PICKIN' BERRIES 'N PLAYIN' BLUES

Son of Dark Star.

Listening to this live free-for-all from Spacious Minds, it occurs to me that were it not for the obvious audio quality improvements of 40 years time, you could be played blind snippets of this and not know if you were listening to The Floyd in '69-71 or The Dead doing one of their mammoth Dark Star jams from the same era. Long, meandering psychedelic thunderstorms of angry God proportions, throwing lightning bolts at your head in the form of screaming guitar and crashing cymbal. Three tracks totaling one hour of music for your acid trip, or your trip to work, or a date with the headphones and couch.take your pick. Actually the three tracks are all connected making this a straight one hour jam.

The first track has plenty of aggression and screaming psych jamming, with very good moments of sheer volume morphing into bits of other things, sometimes recognizable melodically and other times not. And it's not all ferocity: like Garcia and Lesh there are plenty of moments of subtlety and sidewinding. The second track is much quieter, mellower, with clean guitar, "liquidey" sounds, electronic noises, percussion. Again, things may seem to be static one moment but as the time ticks away you realize things are changing slowly in front of you. In the second half it sounds a bit more post-rock to me with a more structured approach, heavy drumming and the dual lead guitar. There sounds like some organ present as well. The 3rd part is more of the same. I'm not very good at describing music like this, its just plenty of juicy chaos for your ears. If you like hour long space jams it may be a masterpiece for you, if you hate them then this is one star. I guess I'm in the middle. I appreciate this but it's not something I will play very often. But it is good at what it shoots for, so 3 stars. If you like this band or this kind of music, I would definitely check it out.

THE SPACIOUS MIND from Sweden are one of my favourite Psychedelic bands, but I must admit their albums are often "hit or miss" for me. Their earlier live album called "Do Your Thing But Don't Touch Ours" is an example of "hit" for me, while for some reason this 2005 live recording does little for me.

"Distant, Oh So Far...Better Go Right Away" is the 21 minute opener. I was surprised after the band was introduced and we get the smattering of applause how bombastic they are here. They come out with guns blazing but for me it doesn't work. A lot of noise though, it just doesn't sound good. It settles around 2 1/2 minutes.This is fairly pastoral really. I like the bass after 4 minutes because it makes the sound a little meaner. It gets fuller before 10 minutes before it starts to settles again. Kicks back in after 14 1/2 minutes with some wild guitar.

"Me And A Tree And The Sigh Of A Leaf" is also around 21 minutes. It opens with guitar sounds and is laid back. The tempo picks up and it gets fuller 12 minutes in. Drums 16 1/2 minutes in. "The One That Really Won The War" is around 18 minutes in length and is the final track. More of an ethnic vibe on this one.The guitar starts to make some noise after 4 minutes.

A pretty good album that is fairly laid back overall, but for me it lacks something.