THINK PINK

Gritty psychedelia, quite ahead of it's time.

TWINK is essentially John Charles Alder and with the help of various members of the British psychedelia scene he recorded and released this fine album in 1970 (although the recording quality and music are firmly rooted in the 60s).

'The Coming of the Other One' starts off our journey and is the most psychedelic song on the album, it's really out there and one interesting thing to note is the similarity that it bears to later krautrock acts with the ethnic percussion and sitar as well as spoken word parts (focusing on the apocalypse in the year 1999, a novel concept now that year has passed). 'Dawn of Magic' is another real highlight, a short song of chanting and building, very intense. 'Tiptoe on the Highest Hill' provides us with some great jamming and sparse soundscapes. Mexican grass war is quite a unique song with a marching motif and various percussion along with tympani and yelps and guitars coming in and out of the mix. Suicide is a very raw and melancholy investigation of the dark side of the mind, made even more so by the fairly upbeat nature of the main part of the song, contrasted with the spacey reverberant vibraphones.

The production on this album is fantastic (disregarding the fact that it's quite gritty and raw due to the technology available), it always seems very rich and dense and there are some very interesting delays and reverbs present which is a formidable achievement given the resources available to achieve those sounds back then.

Think Pink is a great little gem that's well worth investigating by any psychedelia fan, kraut fans will find something to enjoy here too.

Beware the lost ,rare progressive or psychedelic record. How many times have you read or heard that they are some undiscovered masterpiece. Maybe this album is not a masterpiece but it is not too bad either.

Twink is John Adler whose music career got going around 1963 when he was drumming in a band in Colchester. He changed his name to Twink in 1967 and played in Tomorrow. He was also in the Pretty Things and left them for early Pink Fairies.

The album commences with The Coming of Age which a good piece of British Psychedelia. Sitar and Tabla are used throughout(What more could you want) and spoken word.l 2.Is Basicaly blues/rock with a pretty good lead solo also the there is a good grungy sound used by the guitarist. 3 Sounds almost like an Indian raga. Only runs for a minute and a half which leads to the next tune. 4.Tiptoe on the Highest Hill is pretty good progressive music from that era. Vocals for a short period at the begining but the tune is instrumental for the remainder 5.Fluid has vocal effects but is basically instrumental 6.Mexican Grass War. There is always a track that you hate well this is it for me. It is mainly a percussion driven track but what really gets me the percussion is almost marching time. 7.Back on track another blues/rock with that grungy sound in the guitar.

Thats as far as I go with track descriptions. There are 10 on the album.

The copy I have is from Akarma and comes a really solid Mini lp size book. The cover looks great.

This a fairly good album but I rate it as only 3 stars. For 4 stars I 'd say that as soon as the album finishes you want put it on again. This album does not do that for me

Matt

Some associations borne from this album; Chaotic hippie activity in style of early krautrock, with good recording facilities and musical performing quality. There are some ambient sound collages, open drug sympathizing, fetish to atavism and oriental hippie rock clichés paired with also some coherent tunes, keyboard driven rockers like "Ten Thousand Words In A Cardboard Box". These are good, counterbalancing the wilder freak outs. The end result is nice, but did not blow my head totally. There are good psychedelic jammings and funny things happening anyway, people seem to get laid and stoned quite much in this record, heh, I nearly got hardon when listening to song "Fluid". All restraints were certainly relieved before recording this one... Some solutions seem irritating though, for example "Dawn of Magic" sounds very good (little like Dario Argento's movie soundtrack "Suspiria" by Goblins), but the evolving chant is cut abruptly and following heroin blues begins. I would wish this kind of ideas to be respected and treated accordingly, not as jokes. Maybe I'm not just at totally same level of psyche with these guys, or do not have a sense of humor. Even with these some negative points, I still enjoyed this to some extent. There is certainly much of potential in it, thus recommended for verification for all psychedelic music fans.

It begins when the world ends.

The first track of this heavy psychedelic album of the only artist able to convice Syd Barret to join a band after Pink Floyd, "The Coming of the Other One", opens with the famous prophecy of Nostradamus that was interpreted as the coming of the apocalypse: "1999 seven months...". It's a chaotic track featuring voices and screams, like some of Ron Geesin's works.

"10000 words in a Cardboard box" is beat-psychedelia with a touch of early Pink Floyd. It's a pity that Barrett left the band before the first gig. An easy track, in any case.

"Dawn of Magic" is heavy psychedelic. A sort of electronic mantra for less than 2 minutes. It ends suddenly to give room to another very floydian song: "Tiptoe on the Highest Hill".

"Fluid", with its female sighs has some of Gong's Radio Gnome. I mean "Prostitute Poem" on Angel's Egg.

"Mexican Grass War" opens with military drums followed by tribal voices while a distorted guitar makes "noise" in the background". Then a crescendo of noise raises the tension until the coda, when percussions fade out.

"Rock and Roll the Joint" is made of psychedelic sounds over a standard bluesy E-A-B sequence of chords. A non-essential song.

"Suicide" opens with acoustic guitar and has a beat flavour. It fits well in late 60s British psychedelia, but it was already 1970. The voice and the melody are essentially beat, but floydian in the chorus. It's a song made of different sections. It could have been longer.

"Three Little Piggies" is a joke. It makes me think to early Gong.

"The Sparrow is a Sign" is just the closure track, also this mid-way between Early Pink Floyd and Gong.

This album is a collection of disconnected songs. Not that each album needs to have a concept, but probabl the track sequence could have been set differently. It can be of interest to fans of psychedelia. Just a sort of documentary about the end of the UFO club years.

2.5 stars really, rounded to three.

