THE CURSE OF LORD SPACE DEVIL

This one came up under problematic circumstances. Will and Majnun have already released two promising albums, which I really liked, because they are brimming over with ideas and inspiration. In 2009 plans grew to work out the follower 'Son Of Lord Space Devil' as a double album with four different suites. Many difficulties occured though, disease, depression, technical problems to name a few. Back and forth ... finally they decided to compress and rearrange their material and to call the new album 'The Curse Of Lord Space Devil'. The result is more of an unplugged thing, except the last track the rocking component takes a backseat.

Tribal oriental flavoured percussion, many acoustic guitars and repetitive patterns - they offer a trippy psychedelic atmosphere basically, which is mostly suitable for a campfire session. Will's voice is charming as usual. Quiet Night Thoughts holds a fantastic electric guitar solo and ends with a spacey downfall. Remains Of Amethyst is an excursion which moves deep into cosmic fields. The short Jessica's Nightmare comes as a mourning thing with decent organ adds serving a slight menacing touch.

Hence Son Of Lord Space Devil has failed to reach for the album's title track due to the aforementioned reasons. This extended track contrasts with a rather heavy psych outfit towards the end and probably is useful to defuse an atmosphere which otherwise would have been too dark mooded overall. They start very spacey and then regular acoustic drums appear after a while until finally the last minutes are rrrrocking the studio really.

'The Curse Of Lord Space Devil' is a nice album, not really thrilling though, which means I'm missing a reasonable advancement when considering their predecessor stuff. However, the great guitar work is generally striking and again they offer many haunting melodies. So this one surely is dedicated to fans of trippy psych music.

The most recent album of Cosmic Trip Machine continues the slightly occult themes found also from their earlier album, and deliver a rich display of psychedelic music stylistic choices. The record kicks in dynamically with a folk-oriented psych tones, and the lysergic rock guitar and vocals phase out to void of cosmic soundscapes. "You" moves to some acid folk dronings with leanings also to classic European traditional music, having very pleasant guitars and shimmering abstract aural backgrounds. The story continues with more oppressing tribal horror movie feelings of "Jessica's Nightmare", which is the soothed with acoustic hippie ballad. A really beautiful acoustic guitar cadenza leads to a minor ballad ending to stinging guitar soloing, which merges to a more cosmic space tones and experiments. The concrete tonal elements reappear with a mellow keyboard driven downer ballad, which switches as open guitar experimentation phase in space rock sounds, leading later again to more close to earth feelings with folk rock and tribal music phases. The longest track on the album is the cosmic ender "Son Of Lord Space Devil", sounding little like a more tamer version of Acid Mothers Temple's experimentations.

The album sleeve has a detailed history of the band, and also a description of the journey building the musical entity of this record. From my personal tastes point of view, I maybe did not feel very comfortable with the intensity of changes in moods, as the music has quite strong alterations. I guess this record should be taken as kind of movie for your ears, as Frank Zappa once stated in some of his record, and allow one to be carried with the scenes. The album quality is good in all technical standards, like one might expect from a Nasoni release, and for a psychedelic prog music listener this album is certainly a record worth checking out; there are good changes this might fit to the central of your musical fascination.