3RD EAR EXPERIENCE

Jamming is the fundament, the name of the game here anyhow, quasi as usual. The band's regular core is aboard as expected, means Robbi (guitars, vocals), Amritakripa (synths), as well as Jorge 'Bassman' Carrillo. If you are new to their approach, the music lives from a blend of multiple influences, which also counts on mythological themes, or Robbi's roots in South Africa. And finally the impact coming from the Mohave desert environment where they are living. This in general leads into ethno/world flavoured space rock improv sessions. Thus either we have a proper orientation at ancient Indian styles concerning instruments and vocals. But they are also providing a stellar remake of a David Crosby song on the other hand.

The album opens with a terrific example of Robbie's passion to incorporate folk influences deriving from India. A Beautiful Question is drawing on very old Hindu stylistics, called Dhrupad. The kosmische Cosmos Glazed Elephant comes deliberately reduced, synth and percussion driven more or less. Melancholic, tension filled, hypnotic, Weep No More, My Friend is dedicated to songwriter and guitarist Neal Casal, who unfortunately died in 2019. Attention, several like-minded musicians are also contributing to this album, Troy Page (didgeridoo) as well as Trevor Madison on keyboards for example, and not to forget synthesizer wizzard Scott Heller aka Dr. Space. A real sensation, Timelessness Speaks shows some Hammond organ delivered by Becca Byram, that occasionally sounds like directly coming from a fairground.

'... I wonder who they are, the men who really run this land, and I wonder why they run it, with such a thoughtless hand ...' Obviously concipated as a protest song What Are Their Names? originally was written by David Crosby. Still evident, or what? This came up and evolved in the studio at about the same time the storm on the capitol occured. Including Teddy Quinn on the vocals the involved musicians are excellently capturing the 1970s mood, somehow reminds me of diverse The Byrds live excursions. Danny Frankel's drumming skills teaming up with extraordinary bass playing and Robbi's sensitive guitar input, wonderful! For me this marks the album's centerpiece. Easygoing space rock - 'Danny Frankel's 3rd Ear Experience' is another big shot, consequently I recommend to give it a chance.

The name of the album is a play on words that use their own group name combined with artist Dr. Space (from Oresund Space Collective) who collaborated with the band on this album. The album is made up of 5 jamming tracks with a total run time of over 73 minutes. The first 3 tracks were first recorded by 3rd Ear Experience and were then sent to Dr. Space who did final mixing after adding some overdubs to the existing music. The last two 'shorter' tracks were first recorded by Dr. Space who provided the basic track, and then sent on to 3rd Ear Experience who jammed along to these tracks. After all is said and done, the line-up for this collaboration consists of Jorge Bassman Carrillo on bass, Richard Stuverd on drums, Robbi Robb on guitars and guitar synths, Amritakripa on synths and who provides the 'middle earth' chants, John Whoolilurie on Saxophone and organ, Dr. Space on synths who also produced the album along with Robbi Robb, Eric Ryan on ambient and glissando guitar and Ryan Post on percussion.

The album starts with 'Screams of Eagle Bone' (14:50). This starts out with a nice driving rhythm which starts the album off with a nice rocking sound. Guitar and sax drive the first melodic section which eventually morphs into a guitar driven jam. The sax also comes in a lot and provides its own jams, melodic and also squawking and squealing at times. The jam settles in nicely, staying quite upbeat and leaning towards a stoner rock/space jam style. There are occasional swashes of spacey effects from the synth. Before the 8 minute mark, there is a slow deceleration as things adjust to a moderate pace and the guitar and bass take charge again. The layers tend to calm down a bit as synth effects and the guitar become more atmospheric and psychedelic sounding. The echoing and chiming of the guitar along with the heavy bass makes for a nice section, and soon the sax softly adds in some more sound. Just before 12 minutes, things calm even more as percussion softens and then suddenly starts to pick up the pace again and everything crescendos back to a sound more like the beginning of the track. All of the layers get louder and the whole thing accumulates into a swirling jam, then that slowly fades as spacey effects continue to the end.

