THE ACID TEST RECORDINGS 7th August 2020
A blast from the past, this album was originally issued in 2003 and is a monster psychedelic experience that might have been drawn from anywhere in the last 50 years or so. The original double album has been expanded with a few tracks and reaches a couple of hours in temporal time; anywhere from ten minutes to a few days in experiential time, depending on your depth of immersion.
Still around as a band, this dip into the past is timeless.The opener, Score Trek, has a nicely paced slow beat. There is lots of space, as instruments circle round each other. The bass thrums deeply, drums tick and thud, the guitar jitters and picks. Twenty minutes gives time to tease out the themes and shifts into some funkky breakbeats and jazzy organ sounds towards the end.If you are sonically tuned in, it triggers chair boogie.
Elsewhere, the title track is nicely groovy. There is some noodling, some funky sections and a nice portion of deep space. On we go, into the deep reaches, with tracks that range from twiddly exploration to blasts of sound to meaty, beaty groovers. Heading in a few directions at once, this set collates the finest chunks of the evolving band dynamics as they follow wherever the muse takes them. The few minutes of rehearsal tape at the end make me glad the album is without vocals and grateful for the editing that has made the set into the headily rich mix that it is.