Arzachel - Arzachel (1969)

An excellent album from this British progressive group recorded in 1969 by a band of mysterious pseudonyms. In fact, this was a formation of some of the biggest names in UK progressive rock including Simeon Sasparella & Njerogi Gategaka (aka Steve Hillage from Gong). The other 3 members Dave Stewart, Clive Brooks and Mont Campbell formed Egg. Originally released on Evolution this heavy, spacey keyboarddriven album is often compared to Pink Floyd's Saucer Full of Secrets. For fans of Egg, Gong, National Health and Caravan.

A classic late sixties heavy, bluesy, psychedelic guitar album. Full of fine guitaring, major organ work with some weirdness and sound effects. Originally released in 1969 on Evolution Records (mint copies now cost well over £200) and in very small quantities periodically since on various strange small labels.

You can certainly hear echoes of Steve's later work in Khan and even his first solo album 'Fish Rising'. Probably another fleeting chance to hear a vital piece of Steve's musical development.

The production has oft been remarked upon, for this psychedelic fuzz-fest, but to my ears, this simply makes it all the more compelling, and lends the music the correct "free-festival" atmosphere.

In actual fact, the main problem with the production seems to be the almost complete absence of compression, and omnipresent and over-worked reverb, leading to what might be considered excessive distortion. However, I have to say that I find it a veritable feast of fuzz and feedback, with a great range of dynamics and a very full sound for each instrument - a beautiful and powerful sound.

The self-titled album from the psychedelic pseudonyms is a surreal trip through a variety of musical styles that go beyond psychedelia and into the realms of Progressive Rock proper. The band get into some seriously good grooves, and seldom if ever make the kinds of mistakes and fluffs that plague many Krautrock albums of this time, and Hawkwind albums for decades to come.

I've seen many comparisons made to Pink Floyd, and I'd like to scotch most of those rumours here and now. The huge organ sound that Dave Stewart produces is far more akin to Deep Purple - or more accurately, The Nice, inspired, as it was, by Keith Emerson, and Hillage's guitar work, although not the polished leading light of space rock that he would become in Gong and his solo work, is utterly remarkable. Especially when you consider that he was 17 at the time. Come to that, not one of the musicians were in their twenties when they made this recording, so the professionalism of musicianship is extraordinary.

The closest this album comes to Pink Floyd is in the cosmic "wooey noises" that begin the 14-minute jam "Metempsychosis", a track that threatens to drop into "Interstellar Overdrive" at any moment - but instead remains an energetic variation on a theme, albeit with slightly uninspired moments that drift off into stoned noodle. These, fortunately, are way more than balanced with moments of pure drama and psychedelic power with some particularly stunning vocal and keyboard work. Think Hawkwind at their very best and you're close.

As has been remarked upon, this album was recorded in a single day - Hillage himself is alleged to have said it was just done "for a laugh" - and the fun certainly comes across. The plethora of pseudonyms that plague the personnel were largely for contractural reasons, which the artists got around by using the invented names - even the band name was a pseudonym.

I guess that those fond of categorising are going to say that this is more of a psychedelic jam or Space Rock album than a "proper" Prog Rock album, and they'd probably be right.

However, it's so much more together than the average psych album, and so much more than pure Space Rock, that I'm just going to have to say that you really ought to have this in your Prog collection as an indeal representative of where Prog was at in 1969 (ITCOTCK excepted, of course!).(Review by Certif1ed (Mark)

It's a bit of a masterpiece really.

Line-up
- Basil Dowling (Clive Brooks) / drums
- Njerogi Gategaka (Mont Campbell) / bass, vocals
- Sam Lee-Uff (Dave Stewart) / organ
- Simeon Sasparella (Steve Hillage) / guitar, vocals

01. Garden of Earthly Delights 2.45 (Arzachel)
02. Azathoth 4.21 (Arzachel)
03. Queen St. Gang 4.25 (K. Mansfield)
04. Leg 5.40 (Arzachel)
05. Clean Innocent Fun 10.23 (Arzachel)
06. Metempsychosis 16.38 (Arzachel)

From Chris Goes Rocks

Arzachel

Baby Grandmothers - S/T (1967-68)

Monster hardrock trio from Sweden. This cd release features this bands 1968 single and some overkill Heavypsych outtakes.
This band started of as T-Boones but when they started playing at Filips (a Stockholm Psychedelia club) their name was changed to Baby Grandmothers.
They basically did HEAVYPSYCH jams with Stack amps and Cream inspiration, but a helluva alot heavier.
A Finnish cult hippie dude M.A Numminen (Yes clown voice dude, if your a Finn ya know his songs) saw em play and was impressed. So he carted off the band to Finland to record a single "Being is more than life". This turned up later in a shorter version on Mecki Mark Men 1969 Lp "Running in the summernight" (there is also a way cool video for this song, with the band meditating in the forest in way cool hippie gear. A must see!)
This CD is a historic release. It's so rare that most US rarities are everyday stuff.
The music is wild, jaming HEAVYPSYCH that will rock all boats. Josefus and Stonegarden fans will feel home here with ease! Hear "Bergakungen" Mountain king That flattens most things outhere! More need not be said.