'Anam Cara' (20:21) begins with nice effects with synth sounds shooting off everywhere, then a drum pattern helps bring everything together to create the background. While this goes on, the chanting vocals begin, but they stay at an even keel with the instruments, becoming one with the entire sound. Heavy percussion and bass continue with vocals and crazy effects and the intensity level ebbs and flows along creating a nice and unique sounding jam. Soon, the guitar takes over free wheeling over the heavy backdrop. Nice riffs by a synth keep things from getting stale. Layers of organ come in as the sound mellows a bit. The music softens even more entering an ambient stage provided by synth space effects and oscillating guitar/synth effects softly roll by. At 8 minutes, percussion comes back in with a moderately slow but consistent drum beat and the instruments soon fall into the rhythmic pattern, but remaining soft and blissful. A slow crescendo driven mostly by the bass pushes the song to more intensity and by the 11 minute mark, you know you are driving to a heavier sound, especially when the organ pushes to the front of the mix along with squealing guitars coming out of nowhere. When the climax of the crescendo is reached, the wailing guitars are having their way. After 14 minutes, the guitars calm down, the music softens, but then boils up again with another crescendo. Instead of reaching a climax however, the music rolls along in a flowing manner until the end while the guitar and organ take turns and everything stays in the same key and the chanting and psych sounds come back at the very end.

'Dreams of the Caterpillar' (22:12) begins with pulsating series of synth effects and noises for an atmospheric array of sound. After 5 minutes of psychedelic and experimental sound, the track becomes a bit more musical with a synth loop throbbing along which organizes the effects making them seem not so random. The synth ascends and descends while the musical rhythm boils along smoothly underneath. The underlying music grows as it goes along until by 9 minutes, it has established itself as a smooth sounding space jam with free floating guitar and tinkling cymbals over a moderate beat and continuing synth effects. After 12 minutes, heavy effects and sustained keys take over the guitar improvisation and the percussion fades to the background and then stops. A new percussive sound takes up the beat and the throbbing synth returns. A heavier rhythm comes in and the track picks up new steam while maintaining the same moderate rhythm. By 17 minutes, the rhythm is lost again but synth washes have taken over as the music moves back to an experimental and ambient style. After wandering along a while, the rhythm comes back bringing a push towards intensity before the 20 minute mark while squealing sounds like seagulls sound out. Intensity continues to build as it pushes its way towards an ending featuring a rousing guitar.

The next two shorter tracks are the ones that were laid out by Dr. Space before being given to 3rd Ear Experience. 'Coin in the Desert' (9:37) utilizes synth effects giving it an airy texture and something that sounds similar to a pan flute. The music has a more ethnic feel to it, and is a nice change in pace. A keyboard playing a sustained chord gives it all a nice foundation and after 2 minutes, active percussion patterns and heavy bass bring a lot of life to the track. The music floats along nicely, driven mostly by light guitar and synths/keys. At 5 minutes, a cacophony of percussion drowns out the previous sounds as hand drums and etc. create a toneless section. After a minute, and the synth creates a more melodic jam session that has a mid-eastern flair. All of the sound fades except for the soft synth/guitar sound and that eventually fades too.

'Sue's Dream World' (6:04) stais made up of mostly layers of synths creating a beautiful dreamy texture. This full, yet ambient sound makes one feel like being stuck in outer space somewhere, with the random harmonies of the universe swirling around. If you listen closely, this is very immersive.

This is an excellent album of psychedelic and spacey jams and experiments, with a surprising amount of variation not just from track to track, but also during each track. It is high quality and some of the best I've heard this year. I love the fact that it while it does include some space jamming, it also isn't afraid to explore and adjust, making changes without losing the flow. The music is smooth, at times very straightforward in its rock heaviness and other times laid back and ambient, experimental. But I found I never really got bored as there is enough change to keep the listener interested, yet doing so without interrupting the blissful sense of the music. With all the psychedelic/space rock bands and albums that have been around this year, this one really stands out as some of the best in my opinion, very authentic and dynamic, while not compromising the genre, but actually stretching it to become more explorative. This is a strong contender for being one of the best of the year.

3rd Ear Experience comes across as an ensemble nearing their peak quality on their fourth album "Stones of a Feather". Space rock with an improvised charm and character is the name of the game here, with versatility and variations as central supplemental phrases to describe the contents. If you enjoy music of this kind, then this is a CD that seriously merits a consideration as a must buy, for everyone else I'd say this is a fine manner in which to get familiar with the improvised school of space rock bands.

