[Ed. note – This review is being posted after the reivew of the most recent Re-Stoned album Plasma. CLICK HERE to read that review]

The Re-Stoned are a three piece band from Moscow. This looks to be their third full length title as their earlier releases are Return To The Reptiles EP (2009), Revealed Gravitation (2010) and Vermel (2011). But after hearing Analog I now realize that I should put those CD’s on my want list. Re-Stoned is usually described as ’70’s-like psychedelia. The band generally focuses on free-flowing improvisations that much of the time include some much-welcomed lengthy jams. The CD opener, Northern Lights, may be a bit repetitive,but still good [don’t get me wrong], as the ten-minute title track Analog sort of has a Hawkwind-like vibe to it, especially during the first half of the song. Then I noticed it got bluesy thereafter and I also got something good out of Put The Sound Down Or Get The Hell Out. The only way this CD could be better is if these tunes had some vocals, even occasional ones. At first, I wasn’t aware that Analog was an all-instrumental disc. Feedback is indeed a very ’70’s like cut, with some truly great guitar riffs, as Music For Jimmy would likely be a good song to hear while you’re on the road and the fourteen-minute epic Dream Of Vodyanoy serves the listener(s) with a healthy dose of psych effects and wah-wah guitar intact.

Personnel: Ilya Lipkin – guitar, Vladmir Nikulin – bass and Vladmir Muchnov (Lord Of Doubts, Ark Of Passage) – drums. Analog was notably mastered by Alisa Coral (who heads up Space Mirrors and Psi Corps). Rather than second guessing, I contacted the band myself and they told me that their influences were Jimi Hendrix (it shows, no doubt), Black Sabbath, Miles Davis, Led Zeppelin, Blue Cheer and Frank Zappa. The Re-Stoned describes themselves as classic rock / psychedelic. Recommended for fans of Fu Manchu, Nebula, Mastodon, Kyuss, Colour Haze and possibly The Sword or Valient Thorr.

For more information visit The R.A.I.G. label web site at: http://www.raig.ru
Visit The Re-Stoned Myspace page at: http://www.myspace.com/restoned

Reviewed by Mike Reed

The Legendary Pink Dots are an esoteric underground communal Beatnik collective phenomena and a band I avidly collect and listen to often for the past 15 years, ever since discovering them at a gig in Oslo, a review which can be found in the old index on the old Aural Innovations page, spring 1998 issue. Please CLICK HERE to check it out before reading this review.

Most of my favorite material of theirs was produced between 1980 and 1998, despite lineups and sounds that changed drastically during those eras, the band adopting sounds ranging from electronic underground pop-goth (Brighter Now, Curse) to sprawling progressive concept LP’s in the 80’s (The Tower, Asylum) to full blown spacerock in the 90’s (The Maria Dimension, Hallway Of The Gods, From Here You’ll Watch The World Go By). Since the band’s humble beginnings with the 1980 Chemical Playschool 1+2 cassette releases being early favorites, found collected on The Legendary Pink Box; Ancient Daze and Stained Glass Soma Fountains compilations, like much of the later Chemical Playschool releases like 3+4 and 8+9 as well, having been blown away by them live the 3 times I have seen them play Oslo, in 1998, 2009 and 2011, they never disappoint with a live show, and very rarely with an album release. On Chemical Playschool 15 the linup is unchanged from the latest album, with core members Edward Ka-Spel and The Silverman who founded the LPD’s together with some wonderfully artistic psychedelic post-punk musicians in 1980, and in 2013, recruits Erik Drost, and Raymond Steeg are present as well. For those who are curious if it is the same Mr. Steeg that worked with Hawkwind between Distant Horizons and Canterbury Fayre” albums, yes it is the “missing link” between two of my favorite musical ensembles, the very same Raymond Steeg we have seen credited in Hawkwind CD’s as sound man.

