NIK RAICEVIC

— First review of this album —

A purely electronic affair that will remind many listeners of early "Cluster' circa '72. Best known for naming his tunes after illegal substances, Raicevic produces yet another splodge and splatter ridden synth bloop album. Every sound appears to be squashed through massive reverb and filters creating an eerie and celestial feel from beginning to end. Released on the self explaining 'Narco Recordings' - it will give you an idea of what to expect.

This is free of vocal and conventional instruments throughout, just like his previous recordings. You end up with an uncompromising mid 70's melange of sound that had no chance at all of breaking the top 100 in any country. I'm quite sure that's how he'd have wanted it...

Supposedly Raicevic played percussion on the Stone's 'Goat's Head Soup'. Listening to this you'd find that very hard to believe. Two more dissimilar albums you will never hear.

Apparently Raicevic gave up after this and sold his keyboards to up-and-coming ambient meister 'Steve Roach' who would go on to the present day producing beautiful waves of ambience.

It's such a pity he stopped here. Perhaps his brain just imploded? After all - each of his albums had a sticker attached to it reading 'Do not listen to if stoned'

Man, Raicevic looks too cool to have released this oddball 1971 electronic monstrosity. He looks like he should have been James Bond before Roger Moore. However, what went on inside that head at the time of these recordings is another matter altogether...

Strangely, my copy is named 'Beyond the End... Eternity' and not the above, where, if spoken will make you feel like you've got a mouthful of marbles breaking teeth as you try to pronounce it.

It looks like I've ended up with some 'hooky' copy of this, as mine consists of 4 albums covering two cd's. Mind you- they're mighty short. This LP for instance only scrapes a miserable 27 mins in duration. Oh well, you'll be glad there's no rambling aimless review then?

At the ripe old age of 38 in 1971 Raicevic released this warped electronic mish-mash of an album on an unsuspecting public. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of this breaking into the top 100. This is early proto electronica from which I'm sure 'Aphex Twin' got many ideas and inspiration from. 'Kluster' also spring to mind - this, however, is far more synthetic. 'Beyond the End... Eternity' is entirely electronic with no vocals which will give you an idea of the kind of difficulty your brain will have trying to come to terms with this recording.

The whole thing ends up sounding like some weird evil alien dentist from Sirius B drilling away at E.T's. jawbone as he struggles to stay awake under anaesthetic , whilst floating creatures swarm around his big malformed head.

An extremely unusual album and one I'm glad I bought. A very difficult album to describe as there's nothing conventional about it at all

No wonder my dad thought I was mental 20 years ago...

— First review of this album —

Back when I was a small kid (1979-1980) my father would occasionally buy odd and unusual, or just obscure albums. He wasn't exactly a music expert, so I was often wondering if he bought it because he liked the artwork or the title, or maybe the instruments used? The Internet obviously didn't exist, couldn't find info on this stuff, you pretty much had to go by word of mouth, or perhaps the owner of the record store. My father's more normal record buying habit at the time was Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young), Neil Young, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, and It's a Beautiful Day, and for electronic music, it was Jean Michel Jarre. Magnetic Web was one of these odd obscurities he bought at that time, really strange electronic music, with a warning sticker on the shrink wrap that stated: "Do not listen to this album if you are stoned" (I don't recall his copy having that warning, or the shrink wrap). He got rid of it (I wished he didn't because I liked it, though I didn't know why then, looks like even at age 7 I wanted to hear the unusual), and all these years I was starting to wonder if my mind was playing tricks that there was an album called Magnetic Web. In 1984, my father bought a copy of Jarre's Magnetic Fields, which I knew wasn't the album I was thinking of (but then he was into Jarre, so it was expected he'd buy that one), besides that one was released in 1981, and Magnetic Web was released in 1973. Years later, comes the Internet, surprised to find the Magnetic Web album in an entry of the Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock and to find out the artist was named Nik Raicevic. Well, in 2006 I was able to acquire me a copy and it came with the shrink wrap and warning sticker, which made me an ever happier owner.

Perhaps this album was too strange for my father's taste. This was his fourth album, and by this point he acquired an ARP 2600. The title track starts off with some cheap sounding drum machine before the synths kick in. It's basically a bunch of pulsing. He really got some reedy sounds off the ARP. "Light Stimulus" features a bunch of computer-like sound (of the trippy '70s variety), while "Edge of the Unknown" features strange droning sounds and trippy organ at the end. "Dance of the Supernatural" has this mechanical pulsing sound, while "Interplanetary Beings" features strange laser sounds. This one could have been easily used on the movie Fantastic Planet. "Cosmic Aura" really trips me out with those bizarre Moog leads, but the song ends abruptly leading me to think he simply ran out of tape before he finished recording it.

He only recorded one more album, Zero Gravity in 1975 before retiring (it's been said he sold his synths to Steve Roach, then a San Diego race care driver).

I love this stuff. Very unconventional stuff that reminds me a bit of Mort Garson at his weirdest (like Lucifer - Black Mass). It's pretty safe to say if you like Mort Garson's more off-the-wall stuff, you'll like this!