Clocking in at about 70 minutes, the album features 6 mostly instrumental compositions which crystallized during extended jam-sessions in the studio involving Amritakripta (keyboards, synths, vocals), Robbi Robb (guitar, vocals, productions), Richard Stuverud (drums), Jorge Carrillo (bass guitar), and two guest singers ' Alex Perez and Steven Young. In some way, the music illustrates the aesthetic views and theoretical foundations which one can find in Robbi Robb's 'The Art of the Jam Band: Concepts and intricacies for collective improvisation', 20-page musicological essay attached to the CD/Vinyl release. The essay itself is a sort of recourse to the young generation of aspiring musicians stating that Improvised Rock is incredibly rich and imaginative array of modern music.

While many modern impro-instrumental bands adhere to the principle 'play what you can' (creating actually the same sounds over and over), 3RD EAR EXPERIENCE are here to elaborate huge variety of creative approaches and bring multiple different colors to each new composition. In fact, each track on 'Stoned Gold' has its own stylistic identity (or even several identities). From vintage and forceful, classic power-trio Acid-Psyche-Rock (on opening 'Infinite Unmanifest'), through esoteric and synth-textured Space-Rock ('Iceberg Dreams' and 'Stoned Gold'), groovy-motoric, droning, distorted, and riffy Kaut-Rock and Heavy-Psycho ('I Am Not Robot'), towards Tribal-Rock and Afro-Beat ('No Walls, No Wars' and 'The Drone'). Each track on the album offers kaleidoscopic variety of stylistic elements and influences. As well as each track showcases intelligent, thoughtful, absolutely competent and artistic performance of each musician involved.

Summing up, 'Stoned Gold' is highly representative, expressive, inventive, stylish, challenging, and enjoyable album. This is 'must have' for lovers Psychedelic-Prog, Space-Rock, World-Fusion, and modern Impro-Rock in a broad sense. There is no Progress without Experiment, so yes, don't be afraid to experiment and try yourself in what you don't know yet!

Welcome, Robbi Robb shows up with a new challenging offer here. The follower of the bands anticipated 'Stones Of A Feather', where they successfully intended to transform feathers into stones and vice versa. Play what you don't know - on this occasion the main idea deals with 'The Art Of The Jam Band'. The approach is to introduce us, preferably young motivated musicians hereby, to his concepts and intricacies for collective improvisation. It all came up once with an inspirational writing addressed at his band mates and other like-minded fellows. And later, based on that, he wrote a real primer about this issue, summing up his experiences, advices, hints. Starting with the official release date 1st of November Space Rock Productions will be distributing special limited vinyl and CD editions. Including this book, needless to say. Consequently, besides the intellectual and spiritual component already mentioned, the tracks featured on 'Stoned Gold' are resulting from different improvisational sessions of course.

The line up is reduced to the essential core, speaking of Robbi on guitar, Jorge Bassman Carrillo, Richard Stuverud on drums and Amritakripa (synths). As for that the diversity concerning involved instruments is concentrated as well. This will pass a good impression by the way, how their live performances use to work on tour in general. Each song shows other stylistical elements, and as for that it is inevitable that some references to other known groups are coming up too. For example the first song Infinite Unmanifest somewhat sounds inspired by early Cream live trips in the vein of 'Spoonful', 'N.S.U' or 'Toad'. Mixed by Robbi himself the album is a proper blend of floating and heavy moments. With the focus on the latter for sure, due to an energetic, luxuriant, sometimes multi-tracked guitar input overall.

The bass guitar is variating in the same way, so that you may think each track shows another player, chapeau Jorge! Iceberg Dream sees them evolving from a trippy start to a heavier fast-paced execution. The intriguing I Am Not Robot passes over to a more halting doomy atmosphere, provided with massive slicing guitar and excellent effective drumming. No Walls, No Wars then is dedicated to Mister Trump I'm sure, though as well introduces a fallback regarding Robbi's roots, which are in South Africa. Tribal percussions furthermore, native chants, didgideroo. Including the closing The Drone this is intensively pointing to African Acid Rock, and his former band Tribe After Tribe in particular. There's a lot to discover on 'Stoned Gold'. Take your time for this lesson. You will learn to love it!