The problem the post-Millenium lineups of the LPD’s is that they get too abstract and non-musical, creating “noise” music or “drone” music, if one likes those descriptives. A few odd albums here and there are still “rock” or “kraut” or “psychedelic” and at least contain “songs”, like the latest studio album proper, Seconds Late For The Brighton Line a few years ago which I have both on CD and on double LP. But alot of LPD’s output elsewhere, most notably Edward Ka-Spel’s post-Millenial solo material, is abstract loop and electronic experimentation, like on this 15th Chemical Playschool edition. The series set out to capture the closest to the Dots’ creative collective / communal “playschool” approach to churn out as much obscurantic material as they are capable of as they live and breathe as a creative entity, with a band that has a sprawling miasma of mythology and internal cross references over the years, be it The China Dolls or the ever ominous Premonitions. During the years, you may have been busy taking exams at The Chemical Playschool but was too stoned reading your Obituary to notice The Cloud Zero pass over and you ended up as a Broken China Doll at The Terminal Kaleidoscope. What do you do then? Join a Cult? Now, CP15 leaves me underwhelmed and a little afraid that the band seems to be treading water towards their 33rd year of existence, with no mythical LPD mythology to expand upon. This is scraping the bottom of the barrel, you dedicated Dotheads and all ye Monk like followers. My last 3 favorite LPD albums were All The King’s Men in 2002, Your Children Will Placate You From Premature Graves from 2006 and Plutonium Blonde from 2008. They were solid, psychedelic, songs balanced out with abstract pieces, all in all fine efforts. This is a band that has been on labels like PIAS and ROIR, so they carry weight of authority as well.

The opener Immaculate Conception is throwaway electronic sound sculpture with phased quasi-psychedelic guitar echo effects and a rubbish lyric that goes repeatedly, “I live at the center of the Universe…..” etc. etc. ad infinitum. There is nothing that jumps out and “grabs you” on CP15 except for some brief interesting moments, some of the film samples and Edward’s monologues 11-19 minutes into Sparks Fly / Museum, the second track. The Opium Den Parts 1-3 is a long experimental track with half spoken vocals, with some acoustic guitar 5 minutes into the song. AAAAARGH!!! HULK MISS THE 80’s & 90’s DOTS! HULK SMASH!!! Yes, I get agressive when I hear experiments that fail. I get angry. Track 4 is called Ranting And Raving and has a spoken intro and more weird ambient interludes. IT REALLY DOES NOT GO ANYWHERE. Excpect no more when Edward returns on vocals over a noisy backdrop, some ranting that does not inspire me at all. It’s directly unlikable. Immaculate Conclusion has echoey chanting voice from Edward and ambient noodling. It really is formless, mis-shapen and most of all uninspired. It sucks. Life with The Dots is no longer like running away to join a travelling Circus or meeting Gypsy caravans at night to get your fortune told with Tarot cards or gaze into a Crystal Ball. So hide your wings in a ghost tower, sails crackling at every breath you take, The Madcap Laughed…. AND NOW HULK SMASH CP15!! HULK ANGRY AT EDWOOD, PLAN 9 FROM OWTEW SPAFE! So the verdict is, I am pissed off that I bought Chemical Playschool 15 but as I collect and adore this reputable band and will never give up listening to them, I will brace myself for future experimentation and take anger management courses. Avoid. I never thought I’d ever say that about a Dots album. S.O.A.B.!!!

For more information visit http://legendarypinkdots1.bandcamp.com AND http://legendarypinkdots.org AND http://brainwashed.com/lpd

Reviewed by Christian Eric Mumford

The latest from Austin, Texas based My Education is a set of psychedelically dreamy and cinematic powerhouse wall-of-sound compositions that are all about folk-like serenity and image inducing intensity. The band are the sextet of James Alexander on viola, guitar and programming, Chris Hackstie on acoustic, electric and pedal steel guitars, Brian Purington on guitar Vincent Duncan on drums and percussion, Scott Telles (ST 37) on bass, and Henna Chou on piano, keyboards and cello, plus guests on vibraphone, saxophone and keyboards.

