A VISIT TO NEWPORT HOSPITAL

Released in June 2012, "A Visit to Newport Hospital" is one of the steadily increasing number of releases by enthusiast vinyl only label Fruits de Mer Records. This production is one of their regular ones: A 7 inch vinyl single featuring remade versions of two compositions from ye olde age of psychedelic rock. Egg's A Visit to Newport Hospital and Arzachel's Queen St. gang are the classics given a contemporary visit on this occasion, by The Baking Research Station and Cranium Pie respectively.

And if this reworked take on A Visit to Newport Hospital is anything to go by, this isn't a place you'd like to visit unless you really, really had to. Opening with an introduction consisting of organ amidst fragmented sounds, voice and machine effects and a rather chaotic soundscape, this song moves on to a gentle organ and vocals theme that comes close to lounge music in expression, but with a resonating effect applied as well as most of the sounds from the opening sequences. The end result may be described as demented lounge music I guess, the kind of track you'd expect to find amidst the back catalogue of artists such as Magical Power Mako.

Cranium Pie's take on Queen St. Gang is a nice companion piece. Opening with a gentle organ given some eerie effects treatment it then stabilize for a bit, and a massive dark toned guitar dripping psychedelic undertones from here and down to Australia somewhere is added to the proceedings. Until a sudden shift replace everything with a dark drone beneath dampened voices and voice effects that is, and while we're given a revisit by the organ and guitar theme a bit later another interception follows, this time more freaked out in character with sounds and voice effects and even a dampened manic laughter that you might suspect comes directly from the deeper vaults of Arkham Asylum.

A very nice release for the right crowd, and as all 800 copies have been sold out by the label at the time of writing I suspect that the crowd in question is a good-sized one too.