Apologies for the fact that it has been a wee while since I last posted. Just got back from my cousin’s Bat Mitzfah in Rotterdam which, I’ll tell you now, beats an Irish Wedding any day.
This album is psychedelic, which, as I now realize, several of my previously reviewed records have been too. I’ve grown quite fond of psychedelia in the last few years. This I think has developed from my initial love of Arkestra-style spaced out jazz, after which it became my mission to seek out the biggest aural trip around.
Now, I don’t want to get preachy as I fully understand that this genre goes hand in hand with a particular drug culture (and in the past I’ve conducted a few of my own ‘experiments’ shall we say) but I honestly think that the really good psychedelic music can make you lose your shit just the same but without the need for chemical assistance— ‘Sleeping Beauty’ by Sun Ra is one such piece of music.
So how does this record grade on the psychedelic scale? Well, it starts promisingly, sounding like a mixture of jazz reworks, trip-hop, psych-folk, early electronic music and sci-fi television theme tunes.
But (and this is something that really grates me too) as the album progresses it struggles to keep the listeners attention, so that what started out like a magic mushroom barbecue, burning with a multicoloured, phosphorous flame, soon fizzles out as if it has been promptly pissed upon. A shame really.
Rated three peeled humans.
-toby ginsberg
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