The album opens with the double edged title track. A Drink… is a light droney chamber orchestral intro that leads into …For All My Friends. It opens with melodic yet dark and droning viola, cello, and guitar, with the other band members soon joining in. The harsh acidic guitar makes for an interesting contrast against this theme. And when the explosion comes it’s a massive and desnse blast of noisy acid-folk-drone rock. When the lead melody guitar is added the music reaches even further heights of intensity, adding a strange orchestral heavy prog and metal infusion. Wow, there is a LOT happening on this track and it all develops seamlessly. Mister 1986 is next and features stringed instruments, acoustic guitar, and piano passages, alternating with the addition of two electric guitars, one having a 60s Western soundtrack sound and the other a harsher acidic edge. And once again the band build up to explosive levels of head on attack, and I love the way they create a cooperative contrast between aggression and dreamy melodic seduction. Black Box consists of psychedelic drone rock for valium heads that deftly combines serene melodies with dissonance, and is laced with spaced out mission control samples. Roboter-Höhlenbewohner is one of the more high octane heavy guitar driven rock ‘n rollers of the set. It’s a got a prog-like sense of thematic development, and these guys use multiple guitarists such that each creates his unique and individual voice within the piece. I like the spacey keyboard effects too. Happy Village starts off like the earlier tracks, being a slow, melodic, droney folk-orchestral meditative journey. Around the halfway mark the music doesn’t so much explode as it does quickly yet surreptitiously build to the same levels of eruptive intensity heard on Mister 1986. And just as Happy Village is coming in for a landing the band launch directly into the closing track, the powerhouse rock ‘n rolling Homunculus, a kick ass ripper of a finale. Guitars and saxophone are blazing on this monster!

My Education excel at creating beautiful melodies and craftily using their various instrumentation to create and execute their compositions, which sets them apart from a lot of other cinematic/psychedelic wall-of-sound bands in that the listener really gets a sense of the instrumentation involved. A Drink For All My Friends is a raging tour-de-force and psychedelically dreamy meditation, all rolled into one.

For more information visit the My Education web site at: http://www.myeducationmusic.com
Visit the Hauge Magie web site at: http://hautemagie.com

Reviewed by Jerry Kranitz

This Finnish trio start off the first of four tracks on this CD somewhat slow and droney and meditatively heavy and instrumental in a My Sleeping Karma fashion, but that is only the opener. The accented vocals sound like Dark Sun’s very similar singer as well. Maybe it’s just being Norwegian, Finland is like an strange language with its nasal accentuation and is distant to Scandinavian. If the singer had been female, it may as well have been a spacey Amon Düül II section from the Wolf City album as well. The track in question is called Beneath A Black Star. It seems from the get go this band is related to the weird kraut-goes-Doom stylings with heapings of drone one hears bubbling up with bands like Astra, with the psychedelicized kraut-goes-Sabbath influence. Deserted Planet 2078 is the next track and is a departure being less heavy, with keyboards reminding me of the first Orange Goblin album’s Star Shaped Cloud, but it does not build to a mind-blowing keyboard and lyrical climax like that song does. Its just kind of low key like Astra often do, and the vocals are present. Spacy Phantasy is next and has a vintage slowed down Fly To The Rainbow feel (Scorpions on Brain label!) but soon doomingly meanders into the Rise Above label bands like Astra or early Orange Goblin again, with heavy guitars and keyboard bits. The song gets progressive after 2 1/2 minutes, with more complex and uptempo changes with spacey vocals. Sykli is the last track, of this short album clocking in under 40 minutes, and is sung in Finnish language. It is slow at first and picks up after 8 minutes to a rockier groove.