Kenny Håkansson (guitar)
Bella Fehrlin [Bengt Linnarsson] (bass)
Pelle Ekman (drums)

1 Somebody Keeps Calling My Name 9:14
2 Being Is More Than Life 5:40
3 Bergakungen 16:19
4 Being Is More Than Life 2 19:44
5 St George's Dragon 7:03
6 St George's Dragon 2 0:57
7 Raw Diamond 1:30

Rip from CD 256@ (artwork included)
From Orexis of Death

Baby Grandmothers

Alain Goraguer - La Planète Sauvage (1973)

In 2000, the European label DC Recordings reissued on CD the soundtrack from the cult sci-fi animated film La Planète Sauvage (released in English as The Fantastic Planet). The René Laloux film, which won a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973, was supported by a soundtrack by Alain Goraguer, mostly known for his work as Serge Gainsbourg's arranger. Goraguer's music consists of 25 short vignettes. Each is a contextualized adaptation of one of three main musical themes. The main theme is very reminiscent of Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother Suite" (same half-time tempo, mellotron, harpsichord, and wah-wah guitar), and the other two are a ballad and a circus-like waltz. The music is very '70s-clichéd and will appeal to fans of French and Italian '70s soundtrack stylings. Although repetitive, the album itself creates an interesting marijuana-induced sci-fi floating mood, blending psychedelia, jazz, and funk (the album has been sampled by a few hip-hop artists).

La Planète Sauvage
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La Planète Sauvage

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Terry Riley - In C (1964)

In C is an aleatoric musical piece composed by Terry Riley in 1964 for any number of people, although he suggests "a group of about 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work". As its title suggests, it is in the key of C. It is a response to the abstract academic serialist techniques used by composers in the mid-twentieth century and is often cited as the first minimalist composition.

The piece consists of 53 short, numbered musical phrases; each phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of times. Each musician has control over which phrase he or she plays: players are encouraged to play the phrases starting at different times, even if they are playing the same phrase. The performance directions state that the musical ensemble should try to stay within two to three phrases of each other. The phrases must be played in order, although some may be skipped. As detailed in some editions of the score, it is customary for one musician ("traditionally played by a beautiful girl," Riley notes) to play the note C (in octaves) in repeated eighth notes. This functions as a metronome and is referred to as "The Pulse".

In C has no set duration; performances can last as little as fifteen minutes or as long as several hours, although Riley indicates "performances normally average between 45 minutes and an hour and a half." The number of performers may also vary between any two performances. The original recording of the piece was created by 11 musicians (through overdubbing, several dozen instruments were utilized), while a performance in 2006 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall featured 124 musicians.

The piece begins on a C major chord (patterns one through seven) with a strong emphasis on the mediant E and the entrance of the note F which begins a series of slow progressions to other chords suggesting a few subtle and ambiguous changes of key, the last pattern being an alteration between Bb and G. Though the polyphonic interplay of the various patterns against each other and themselves at different rhythmic displacements is of primary interest, the piece may be considered heterophonic.



In C

Harvester - Hemat (1970)