Side A, 5 stars, Side B, 3.5 stars

Twink might sound like a twisted band name whose first (and only) album is a losy gem in UK proto- psych/prog, but it's really John Adler's first (and only) solo album. Indeed the "touche-à-tout" drummer has been present on the London scene ever since 63, passing through the ranks of The Deep Beats, Tomorrow (where Steve Howe played guitar) and The Pretty Things (holding the drum stool for that band's legendary concept album SF Sorrow) and kick-starting the Pïnk Fairies. Quite an achievement, making Adler/Twink an inevitable actor of the 60's underground scene. So by the end of that decade, Twink gathered in the summer of 69 a bunch of buddies from The Deviants, Tomorrow, Pretty Things and even Steven "Peregrine" Took from Tyranosaurus Rex to make what is a solo album that sounds like a very solid group. Indeed, very few solo albums have this kind of cohesiveness or soul or even experimental/groundbreaking force. Though recorded in mid-69, the album didn't get released until the next year on a red-coloured vinyl disc (now ultra sought-after) on the Polydor label.

Not only does the album title hint at pure psychedelia, but even the bucolic sleeve artwork hints a strong sense of adventure. And the sonic results are way beyond the expectations induced by the sleeve, too. Adler's songwriting (only three tracks are co-written) is absolutely mind-boggling, and obviously, the main musical participants were quite in phase with Twink's wavelength. BTW, Twink's lead vocals are also very psychedelically professional. I can only imagine what kind of awesome vegetables were consumed during the album's construction. The ten tracks made of wild instrumentals and poetry-laced tunes will send you in such a long strange trip that you won't need any substance assistance.

Right from the freaky and semi-improvised Coming Of The Other One's opening note, you know that you're in a fifth or sixth dimension, and it's not Cardboard Box (from a previous Aquarian Age incarnation single) that will ease your worried ears and soul. Yes, your sanity is being challenged, and even possibly attacked, by some of the wilder soundscapes of the era, including soaring and screeching fuzzed-out guitars (courtesy of Pink Fairies' Rudolph) and demented drumming and percussions (courtesy of Adler, Took and Viv Prince). Povey's Mellotron, Wally's piano, John Lodge (Moody Blues) or Junior Wood's bass round up the normal instrumental section, but there are some rather unusual tweaks, sonic gizmos and studio wizardry that impedes on your aural comfort. Though there are some incredible peaks like the lengthy semi-instrumental Fluid closing the A-side, not all tracks are of the same ilk or quality, especially on the flipside. The very percussive Mexican Grass War and Three Litle Piggies are not only over-staying their welcome, but they lack the same kind of interest, probably because it's not a well-thought-out lunacy-laced improvisation. The short Suicide track brings an acoustic side to the album's electric quagmire. Overall, the flipside largely fails to confirm its alter-ego's excellence.

The Sunbeam CD reissue holds a bunch of bonus tracks, all of them except one being different (and sometimes interesting) takes of the album tracks. The sole exception being Good Wizard (part of a previous incarnation Aquarian Age single), hence the whole bonus package is only moderately enhancing the album. The weird thing is that after Adler's most artistic success Think Pink, he seemed to hit a much rockier (read stonier and rougher) road and seemingly failed to capitalize on his 60's achievements in the following decades. He would resurface again in the Pink Fairies and a very short (half-gig) with Syd Barrett. Not much has been heard from him since then, except for a late-80's stint with neo-psych band Plasticland. He's now apparently a born-again religious dude, but that shouldn't let you overlook the man late-60's musical genius achievements, which rank among the wildest and groundbreaking of the era. And this album epitomizes the man's aura, and is one of the era's all-too-forgotten gem.

You certainly meet some characters when exploring the world of progressive rock and John Adler really had an influence on early British psychedelic music starting in a band way back in 1963. He used TWINK as his stage name at some point in the 60's, the brand name of a hair product that fans would often send him. A drummer by trade he would be in such bands as TOMORROW, THE PRETTY THINGS, AQUARIAN AGE and more while after this 1970 solo release he would be in the band STARS with Syd Barrett and also was a leading member of THE PINK FAIRIES.

"Think Pink" was recorded in July of 1969 in London and is very 60's sounding but man so adventerous and "out there" at times. A six piece he has friends from TOMORROW, THE PRETTY THINGS, THE DEVIANTS and T-REX. Many feel this is a fundamental release in British psychedelia. Povey from THE PRETTY THINGS really adds some nice flavours with the sitar and mellotron with Wood from THE DEVIANTS playing lead guitar. I'm not often into solo albums just from my experience over the years but man this one is a keeper. As Hugues mentions in his review the first half is almost perfect while the second half sort of dissolves into silliness at times and experimental bits but this is psychedelic music!

You know your in for a trip when the first words you hear on that opener are "In the year 1999 and seven months from the sky will come..." an experimental opener with sitar and at times theatrical vocals, yes this can get insane. The second track is brighter with piano then fuzzed out guitar leads. I like the vocal harmonies too. "Dawn Of Magic" is a short atmospheric piece with vocal expressions and sitar standing out.

"Tiptoe On The Highest Hill" is a relaxed vocal track with mellotron but it will turn a little crazy and I like that guitar when it trips along. Favourite song though is "Fluid" which comes across as being Krautrock-like or early FLOYD-like in the "A Saucerful Of Secrets" vein. "Mexican Grass War" is nuts with people yelling and lots of percussion and drums. A nursery rhyme starts "Rock And Roll The Joint" before we get a heavy groove with guitar over top. Kind of bluesy this one. I really like "Suicide" as well with the vibes and mellotron. "Three Little Piggies" is silly and the closer sounds like a Kevin Ayers tune.

Without question a 4 star album in my world, so adventerous! And is this the first super-group? One of the first no doubt.