Sorry, my Norwegian-Swedish-Danish abilities are 100%. Finnish language has roots, I believe, from an ancient slavic people that wandered north, and they have pirated Chris Cringle since the 50’s from the Norwegians who had him first. Well, not counting the Dutch who created him, before the Norwegians, but never mind. We share the Trolls, at least, and the North Pole. We are proud of Lappland which unites us all even more. Forgetting the bitterness and quarrel within the otherwise peaceful Nordic countries we belong to, in Finland there is, likewise in Sweden, a large amount of Hawkwind-related musicians, though I hear very little Hawkwind in Deep Space Destructors. They play much more like Astra, My Sleeping Karma and old Orange Goblin with smatterings of light prog influences and the Düül krauting out ca. 1973. They mellow out and come crashing in waves back in but never too heavy for the most faint hearted. The CD comes in a beautiful sleeve with titles made to read when stoned, as looking at them straight I barely make them out. The band released two albums in 2012, their debut “I” and this one, “II” at the end of the year. Jani Pitkänen plays bass and sings, Markus Pitkänen is the drummer and Petri Lassila handles guitars and backing vocals. They hail from Oulu, in a country far far far away I can assume. It’s pretty good if you go for this sort of style of Rise Above label/My Sleeping Karma brand doomishness, but it tires me a little, leaves me in a neutral mood. I give them a solid 4 out of 6 points on the dice for this effort. With a title like Deep Space Destructors I expected a fast heavy dose of Spacerock a la Hazard Wings (see other review) but ’tis not. But I like this CD, it seems subtle enough to be a grower.

For more information visit http://deepspacedestructors.bandcamp.com

Reviewed by Christian Eric Mumford

Greece and Italy (or the Mediterraenean in general) seems to be a hotbed for Freakbeat / Garage revival bands since the wave was started by The Fuzztones and The Cynics and a few other US acts who also have toured that part of the world extensively since the early 80’s, and are very popular down there. So what we have is a genre, which in my younger LSD trippin’ art student days, was a favorite of mine, owning The Fuzztones Lysergic Emanations CD, a handful of Bevis Frond CDs (all this bought at the Wild Mind shop in Oslo, R.I.P.) and several “Nuggets” comps (I now have many of the expanded box sets). In the late 80s I was a big fan of The Doors as well. All personal history aside, I’ll get to the point: if you like listening to the same stuff over and over, the snarling vocals, the fuzz guitars, the Farfisa organ, fine, then these two Greek-beat (a new genre?) platters are for you. You probably have all 12″ and 10″ and 7″‘es by The Fuzztones already stashed away with your incense holder, lava lamp, etc., somewhere from last time you had a session at the turntable.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore the 60’s stuff, the innocence of the era (at least the innocent part these bands try to recapture), I have just “moved on”. I sometimes play LA Woman by The Doors, dig out a Yardbirds or Who album or skip through a “Best of The Small Faces” for old time’s sake, delve into bands from the 60’s on occasion, sometimes a quick scan thru of my expensive “Nuggets” boxes once in a blue moon. But doing all this over again, reviving it, it’s fun but it cannot be a valid lifestyle unless you are totally dedicated only to Freakbeat or Garage, which I am not, I am afraid. I love Third Bardo’s I’m Five Years Ahead of My Time and The Snails do it justice. There’s loads of great harmonies to be found on the Basements CD, it’s all nicely done. But revivalism of this genre in 2013 is best left to the original 80’s wave of bands. Its not bad at all, if you dig the Fuzztones in a hardcore way, please do pick up these two CDs, you’ll think they are fuckin’ great. But if you, like me, feel like the 60’s were more than just Strawberry Alarm Clock or The Seeds and frankly, burned out on drugs and Nuggets albums by the time you were 25, explored new worlds, maybe went a little insane on harder drugs and evolved into a reptile-like humanoid, and found you preferred other genres than 60’s revivalism, don’t bother. To me, who likes all kinds of rock music made between 1962-2013, I feel a kinship to the Freakbeat and Garage revival, though I let it be an obscure part of my musical hereditary makeup, although these bands are both very good at what they do… But it’s just not my cuppa… so to speak. Onward to Fuzz!

For more information on The Snails visit http://www.thesnails.gr
For more information on The Basements visit http://www.myspace.com/thebasementsthess

Reviewed by Christian Eric Mumford

The Lost Art Of Twilight is the second album from Belgrade, Serbia based Temple Of The Smoke, the follow-up to their 2011 debut, Against Human Race. That album was a powerhouse set of heavy space rock (my favorite being the blistering Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator), psychedelic reggae, stoner rock, and mellow psych rock.

