The Onion Factory

Dr Brown - Another World (1993)

2009-06-06T09:44:00.005+01:00

Yet again, someone has written stuff so that I don't have to and can sit back and have my harem fluff my toes. Thank you Chris Williams and Adrift in the Ether:

Rat's style of guitar playing was hardly less skilful than Dave Shah's and was certainly more psychedelic. Consequently, ‘Another Realm’ was by far the most psychedelic (and best) Dr. Brown release with much less emphasis on the blues than on previous records - only two tracks were in such a style: ‘Daydreaming’ and ‘Girl She Never Knew’, both of which feature Dave Shah on guitar. Dave can also be heard on ‘Across The Border’ and the extremely weird ‘Palindrome’, much of which is recorded backwards. Both Dave and Rat are on the spacey reggae piece ‘Lucky Jack’. The most overtly psychedelic pieces feature Rat exclusively. ‘Social Disease’ is an energetic protest piece with some blistering guitar soloing and even better fret work can be heard on the ‘Mind's Eye’. The stand out piece is the title track ‘Another Realm’, which sets spacey guitar playing against powerful percussion before the bass kicks in, matching the guitar riff; this heralds in ten minutes of some of the most expansive music around.

It's that old 128K magic evaluation rate

Crystalized Movements - Mind Disaster (1983)

2009-06-06T08:55:00.003+01:00

Now, this time I'm grepping from Wikipedia!

Crystalized Movements were a psychedelic rock/punk/folk band with a sporadic recording and performance schedule from 1980-1993. The Movements were formed by Wayne Rogers and Ed Boyden, two Tolland, CT High School freshmen brought together by a love of late 70's No Wave music and 60's psychedelia. After years of improvisational experimentation, they decided to make an LP in 1983. They recorded duo versions of some of Wayne's songs, and then split up upon graduating high school. Rogers, a longtime fan of the Plastic Cloud and Randy Holden, spent a summer piling on mountains of guitar overdubs. The resulting 'basement prog' album 'Mind Disaster' was released at the end of that year in an edition of 130 (on Rogers' own record label, as Twisted Village #1001). After being discovered by record collectors, the album was reissued on Psycho in the UK in 1984. It was received by the 'paisley revival' community with horror and quickly went out of print. Rogers put a full band together in 1985 before recording the next album: 'Dog. Tree. Satellite Seers...', a scathing rebuke to faux-lysergic posers. The addition of second guitarist Eric Arn encouraged Rogers to focus on song structure: the two engage in guitar duels over chord progressions that press forward relentlessly. Guitarist Kate Biggar joined in 1988 upon Arn's departure (to southern Califirnia where he formed Primordial Undermind), cementing the band's final lineup on the next album 'This Wideness Comes'. Here, guitar experiments like "Third Half" appear next to tightly arranged tracks like the forbidding "The Second a Siren". Rogers' vocals impart a sense of anxiety that cements the mood. The album 'Revelations From Pandemonium' proved to be Crystalized Movements' finale,as well as the group's most successful intermingling of druggy rapture and postmodern sonic experimentation. The album established the Rogers/Biggar guitar tandem as a force to be reckoned with. Following the demise of the Movements, the Rogers/Biggar duo have continued on in critically acclaimed groups such as Magic Hour (with Damon and Naomi of Galaxie 500) and the Major Stars.

An inconsistent VBR!

Brast Burn - Debon (1974)

2009-06-06T07:20:00.003+01:00

Shamelessly copied from Julian Cope's Japrocksampler.com (hey, I bought the book so I do have *some* scruples):

Konimara – vocals
Masabuni - synthesizer
Rey Ohara - percussion, hand drums

This virtually unknown free chant’n’ritual ensemble made one brilliant LP DEBON for Voice Records in 1974, before disappearing back whence they came. Often compared to Faust, they actually come across more like some Cajun inbreds at a cannibal sacrifice, the chanting exhibiting an apocalyptic bluesy quality somewhat akin to Exuma the Obeah Man, or Captain Beefheart circa STRICTLY PERSONAL and MIRROR MAN. Hand drums, sleigh bells, tambourines, blues harp, and many many vocals go into the sonic stew that makes the sound of Brast Burn.

Julian Cope

Evaluation friendly 192Kbs

Acid Jam 2 (2000)

2009-06-06T00:04:00.007+01:00

From Pop Matters' review:

Before Acid Jam 2 there was, predictably enough, the original Acid Jam. In 1988, Nick Saloman, the one-man epicenter of latter-day British psychedelia (co-boss of Woronzow Records, publisher of The Ptolemaic Terrascope and brains behind The Bevis Frond) herded a hand-picked bunch of collaborators into a converted pigsty near London's Heathrow Airport. After a two-day recording session, Acid Jam was born.

