ARBORESCENCE

Ozric Tentacles are one of the many threatening psychedelic/space rock bands that have emerged over the years thanks to the sheer size of their ever expanding discography and the nature of their very off the wall music, but there's always been something intriguing about them. I was introduced to this band by a friend who lent me their Hidden Step album. From the moment I heard the first seconds of Holohedron I knew that this was a band that would take my full mind power to be able to accurately wrap my head around what they were doing. So I delayed. Procrastinated. I didn't buy any of the albums that I saw by them because I knew that the time was not right. And so the time was never right...

...Until one day I was searching through a used section of a local record store. A section which was totally unorganized other than by letter of artist, and what did I eventually find for a fantastic price than this record. The looming tree with its seemingly swirling reds and greens staring back at me beckoning me to buy it. It would be the car ride home that I would first listen to the album. Traffic was particularly bad that day and we wound up getting through the entire album in what was supposed to be a ten minute ride.

My first impressions of the music at the time: Hypnotic. Mind melting. Something of an outer body experience.

This is space and psych prog at its best. Very much incomparable to many of their genre peers, Ozric Tentacles are best described as pseudo-electronic instrumental freak-out prog with a hint of dancability (but not enough to be unstomachable). Opening with the quick 'n dirty Astro Cortex the tone and mood of the album gets pushed right into the hallucinogenic sections of the mind.

The songs are all fairly long, only one dipping under five minutes and the rest floating around the six to nine minute marks, but appropriately so. None of the songs are too long, all of the ideas are well developed before moving on to the next mind-imploding segment of the track and everything is played as crisp as one can get. The album features a number of different tracks to keep the album from becoming boring, Yog-Bar-Og is the longest and most ''out there'' of the mix, reaching subtle yet noticeable peaks of guitar wizardry with its riffs and solos while Arborescene employs pure space-outery through floating half-melodies to keep the audience in a state of comatose.

There's no weak tracks on the album, and (as mentioned before) they vary wildly to keep interest while still maintaining a common (if subtle) theme between them. Some tracks like the slow and groovy There's A Planet Here keep the audience's head bobbing in a seemingly perpetual lull while others such as the bombastic Myriapod are better at daring the audience to attempt to keep up.

It all comes down to this - this is entertaining, thought provoking, virtuoso-istic music which is just... excellent.

Recommended for all - especially those who love experimental instrumental music with an outer-worldly sound. 5 blinding stars! Never more shall I so ignorantly dodge an album from these musical geniuses!

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