Kingdom Of Apples opens the set and is a meditative, melodic, yet steadily rocking space rock tune. I like the cavernous, valium-like guitar licks, and the music gets increasingly intense at the end. Moth Of Time begins similarly but at an even more mellow, drifting pace, and includes whispery vocals. Then around the two minute mark the band start to rock out, before quickly returning to the opening theme. And then… BAM!… they lay into a metallic stoner dirge, before abruptly shifting gears again, this time launching into an almost prog-like pattern, before returning once again to the stoner metal. Then for the finale they go into a wild and wooly freeform freakout. Wow, this is a pretty schizophrenic tune. I’m intrigued, but not sure if all the manic shifting of gears really works.

Starfall is a short piece, at only two minutes. But it’s a real smack across the chops, being a hellfire prog-infused hard rock blast that’s tight as a knot and makes its case succinctly in such a compact span. Out, Into The Crimson Night! is an inspired space-prog instrumental with heavenly keys and some thematic bits that bring to mind 70s sci-fi television themes. Later in the track the band start to rock harder, with a prog flavored 70s hard rock feel. This is my favorite track of the set so far. Street Of Shifting Signs is next and opens with multi-layered freaky alien electronics, and then launches into a steady space rocking segment that’s like a combination of Ozric Tentacles and early Korai Orom, but with an added classic prog rock edge. Later the music transitions to spaced out Dub/Reggae, that deftly switches back to the earlier theme, bringing the track to a close. Another smoker! Lots of variety but it all flows and gels nicely.

Beyond The Wall Of Sleep starts off as a drifting chill-out spacey piece that rocks harder as the music progresses. There’s some cool wah’d psych guitar, 60s styled organ, and proggy keys that makes for an interesting combination. I like it but it’s another track that keeps shifting gears while struggling to make the transitions seamless. Temple Of The Smoke (the song title named after the band) is the final track, kicking off with a dark and doomey yet deep space introductory segment. The bass and drums create a sense of foreboding, surrounded by wailing and bubbling alien synths. Then the guitar starts a slow emotional solo which gives the music a more spaced out psychedelic tone, and I dig the efx’d robotic vocals. Overall this track is about creating mood, atmosphere, and varying levels of tension, and the band get downright space metallic in the final minute. This is a fine example of Temple Of The Smoke covering a variety of thematic ground that flows and holds together well.

I listened to both Temple Of The Smoke albums back-to-back several times in the weeks leading up to writing this review and taken together I think this is a very promising and talented band on the contemporary space rock scene. Both albums feature stylistic variety, and anyone could be forgiven for thinking they cover a bit too much ground. Personally, I like the variety, though on The Lost Art Of Twilight the band handle it with varying degrees of success. But these guys are still damn good.

For more information visit http://templeofthesmoke.bandcamp.com
Email at templeofthesmoke@gmail.com
Visit the Cosmic Eye Records web site at: http://www.cosmiceyerecords.blogspot.gr

Reviewed by Jerry Kranitz

Unprotected is the latest album from Athens, Greece based No Man’s Land, and is the follow-up to their 2010 released The Drowning Desert. The band are the quintet of Vassilis Bas Athanassisdes on guitars and vocals, Chris Silver Triantafillopolous on drums, Nick Petavrides on bass, George Pavlis on trumpet and fluegelhorn, and George Sirganides on flute, plus guests on percussion and cello.

Moribundo Part II opens the set and is a steady paced rocker with a very interesting combination of liquid psych guitar and melodic trumpet. Flute soon joins in, and overall the track is a nice flowing trippy instrumental with brief passionate chanting vocalizations, and I like the melodic yet jamming psych-jazz feel that the trumpet injects. The 13 minute Flame is next. There are vocals near the beginning and end, but this too is a mostly instrumental track. The drums lay down a tribal rhythmic pulse and the music has a bit of a Middle Eastern feel. We get more of the psych guitar, flute and trumpet that I enjoyed on Moribundo. And while the trumpet unavoidably adds a jazz flavor, this track is more overtly psychedelic, and the more I listen to this album the trumpet (and I guess fluegelhorn) not only fits in well but gives No Man’s Land a somewhat unique sound. Other treats are peppered along the route, like a lusciously intense cello solo, lysergic freeform tripped out segments, meditative soundscapes, and mood changes that keep the music interesting throughout. A Brave Face is similar but gets more aggressively rocking at times than the previous tracks. My favorite part is when the guitar is ripping away with a raw dirty rocking sound, and then the music turns on a dime, transitioning to a melodic floating section led by flute, and then slowly soloing guitar, followed by trumpet, which is revealing itself to be a No Man’s Land trademark. Once again there are vocals but this is really about the developing instrumental. At 4 minutes, Permian Vacation is the shortest track of the set and the most tightly composed, and during a flute-led segment it struck me as sounding like a psychedelic Jethro Tull. Unprotected In The World closes the album and has a 70’s Prog-Psych feel, though the No Man’s Land trademark sound keeps the music firmly in the present. And it’s got a really cool Bluesy section that is nothing like standard Blues. I also got the best sense of Vassilis’ talent as a singer on this song.

