GRANFALLOON

LASER PACE was this obscure band out of LA who released their lone album in 1974. They were led by Doug Decker and his wife Maureen O'Connor. Decker I understand was a sound engineer in LA, while Maureen was a lead guitarist and singer. They brought in seven more musicians to make this album. It's interesting that are using SILVER APPLES Buchla synthesizer as noted by Andy over at Planetmellotron. This adds to the experimental sound of this record.

It's like this album has that psychedelic spirit but instead of it being psychedelic based, it's jazz based. Pretty funky at times and we do have clavinet on here helping with that. The sound quality is not good. Maybe it's my copy but it's poor. Maureen's vocals are an acquired taste to say the least. But she can play guitar.

My favourite track is the closer called "Scatter" and it's the longest at over 8 minutes. It's all instrumental. I'm not a big fan of the first 2 1/2 minutes which sounds like an improv where each is doing their own thing. But when it moves it is surprisingly good. It settles like free jazz again before it moving again at 6 minutes or so.

While "Endless" is the mellotron track, it's the worst when it comes to sound quality. It affects the sound of everything. Both "Oh Yeah?" and "Redemption" have some excellent guitar sections, while the clavinet leads on "Avatar". I like the bass on "Sky Fell" and throughout really.

While this is experimental to a fault, it's hard not to be impressed with this album. It's different. It's also very inconsistent, and as I mentioned before it certainly could have been blessed with better production.

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