Psych / Prog

Far out, MAAHHHN!!!

Captain Foam – No Reason / Will There Ever Be a Time

This heavy little 45 comes from the great state of Ohio, I have to assume it dates from the early ’70s based on the sound and the lyrical content of the b-side.  All I know about Captain Foam is that the guy was billed as a one man band, I guess he played live with […]

Quincy Conserve – Epitaph

It seems that when you start out collecting records you are magically drawn to find specimens in your preferred genre which were created by local musicians. The problem you often encounter when collecting relatively niche genres is that the local examples you find will usually be pretty sub-standard compared with what you get from overseas. […]

Rasberry Jam 2/People – If We Only Have Love

Dollar bin find! Blank back cover & a stock front, the only other info besides band & title:“Produced by Sid Kleiner’s House Of Guitars, R.513, Califon NJ”. The People side consists entirely of covers: the Bee Gees (Words, To Love Somebody), Beatles (Birthday), Jefferson Airplane (White Rabbit), Monkees (Shades Of Grey), and The First Edition […]

Fuat Saka – Ayrilik Turkusu

With its use of delayed percussion, eastern scales and jazzy ney (flute), this folk pop album manages to create a nice psychedelic mood, despite the release date (1984). The 10 songs featured on it are very contemplative, sung with a dark brooding voice, but still there’s a drive to the music, not in the least […]

Lightdreams – Islands in Space

I was listening to this album hardcore at the same time I started reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer. They seemed to compliment each other well, each depicted a world in space so daring and different. Paul Marcano, the mind behind Lightdreams, dedicates the album to the colonization of space and this really sets the tone for […]

Jay Walker Effort – ‘Paper Dolls’ – Scott

Obscure acid rock stomper from Grand Rapids Michigan: fuzzy dual guitar shredding and psychedelic Leslie speaker vocals are backed by clattering drums & shaker action. An imaginative friend of mine once wrote that this group was likely “aiming for Cream, but ended up with something hipper, a band likely to appear on a 1968 bill […]

Blerta – Freedom St. Marys

Blerta was the brainchild of legendary New Zealand drummer, bandleader & actor Bruno Lawrence. He formed Blerta in 1971, with the name standing for “Bruno Lawrence Electric Revelation Travelling Apparition”. Blerta was held together as a band through to 1975 & it’s ever revolving membership included actors as well as musicians. It was conceived & […]

Carl Erdmann – Bizzarrophytes

The one-liner entry for Erdmann in Acid Archives is short but accurate: “Excellent later day hippie gets lost in eastern Acid Symphony trip. Instro guitars, sitar, kalimba, tabla, percussion, sax, even some flute.” EVEN! SOME! FLUTE! What we have is here a southwestern US getting his white man introspection on with sitar and guitar, espousing […]

Sweet Marie: 1

One of those bands that just really, really, really, really, really wanted to sound like Hendrix. Not that that’s a bad thing though, as there are more than a few highly enjoyable tracks on here. Take the grinding, fuzzy “Sweet Pea” for example. On the whole it’s somewhat over-exaggerated and hard to take completely seriously […]

Hugh Romney (Wavy Gravy)

Before transforming himself into performance artist, westcoast scenemaker, and hippie commune godfather Wavy Gravy, Hugh Romney hung around the beat scene on both coasts, and made some recordings. This poorly documented album, titled “Third Stream Humour”, dates from 1962 and is a live recording (at least partly) from a standup performance at the Renaissance in […]

Bojan Adamia – Maskerada

This is the soundtrack to the Slovanian film MaÅ¡kerada (Boitjan Hladnik). The film was made in 1971, but was banned and only shown years later in 1984, apparently due to the explicit sex scenes that it contains. Anyway, the tripped out psychedelic “song” Hippy on the A-side of the 45 is quite spectacular. It has a great funky garage beat, wild soaring […]

Tangerine – De l’autre cote de la foret…

Tangerine’s first album from 1972 is the full package. From the beautiful cover art to the long-haired pose on the back, you know you are getting something great. And they deliver. One of the few albums that I can say stood up to its cover. Well instrumented psychedelic folk with the tiniest hints of their […]