In summary, Unprotected is an impressive set of psychedelic rock that does an excellent job of creating melodic accessible music, yet takes a progressive rock approach to instrumental thematic development, whiling managing to retain a loose jamming quality. And I love the way these guy utilize the guitar, flute and trumpet. Recommended.

For more information you can visit the No Man’s Land web site at: http://www.nomansland.gr
Visit the Anazitisi Records web site at: http://www.anazitisirecords.com

Reviewed by Jerry Kranitz

Y’know the feeling you got first time you heard, as a spotty stoned teenager, In Search Of Space or Chronicle of The Black Sword on your first introduction to Hawkwind after a phase of cassettes with Ramones and Sex Pistols and punk in the mid 80’s right at the tail end of the 80’s when Nordic bands like DarXtar and Dark Sun were still about jamming Hawkwind style dark space punk just about to release demo cassettes? Well that’s what Hazard Wings Interstellar Torment CD is like… the first DarXtar LP, the first Dark Sun demo cassette, etc. Its superfabulous, it is what I loved about Hawkwind and their followers in the Arctic North from the get-go, the “Chronicles” metal darkness punk, bands like Full Moon (the UK one), old issues of Ptolemaic Terrascope from the late 80s, Monster Magnet’s first few EPs and Spine of God album; just that raw, 80’s, Hawkwindness. Call it post-80’s, but these guys had never heard of anything but dark underground, but I swear it was punk enough to be 80’s, with a morbid fascination for Venom and early Bathory to boot; maybe Candlemass in an imaginary world. It was Dark, it was Space, and YOU, STONED YOUNG ANGEL-WITCH was trying to cast counter Enchantments with your runes and your Jim Morrison poster. At least that is what I did. And I had Rodney Matthews posters and 2000 AD and Eclipse and Pacific comics in a pile.

Time Will Be My Grave is pure space-punk unheard since Dark Sun teamed up with Nik on Ice Ritual meets K. Soren’s first DarXtar outing on Garage Land 1990. From there the songs blur a bit, from one track that sounds like Seeing It As You Really Are via more raw Venom-K. Soren-goes-Finnish punky spacerock. I love this album to bits and you better thank Jerry Kranitz for letting me review it. If you grew up in The Dark Ages, was a Witch, or a Viking mayhap, and lived off mushrooms and smoke, and did tribal dances to DarXtar and Full Moon, go ahead and buy the 2012 CD by Finnish spacepunk band HAZARD WINGS! This CD I have here is number 43 / 100 and is out on Krypta Records. The band consists of Vesa Moilanen on vocal/basss/fx, Eero Ruotsalainen on guitar, Heikki Romppainen on drum, and finally Heiko Schach guitar solos on two tracks. The cover art is a wonderful pre-digital age stipled ink piece I would gladly place next to a John Coulthart, Bob Walker, or any other Hawkwind cover sporting an 8-pointed Chaos Eye in the barren 80’s Flicknife mideival era LP covers, a black & white hand drawn Rapidograph stipled LSD brain fallout. Wondrous. Give me more of these guys.

Interstellar Torment is available in CD, LP, Cassette and digital download formats from the Hazard Wings Bandcamp site: http://hazardwings.bandcamp.com
Email at: moilanen.vesa@gmail.com

Reviewed by Christian Eric Mumford

This CD was recorded live at Loppen, Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark 2011. It has four tracks, all of which are totally instrumental, lasting around 40 minutes.

