TWINK

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.

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 symphaticism, fetish to atavisim and oriental hippie rock cliches 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 didin't 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 listeing 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 envolving 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 sense of humour, heh. 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.

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

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.