LA NÒVIA

I wasn't really expecting a thing like this when I decided to give another try to a band that's quite highly rated on PA but I've never been too much into, apart their "In C" that's a good interpretation of the Riley's masterpiece.

"La Novia" is a traditional Occitane wedding song. It's sung in Gascone dialect. AMT open it like a mantra, but what initially seems an "om" immediately changes into a celtic choir. I wouldn't be surprised to see Alan Stivell in the lineup, and effectively the longhair- longbearded guy in the sleeve photo is similar to the Breton harpist. Five minutes of celtic choir and the instruments replace it with a piece of psychedelic folk which grows slowly and becomes just a little more chaotic in the following minutes. The disturbing high-pitched electronic whistles and the quite absurd and apparently meaningless noise of the first albums is no longer present. At minute 11 the track is effectively chaotic and noisy but we have followed a path to reach this noise, and it has a sense. It's a fusion between Krautrock and Folk that last for some minutes, becoming more psychedelic at about minute 14 but without loosing the folk element. I think I'd like to be invited to a wedding of this kind. The electric and highly distorted guitar increases the noise at minute 15. At this point I could expect to hear Syd Barrett's vocalisms as in Pow R Toc H. It's a very floydian part even if the guitar doesn't have anything to do with the sounds used by both Barrett and Gilmour, but the tempo and the bass may come from Pompeii. They should have had a lot of fun while composing and playing it. Everything slows down at minute 20 when the music acquires a more oriental (far-eastern) mood even if still mixed with celtic-medieval melodies. The song restarts. There are just strange voices singing, like spirits in a foggy night, while the main celtic theme is continuously repeated. It's minute 23 when a guitar major chord introduces a new theme. The bass enters strongly and a new melody, still "folkedelic", begins. The heaviness of this part reminds to 35007's "Liquid". At minute 28 the drums change the tempo and the noise increases, then everything calms down. At minute 30 this mixture of high-pitched sounds and keyboard major chords seems like it was chill-out, but after one minute guitar and bass change again. At minute 31 it gives the impression of being a "coda", but there are still 9 minutes ahead. The guitar chord suddenly changes with an additional dissonance at minute 32, while a bass scale is what remains of the original melody. The noise increases but at minute 35 the main theme re-appears even if immersed in the noise. A very good acoustic guitar solo appears in the last minute to close this very good track. 2/3 of the albums are gone.

"Bois-Tu De La Biere"(Do You Drink Beer?) looks like another traditional French song with some background noises, just to remind that this is a psychedelic band. Not bad also those 3 minutes, specially when the noises replace the voice on the guitar harping.

A spacey start for the last track: "Bon Voyage Au LSD" (Have a nice trip with LSD). More than an acid trip it looks more like a space trip, similar to the pink Tangerine Dream and dark as the most ambient works of Senmuth. The spare guitar notes contribute in adding a sense of Krautrock, but the sound of the violin that appears here and there has the taste of the contemporary classic. If this album has a defect is that this track doesn't have anything to do with the previous two. They are equally good, but it's like this track was reused as a filler from a different recording session. Respect to Tangerine Dream the things move faster. The rhythmless beginning is chaotic and noisy just after 5 minutes and the chaos increases helped by drums accents after minute 8. At minute 12 the guitar becomes rock and even with all the background noise this starts sounding effectively as a late 60s acid thing. A sort of skilled version of Amon Duul, but with more modern sounds, like the second part of Tsunami of the already mentioned 35007. This goes ahead with the volume decreasing until the sudden end.

A very good psychedelic album. something that honestly I wasn't expecting to find.