From the very first note of the first track, Et Samfund Under Jorden, I get an expectation of what is to follow. I hear, as the song progresses, a strong Amon Düül II style unfolding into an improvised disjointed mayhem, which just so happens to be my kind of madness.

I hear a lot of strangeness coming from the synthesizers and the guitars alike, which keeps me interested throughout, and I find that the further into the essence of the song we go, the more Amon Düül II it gets, which nicely demonstrates what the band are about from the off, and by the end of the track I am keen to hear more.

Track two, Det Borende X, is a fourteen-minute journey through the bowels of space, and from a listener’s point of view I feel that this is my favourite track of the CD, very spacey yet very earthy.

As we begin, I hear very subtle traces of Pink Floyd coming from the guitars, very much in the Echoes vein throughout, yet from these humble sounds, when the effected sustained bass guitar drones enter, we really begin to build minute by minute into a very nice trippy piece of music indeed. A one that is raw in the Igra Staklini Perli way, just as much in your face as Samsara Blues Experiment’s Long Distance Trip, and full of soul and passion as Pink Floyd were at the heights of the Pompeii era.

Track three, Atomrig, is a stoner styled mania, seared with Hawkwind’s Space Ritual era synthesizer bubbles that remain almost constant for the majority of the 4 minutes onslaught, until we abruptly halt and slowly enter into a true Hawkwind Space Ritual era piece, styled on the likes of 7 by 7 and Upside Down, etc., and this takes us through the next 4 minutes to the end. Very soulful Hawkwind sounding.

Track four, Rockford, Illinois, likewise takes the Hawkwind feel, taking the basics of a would be Brainstorm, as well as a number of other 70’s rock style riffs, and melding them all into one 9 minute space extravaganza, very much again in the Space Ritual era Hawkwind sound.

All tracks comprise of guitars, bass, drums, and manic synthesizers, which are an obvious must. All tracks are very power driven and earthy. All the instrumentation is well constructed and executed. The sound is good for a live gig, and really it is an experience to behold.

For more information you can visit the Troldman web site at: http://troldmand.bandcamp.com
Visit the Troldman Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/troldmandsmusik

Reviewed by Albert Pollard

Cooperation is the 4th album to date by Cyber Zen Sound Engine, and not having heard any of their other albums, I will jump straight in and be as honest as I can be.

The album has 16 instrumental pieces, all of which last under 5 minutes, and all flow in a style that plays more with piano and clean guitar reverberated spaces than it does with the freak out synthesizer soundscapes that so often frequent my reviews.

The music visualises a middle of the road melancholia. The clean guitars and the hollow drones haunt the ears with soft emotion. The subtle sound canvases foretell a place of neither darkness nor light, aligning rather with the bland grey matter, the place in between that conforms to the laws, instead of stretching the limits of the imagination. Therefore I feel that the tracks come and go; too short to express fully what they so desire to tell.

Each piece of music seems to stand alone. Glimpses of subtle Pink Floyd can be heard amongst the guitar pieces, as well as within the piano conjurations. Other pieces break the tempo and vary the mood by use of ethnic percussive elements that become the main rhythmical structure to the compositions when introduced, whereas the Pink Floyd moments were more prominently organic in organ/guitar/piano, void of all such percussion, and also void of the former ethnic flavour, which was nice!

I mention the word hollow in respect to the sounds used, they are too thin for me, as the word is in such realms, and this I find is my main concern. It is not bad musically at all, and I do not state it as such; I just find that, when doing such works as these, a good fat earthy synthesizer is more to my association, and an in depth exploration of one track may take 20 minutes to fully unfold… because as a listener I thrive to find affinity with the soul of the music, the earthy based hypnotism that engulfs the void of mind, projecting, with or without aid of substance, the sub-conscious to the nether regions, of which I am more akin… but it is not to be sadly, and this grieves my heart full sore.

It’s all just a touch too nice for me…

For more information you can visit: http://www.myspace.com/cyberzensoundengine

Reviewed by Albert Pollard