Now, 12 years later, a sequel has finally arrived in the shape of this double CD set. Following a similar modus operandi, Saloman and Bevis Frond cohort (and former Hawklord) Ade Shaw convened a gathering of the extended Woronzow clan in Gold Dust Studios, Bromley. Additionally, contributions were solicited from some old friends and the Woronzow archives were combed for any other material appropriate for inclusion.

The dramatis personae of Acid Jam 2 reads like a who's who of British psychedelia and to trace the musical pedigrees, histories and myriad intersections of the participants would be a gargantuan task best left to rock genealogists of the Pete Frame variety. Suffice it to say that alumni of Hawkwind, Camel, High Tide, and Magic Muscle, as well as members of The Alchemysts, The Lucky Bishops, and the Outskirts of Infinity are among the cast assembled for this album. Even Nick Saloman's daughter sings on one number.

This is an acid rock extravaganza comprising 14 diverse tracks -- equally divided between instrumental and vocal numbers -- with a total running time of nearly two-and-a-half hours. Although the spirit and sound of this recording harken back to another period entirely, at the same time, Saloman and friends -- by some paradoxical sleight of hand -- have created an album that somehow feels wholly contemporary and is completely free of faddish, superficial retro-ism.

The album opens on an epic note as Nick Saloman leads us through the long and winding, moody ax-grind of "Reformation Blues", sharing guitar duties with former Frondsman Bari Watts. Other tracks featuring Saloman's vocals that are particularly strong include "Change in the Weather" and "Just a Point". The former is punctuated by changes in tempo and suffused with guitar pyrotechnics and swelling Hammond organ, while the latter has the weary, melancholy timbre of Saloman's vocals underscored by beautifully pained guitar solos.

The mournful tone of "Just a Point" resonates on the instrumental "Funeral Ballet Music". This is exactly the dirge-like number that the title would lead you to expect; its relentlessly pounding drums (courtesy of Outskirts of Infinity's Ric Gunther), its spiraling, distorted guitars and its doomy keyboards suggest a gloriously beefed-up version of the Cure at their best. The pace picks up and the sound changes considerably on the 16-minute "Deep Space Divers", a sci-flying, synth-twittering track in the Hawkwind tradition that has Bari Watts on guitar again alongside dueling vocalists Saloman and Shaw.

Rustic Rod Goodway of '70s festival faves Magic Muscle steps up to the microphone for another of Acid Jam 2's epics, "Ice Plug". This chugging track might bear a passing resemblance to early Motorhead's "Lost Johnny", but the overall effect is one of an accomplished faux orientalism to rival Zeppelin's "Kashmir". This is thanks, largely, to the violin provided by another ex-Hawkwind member, Simon House (also formerly of High Tide, the legendary British prog/psychedelic could-have-beens).

Another High Tide member, Tony Hill, takes the floor with Ade Shaw and ex-Camel drummer Andy Ward for a couple of guitar workouts entitled, logically enough, "High" and "Tide". And, for the glorious 15-minute jam that is "Negative Blooty", it's the turn of Dorset's Lucky Bishops. Everyone has their say on this number, but its strengths reside in the thick bass of Alan Strawbridge, the heavy, lush Hammond of Tom Hughes and some well-placed xylophone by another Hammond named Grenville.

While the most idiosyncratic interlude on Acid Jam 2 is perhaps "Deef", which sounds not unlike a meeting between Can and Captain Beefheart at their most unhinged and scattered, the low point comes on "Desert Sands" (recorded live at Terrastock III in London). OK, that requires some qualification. It's only the first 10 minutes or so of "Desert Sands" that are dubious, as Rustic Rod's vocals and the endless "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" type of bass line become a tad turgid. After that ill-advised overture, the guitars of Paul Simmons and Saloman kick in, and things pick up and space out into some serious grooves for the remaining twenty minutes.

The jam ends on a high note with the short and sweet "Star Map". Here Bari Watts' solitary guitar soars to the accompaniment of Saloman's simple piano melody, the two conspiring to evoke the valedictory emotions appropriate to a closing track.

When I return to the foundational recordings of acid rock, it's often the case that they never quite live up to my memory of the genre. It seems that my imagined version is constructed out of isolated moments of timeless brilliance within a given track, whereas I conveniently suppress the weaker elements that would now confine the overall sound to the '60s as an historical curiosity. But while, from the perspective of the early 21st century, classic psychedelic rock is often disappointing to me, the present CD gives us an idea of what the form might have sounded like, or perhaps even did sound like, to those who were listening to it the first time around. On Acid Jam 2, in a creatively -- and quite brilliantly -- anachronistic way, Saloman and his troops fashion their music from the more sublime leitmotifs of psychedelia, bringing to life an imagined version of the genre, 30-plus years later.

At an evaluation-tastic 128Kb