International Harvester only played together for three years, the first under another name, but they were an influential group for Swedish progressive rock. While making sonic experiments and deep excursions into psychedelic rock, their biggest contribution was probably that they were the foundation on which the more famous group Träd, Gräs och Stenar was built. International Harvester started as the short-lived experimental group Pärsson Sound. The group formed in 1967 in Stockholm by guitarist Bo Anders Persson and included cello player Ericsson and violinist Yman, both with a musical education and playing on homemade electric instruments. Saxophonist Tidholm was a film student and a poet, drummer Gantz had played with the progressive dance orchestra Mecki Mark Men, and at times the band also included an extra drummer, Berger. Pärsson Sound was mainly an instrumental group and their music was not very accessible. At times they let a tape pass two tape recorders on stage, one recording and one playing, which meant the music returned, overdubbed and distorted in an increasing mass of tones and noise. They played a number of gigs at the club Filips, the main spot for progressive rock in Stockholm, and started to get more well-known after a festival in Kungsträdgården, where Don Cherry and Peps Persson also played. In 1968 they changed their name to International Harvester and abandoned the most extreme sonic experiments, instead putting the focus on folk music and psychedelic rock. Tidholm's vocals were allowed more space and in stressing the collective and improvising aspect, the band gave a hint of what would come with Träd, Gräs och Stenar a few years later. Living together in a collective, they made films and composed music, including the soundtrack for a few professional films. On Öjvind Fahlströms' Du Gamla du Fria, the band created and improvised all the music while the cameras were rolling. The debut album Sov Gott Rose-Marie was released in 1968 on Love, a Finish label, since there were no Swedish alternative labels around and no commercial labels were interested. But already in 1969 alternative labels had started to pop up, and with the name shortened to Harvester the band released their second album, Hemåt, on Decibel. Later that year, Tidholm and Yman left. Tidholm formed Hot Boys but was to become most well-known as a poet and a writer of plays and children's books. The remaining members formed Träd, Gräs och Stenar and toured Scandinavia intensely for a few years, taking the idea of interactivity one step further by involving the audience in the music making. With a climate increasingly receptive for psychedelic music Träd, Gräs och Stenar were more successful than International Harvester, but otherwise they had much in common, building on elements of psychedelic rock, blues-rock, and folk music. ~ Lars Lovén, All Music Guide


The lone album by this post-International Harvester group, originally issued in 1970, once again led by the academic tape-composer turned radical folkie psychedelicist Bo Anders Persson. Accompanied by an able body of co-conspirators including Thomas Gartz (drummer/glue of the Mecki Mark Men, whose LPs on the Limelight label are not to be missed), Torbjφrn Abelli, and let's not forget Ulla on small cymbals. Thunder-plod of magnificent tidal proportions, recalling the burnt splendor of the Träd, Gräs och Stenar Live Gardet 1970 set -- TGOS in fact were nothing more than a stripped down quartet version of Harvester! Another piece to the incestuous little jigsaw that was the 1967-1972 Swedish druggist music school dropout sector. Completely burnt, devoid of restraint, massive (some of the best sounding drums this side of Zeppelin, to boot). Blown through and through and through.

Hemat

Pärson Sound - Pärson Sound (1967-68)

This is a completely astounding collection of dark shimmering drones and super heavy tranced out minimal psych-rock recorded in 1967 and '68. At times freaky and chaotic, but most often hypnotically locked into stoned grooves, this is some of the best heavy psych we've ever heard. Their shifting instrumentation (the list includes guitar, bass, drums, organ, double-bass, electric-cello, flute, cowbell, saxophone, hand drums, acoustic guitar, tape recorder, and...seance? huh?) is employed in both intricate and extended studio recordings and totally primal and euphoric live performances over the course of these two discs. Parson Sound crafted music that, while reminiscient of the Taj Mahal Travellers, Terry Riley, Flower Travelling Band and the like, is almost wholly their own. - Aquarius Records



01. Intro
02. Tio Minuter
03. From Tunis To India In Fullmoon (On Testosterone)
04. India (Slight Return)
05. A Glimpse Inside The Glyptotec-66
06. One Quiet Afternoon (In The Kings Garden)
07. Sov Gott Rose-Marie
08. Skrubba
09. Milano
10. On How To Live
11. Blåslåte

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Kemado Launches New Vinyl Label Mexican Summer

September's the month we in the Northern Hemisphere grudgingly show summer to the door, but beginning September 2, the folks at Kemado Records will usher in summer year 'round.

The label is in the process of firing up a new vinyl/digital-only offshoot called Mexican Summer (hey, just like the Marissa Nadler song!). The imprint will focus on small-batch, hand-numbered releases on wax, each coupled with a download of all constituent jams. There will even be a record club-style subscription service, though those details appear to be forthcoming.

So what's in store for this Mexican Summer? First up is "Sätt Att Se", a previously mentioned 12" from Dungen limited to 1,000 copies and due September 2. The same day will also see the releases of Nachtmystium's "Worldfall" (1,000 copies) and Headdress' "Turquoise" album (500 copies).

Other fun stuff in queue: a reissue of Marissa Nadler's Ballads of Living and Dying (1,000) with a bonus unreleased 7", and a bonus 7"-bolstered edition of the Tallest Man on Earth's Shallow Grave on vinyl (1,000), both due November 11. After that, we can look forward to a Black Moth Super Rainbow picture disc (1,000), a double LP from Charles Manson associate Bobby Beausoleil & the Orkustra (1,000), and a 12" from Valet.