Los Grillos – Mi Destino Es Como El Viento

The sheer amount of non-(North) American records located in the greater Los Angeles area is mind boggling to say the least. One week I’ll come across a grip of Eastern European prog/folk records, the next week some Calypso 78s…just this past week I found a handful of Aboriginal field recordings and a stack of 20 […]

Selah: Consider These Words

Based on the cover I got up fairly high hopes for this one pretty much immediately as I flipped to it. Unfortunately these mid-west Christian hippies only really get it together on a couple tracks here… but those tracks are good if not a bit out of step with the rest of the album. For […]

Ray Harlowe & Gyp Fox: First Rays

You’ll probably read a fair number of reviews where a record is described as sounding “wasted”, but this one really truly does fit the bill. I’ve actually heard this referred to as a “blues rock” or “guitar rock” record which I don’t really get. I mean, it’s far too sloppy and demented to pin down […]

The Bag – Red Purple & Blue

The Bag were a late sixties blue-eyed soul band from the New York area that made one full length LP for Decca that incorporates enough touches of psych to get mildly sweated by people who collect that stuff. Needless to say the LP sank without a trace upon release. This song is the B-side of […]

Universe: S/T

One of the better random thrift shop finds of the year for me so far, and one of the best and weirdest Christian lp’s I’ve heard probably ever. Genuinely spaced out and progy in a crude and good way (especially for the late 70’s). Slightly reminiscent of Silver Apples at times, and pretty cosmic all […]

Don Bellezzo — Concert Hall Univ. of New Mexico 1972

So I suppose I purchased this sometime in some place but have no recollection of having done so. I found this in the files last year. Easy to miss as it’s merely a blank sleeve. This is a quietly strange record that was pressed up after Don Bellezzo’s concert at University of mexico in 1972. […]

Mill Run Band — Pilot Meets Stars

This album reminds me of the time in college when the whole crew and I gathered some 40s, some blunts and headed to Lizard’s Rock to watch the meteor shower. I believe a few of us even brought little hand drums. I was a bit too neurotic to not approach this whole ritual with a […]

Corvina: S/T

Yet another pretty mediocre Hungarian rock record for your viewing/listening pleasure. I couldn’t help but get excited when I found this cause the cover is so foreign and cool, but it’s mostly sorta jaunty lightweight pop with some flutey sheep-herder moves. There are a couple pretty cool tracks that rock a bit harder though so […]

GRAVELPIT: SnowGlobe – Rockadelic RRLP36, 1999

This record certainly affirms the boundless parameters of the Rockadelic Records label and it’s “open to all those worthy” release philosophy. The group GRAVELPIT were a very talented group whose single Rockadelic album release seems to project equally in lyric and song, an ample dealing of post damage recovery vibes. In short, victory despite it’s […]

Simple Image – Spinning Spinning Spinning

One of those frustrating LPs where the music can never live up to the awesome cover art. The Simple Image were a band from Wellington, New Zealand that formed in the mid 60s. This album is their debut from ’68 and the title track was a local number one single. There were a couple other […]

The Avengers – Electric Recording

The Avengers were a local New Zealand pop band of the late 60s. This was their first LP & was released in 1967. They came from Wellington & had the good fortune to hook up with US hippie hitch-hiker Chris Malcolm who went on to write over half of the songs on this record, playing […]

Euclid: Heavy Equipment 1970, Amsterdam (Flying Dutchman Subsidiary)

Euclid’s one and only album is among the very best of it’s type, which is most certainly Heavy Rock at it’s best. The musicians themselves were of an excellent caliber & very experienced, coming from a diverse New England Garage & Psych Rock background. Groups from which they haled prior included the noteworthy Psych tinged […]

Think – Variety

This album makes for great and somewhat sophisticated psychedelic nutrition for those hungry heavy heads with a predisposed preference for multi-colored musical edification. Don’t get the wrong idea though, this is NOT just some over rated, useless & busy cerebral background filler of an album. Neither is it one of those that has every possible […]