H.P. LOVECRAFT

So, you're standing in a smoky hall in San-Francisco - probably the Fillmore West or some other notable venue - surrounded by a sea of counterculture kids donning tie-dye t-shirts who can be seen regularly ejecting plumes of blue smoke from their young mouths. Then, as the lights dim, you realise that the music is about to start. The stage lights turn down, the band enter the stage, the crowd cheer, the psychotropic drugs start to kick in and the music starts. Or so it would have seemed in 1969. San Francisco-based HP Lovecraft are one of a clutch of groups who, for some, seem to some up the West coast psychedelic sound that engulfed America and beyond in the late sixties. Though not as well known as some of their luminaries, the band still exhibited an experimental-pop sound that could only have been a product of this unique time. The likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Jefferson Airplance, Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly espoused this new, free-thinking rock movement, filling the airwaves with blissful rock, bluesy rhythms, experimental madness and left-wing political ideology, thus giving birth to the new ideals that seem popular and mundane in our new, digital 21st century age. Never again will music as beautiful and as original as this be produced again, which is a terrible indictment on our modern society. That is not to say good music does not exist these days because it does, in abundance. It's just the creative freedom of yesterday has been replaced by the slavish commercial needs of both the record companies and the masses who purchase their products. HP Lovecraft came from a simpler time, a time when bands were mush more than commodoties; they were artists in their own write and their art defined a generation. 'HP Lovecraft 1' is a true example of this magical time and it's quality has lasted throughout the ages in the great songs that frequent it's track-listing, such as the ominous blues of 'Wayfaring Stranger' the ethereal and mysterious 'The White Ships', making up a dazzling 1960's album that is one of the many jewels in the psychdelic rock crown. STEFAN TURNER, LONDON, 2010