Wide open spaces, big skies and rugged landscapes - this marks an environment which will expand the musical possibilities quite naturally, especially unique to space rock. And now pay attention please, the opener Flight Of The Annunaki is accompanied at best by a video Casey Kiernan has produced, a professional photographer, who is running the Joshua Tree Photography Workshops. Really fantastic! It's a must! Some sort of dialectics - the album title, covering the music in its entirety on one side, but also self-contradictory somehow, manifests for the first time, as it all starts light as a feather with spheric synths, perfectly complementing the video sequences.

Kripa soon comes in with some other-worldly narration ... eh, is this played backwards probably? Or a new language similar to Kobaïan or Na'vi was born right here? No idea, sounds great and authentic anyway! But wait, this mysterious affair shortly evolves into a jazzy direction, due to the rhodes piano most likely, sort of losing orientation a bit though while having a breakdown hereafter ... and in the end leading into a furious heavy psych finale. Wow! Stones of a feather now! A tour de force. Hence you may have a little clue yet what will follow in addition ...

... anyway, even the old woman is dancing afterwards. Didgeridoo here and bass attacks there, fantastic organ work again, continual ebb and flow in behaviour ... until the Return Of The Peacock is occuring, who already stayed nearby since the year 2013 at least. Charming! Yes, this is very trippy and relaxed, decorated with flute, piano and sensitive guitar at best, quite similar to some songs produced by the band Quarkspace. And yep, it seems Darth Vader had a guest(?) appearance on Chungo, but a short one, as they are banishing him soon with some powerful dynamic. The dramaturgy stays 'til the end though, now it seems quite plausible why they have chosen just this song title.

Besides the opener Balladeer's Tale is another masterpiece ... and now I'm seemingly running out of attributes ... as Robbi and the other band mates are not running out of inspiration obviously. The song is wrapped up by some Black Sabbath feel, nevertheless drifting into a trippy hallucinogenic direction in between, this featuring some beautifully complementing guitar, synth and violin sequences. Showing some saxophone attendence Everlasting Sea only will appear on the double LP version, which is announced for the next year finally. And then - offered by a differing tour line up - Space Tripping has been recorded live in 2015 at Frankfurt, Germany, a high quality space rock jam for sure.

This time however I will prefer the studio excerpts. They are deriving from spontaneous ideas that came up during live improvisations on their 2015 tour and from free form jamming at the FurstWurld Gallery of Music and Performing Arts, where the band records. While guesting 18 local musicians in total 'Stones Of A Feather' is a product of a fruitful collaboration again. Needs time to explore. Richard Stuverud makes an excellent job on drums, not to forget. The proggy rhodes respectively organ appeals the more I'm listening ... well, that's enough methinks, now it's your turn.

If you are looking for a true space/psychedelic sound, where you can close your eyes and enjoy a quite amusing trip, you should seriously give this band a try! Without further ado, let's go to the analysis:

1) Arrangements Contrasting smooth and calm atmospheres with heavier passages, with lots of heavy metal guitars and psychedelic effects and synthesizers, we can notice here a very original sound, exploring modern textures with 70's flavor here and there. But in this work, the modern prevails over the old. Good taste arrangements and fine production. 5/5 stars.

2) Instruments The keys uses since modern ambient synths to hammond old-fashioned style, sustaining the base to the guitar-driving songs. The drums are strong and restless, not following a straight line. The bass is quite creative and audible. 5/5 stars. 3) Vocals The vocals are good, but not the best thing about this band actually. There is a female voice sometimes working as backing vocals and sometimes used in spoken words passages. The main singer has a deep-thick voice, which works very well in the context. Lots of special effects are used in order to create a psychedelic ambience. Unfortunately, there are parts in which the vocals and the background sound got confused, and at least I couldn't understand what the lyrics were saying or define the instruments. 4/5 stars.

It's incredible how underrated a band can be. I've never heard about them since a few days ago, and found them out by chance on youtube. This band is amazing; they are consistent and inspired in this work as a whole. A true space/psychedelic effort. It's worth joining to this trip. I give it 4 stars!

