(US 2007)
Neurohumors- Cosmic Relief- A Neurohumors Anthology
(US 2007)
From Aural Innovations #36 (May 2007)
The Neurohumors are a San Francisco based music collective lead by David Jayne. They have a rotating line up of members similar to the Øresund Space Collective and they also play largely improvised jamming music. The current line up features some members from the Open Space Music Project (http://www.openspacemusic.net/). Anyway, this is a 2CD-R anthology-compilation taken from the bands 56 San Francisco Bay Area live shows and 19 albums and EPs. All the music is improvised, except for the occasional used, borrowed or stolen them (My Favorite things,etc..). Disc A takes you from 1997 to 2003 and starts with the bands more ambient material and moves forward into the rock music and features 6 tracks from 3- 23 minutes. The 2nd CD 2003-2006 Rock moving towards Jazz, is quite a bit different from the 1st CD (that was the point of the compilation!). The opening track, Bringing ‘em back Alive is a bit like instrumental Grateful Dead. Arriba, is a bit of a world music style track due to the cool drumming and guitar but then it gets totally spaced out at the end. Rise of the Phoenix, is 16 minute more experimental (jazz) psychedelic rock track. There are a few short tracks on here as well 2-3 minutes but they don’t do much for me. Some interesting drumming on all these tracks but too short to develop into much. Conjuring Pradash features Gordon Anderson on Sitar, which makes the track quite special but be careful, the bass will blow your speakers out on this one if you are not careful. The CD ends with My Favorite things jam and features the piano player and also has a sax player. A great introduction into a unique collective of musicians.
For more information on the band: Http://www.neurohumors.com
Reviewed by Scott Heller