you'll see the 2006-2007 recording setup in the in
sert photo).  I've even come to piece with my strange 'Duran Duran' moments in "Entoptic."  Have a gander at these tracks and download them over at Bandcamp:

Damaged Tape - 2007 - Entoptic Visions

EUS, Postdrome, and Saaad - 2012 - Sustained Layers

Quality: 4.25 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.5 out of 5

This is some dark, dark atmospheric ambient music, coming straight from the black, bug room.  Maybe that last bit requires a touch of explanation from a former comic book geek:

Ok, moving on.  While we're dealing with nightmare colours in sound, "Sustain Layers" still makes for strangely compelling listening.  I tend to veer away from dark industrial tones and such, but the synthetic mixture here is more like a musical Bosch or something - once you start looking into the details it becomes both stranger and more fascinating.  Ethereal vocals waft over the drone darkness, bringing in a touch of light, although it may admittedly be the light of the angel of death or something.

This is another one of those releases where songs don't really matter for the most part.  It's best taken in as a continuous work.  That said, the sounds start at their midnight bleakest.  I mean, the second track is entitled "3PM," but maybe there was a solar eclipse or something in this world of sound.  As we move on through, the drones become less claustrophobic and more expansive, although still of a post-twilight hue.  Once we've made it to "3AM," it's the sound of old school General Zod as he watches the judgement dome slowly open followed by the sensation of being blasted across the snowblown planes of dying Krypton in his Phantom Zone prison.  I swear I haven't been reading comic books over the past ten years, but I did try and fail to make it through "Green Lantern" with Ryan Reynolds.  Where were we?  "Dawn" is an unnecessary, but fair enough coda.  After being pelted by 40 minutes of black ice, this international collaboration (Costa Rica, UK, France) brings in a guest vocalist to do a Slowdive-on-downers sort of thing.  Not that there's even anything wrong with trying to sound like Slowdive.

Put your brain in the blackened freezer with "Sustained Layers."  A love of drones is essential, though.  I always love a well-matched album cover, and this fantastic photo is a pretty solid indications of the sounds you'll find inside.  Listen in download here:

EUS, Postdrome, and Saaad - 2012 - Sustained Layers

Glaze of Cathexis - 2013 - Journey to the Center EP

Some more original rock n' roll from the Psychedelic Garage.  'Journey to the Center' is the first track being released from the upcoming LP, "Prophecies of the All-Seeing Sage." We were trying to tie together the sludge of early Black Sabbath, the exploration of Can, and a bit of glam-era Bowie pomp into a compact metaphysical musical journey. The other three tunes will remain unique to this EP. 'Things May Change' and 'New Horizons' are tracks I wrote quite some time ago. The former aims to pass a mid-60's British jangle through a modern lens, while the latter wallows in bone-bashing, juke-joint scummery. I hope you dig the journey and will stick around for the full-length, which should be dropping in July.

Listen and download on Bandcamp:

Glaze of Cathexis - 2013 - Journey to the Center EP

A Few Rumblings From Around the Web

Hey, I do appreciate the music that some of you send to my email account.  I really can't answer everything I get, but I do give most of it the one minute listening test that we'd do at my college radio station.  Here's a few of the ones that have grabbed my attention recently:


Kikagaku Moko - 2013 - Kikagaku Moko

Quality: 4.25 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.5 out of 5

A lot of Japanese pop and rock There is a societal pressure to fit into the mold as cleanly as possible and it makes for uninspiring music.  Conversely, those who follow their own zen path can end up further out there then we do it the West.  We hear it in some of the wild noise rock of the Japanese underground, and it has resulted in some prime psychedelic rock, especially in the 70's.  Kikagaku Moko has grabbed the tail of that latter tradition, and had their way with it.  They produce the full on psychedelic rock of something like the Flowers Travellin' Band on tracks like "Zo No Senaka" and "Dawn," while infusing the sounds with the rambling noise trip of more modern acts like Acid Mothers Temple.  They chill out nicely as well, with the lazy, hazy blues jamming of "Tree Smoke," and the ambient cavern of "Lazy Stoned Monk."  Also it seems that they have a full-time sitar player, so that's cool.

Listen Here:
http://geometricpatterns.bandcamp.com/


Sounds Around - 2013 - The Visible Spectrum

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

They told me that this is a concept album cataloging a journey through the chakra system.  The journey is probably a touch too long for me, but the highlights are well-worth your while.  Opening epic "The Witness" is absolutely wonderful, charting a shamanistic tapestry of sound that's not dissimilar from mystic sound designers like Steve Roach or Jorge Reyes.  The final four tracks return to this aesthetic.  "Second Sight" nods to the narcotic cushion of shoegazers such as Slowdive as well.  Put them together and you've got a 40+ minute album that I'd easily throw a 4.5 out of 5 rating towards.  The middle of the album has some grooviness abound with some nice guitar licks here and there and some fun lounge-like sounds (as well as the occasional screaming sitar!), but it suffers from some thin drum sounds and may have benefited from some more editing.  Maybe I'm just not attuned to my middle chakras or something.  That said, I'm sure plenty of people would throw similar complaints at my Damaged Tape project and you will find an exceptional album here if you program your player right.

Listen Here:
http://soundsaround.bandcamp.com/

Oh my!  And with that it's time for the Doctor to head for that job where they actually pay me money.  We'll do this again soon.

Various Artists - 1967 - Contemporary Guitar - Spring '67

Quality: 4 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: anywhere from about 3 to 4.5 out of 5

There was that time in the early to mid 60's when legitimate folk guitarists starting dropping acid and trying to play their 12-acoustics like sitars.  I'm pretty sure that that's how we got the Incredible String Band, at least by the time of their second album.  Back on the other side of the pond there were some minimalist guitar master wielding sheets of Appalachia and eastern tradition together.  They beat the beat bands and American rockers to the psychedelic punch, even if the sounds weren't quite as widescreen technicolour as the rock scene would later produce.  I've heard names like Robbie Bassho and John Fahey bouncing around for years, but I'd never felt smart enough to get around to them.  These recording are scratchy as hell, but it just helps to create the weird world beyond the rural veil of the American countryside.

Most of the tunes on this compilation are 6 or 12-string, acoustic explorations.  Everything here is pretty solid, although my attention keeps shifting to the two Max Ochs "Raga" tracks, which fulfills its title nicely while still sounding like it's coming off of a back porch in Arkansas, and  "The Thousand Incarnations of the Rose" by Robbie Basho, which is the sound of a guitar being programmed and processed by an ancient, analog computer in the celestial temple.  The precise and mathematical picking patterns on "The John Fahey Sampler" are notable as well.  Meanwhile, Bukka White shows up with a drummer and an electric guitar to show the youngin's how raw, gut bucket blues is done, and there's occasionally a touch cropping up on the ultra-obscure Henry Taussig tracks to change up the game a bit.

This isn't the easiest music to delve into, in part because of its eclecticism and in part because it's so difficult to track down the recordings (just try going on a Robbie Basho search).  Fortunately, this is a good place to start and is a nice reflection of the mid 60's attempts to capture the transcendental in the folk underground.