As a consequence the musical output essentially depends from the situation, the atmosphere, the mood .. and of course which musicians are available (or not) currently, simple as that. That's the reason why bassist Dug Pinnick is missing on this production and latin american rooted Jorge Bassman (who else, eh???) joined the task force. Well, they did it again, the third album from that extraordinary crew in the meanwhile. I like the colourful art work. But first of all this is a clever mixture of pre-arrangement and improvisation, I would say, you can listen to over and over again without being bored. The full range between hell and heaven - tightly packed with a running time of nearly 80 minutes.

Besides the glowing guitar input all over, this is featuring a powerful as well as tribal rhythm section, well placed synthesizer add-ons, Alan Swanson's virtuoso organ, spaced out saxophone by John Whoolilurie aso aso ... Tools opens this fortunate trip with melancholic guitar, a song rich in variety while enclosing floating as well as heavy rocking parts, even put with headbanging qualities. On Parsley Amritakripa offers some intriguing Indian chanting, though on the following White Bee changing to a transcendental or maybe even alienated expression when speaking in cosmic terms. Fantastic guitar presence here towards the end of the song!

Space Rock at its best, powerful and expressive more than ever, garnished with some ethno feel and several traces of Robbi's former band TRIBE AFTER TRIBE. With 'Incredible Good Fortune' they have succeeded in landing a new coup. Go and see for yourself - experience coupled with inspiration is an invincible amalgam. First contact? If not already happened, now at the latest it's time to get in touch with this crew - or freely adapted from Steven Spielberg - time for the Fortunate Encounters of the 3rd Ear Experience - 4.5 stars.

So this is another nice surprise which I came across recently ... due to the tribal rhythms and psychedelic influences I already had the band TRIBE AFTER TRIBE in mind in recent times - the song 'Ice Below' attracted my attention especially - and now the band's mastermind and guitarist Robbi Robb comes up with a new space rock project, plus two interesting albums at once on top of it. The 3RD EAR EXPERIENCE line-up is featuring various incarnations, more than ten members are involved in total. Additionally wellknown to me are bass player Dug Pinnick of KING'S X fame and Amritakripa, deeply involved in Indian music, also caring for the synthesizer goodies.

Somewhere deep in the Californian Mojave Desert they came together for a few days (respectively nights) to jam, a region being popular for the Joshua Trees ... and stargazing especially. Well, circumstances which are inspiring per se when it comes to a space rock crew, of course! For the sister album 'Boi' - which was released on the Megaforce Records label by the way - they have cut some jams up into eight regular songs. This self-released album though is comprised of four really extended excursions, where they let it flow with intent, with enough room for experiments.

The band starts the engines in a relatively common way - The Surface Of Last Scattering comes with groove and a jazzy touch, nice restrained organ (Alan Swanson) and saxophone (Aaron Merc) input inclusively. Drummer Eric Mouness serves a tremendous drive and overall this comes close to the Oresund Space Collective in parts, I would say. The following title track is trance pure on the other hand - the band's experimental side chops out. Amritakripa (Kripa in short) provides female voices which appear like coming from a foreign world, this reminds me of the German Chickencage Experience, I mean the vocal sisters MichaeLa Flame and Howling Mad Fishli especially.

Including some dramatic rebellion in between they are basically cultivating a wonderful meandering and partially hallucinogenic style here, with Robbi in top form. For one or two times it seems like the crew is drawing a cut, but another new attempt brings them forward once again - very inspired moments ... Pocket Full Of Stars works in a similar way, this time some digeridoo attendence has to be considered, also nice electric piano. However, the jam temporarily falls back into a lovely, fluffy direction, before they enter the absolutely intriguing finale, wow!

The ultimate long track High Lands initiates with an extended electronical session. This sounds like inspired by the Berlin School. You may not expect any change furthermore ... but right in the middle the band comes in with the already noted planitude of power - that means the song gradually increases to a massive statement in the end. 'Black Peacock' was recorded and mixed by second guitarist Eric Ryan - overall a fantastic spontaneous musical interaction of like-minded musicians, which does not leave anything to be desired. Kudos, Robbi, Dug and all the others ... for me, even after a bunch of listening sessions, this still is a magical attraction - 4.5 stars so far.