STRANGEITUDE

While not as brilliant as its predecessor "Erpland", "Strangeitude" is yet another highlight in the Ozrics' prolific career: its well accomplished combination of synth-driven electronic magic, psychedelic art rock and ethnic multi-colours makes this album - together with "Pungent Effulgent", "Erpland" and "Jurassic Shift" - a perfect presentation of Ozric Tentacles' musical ideology at the top of its creativity and excitement. 'White Rhino tea' and 'Sploosh!' are utterly OT-ish jam oriented numbers, if only with a tighter attitude than ever before, an increased tightness exhibited in the guitar riffs, the synth layers, and a more aggressive rhythm section. Things get a bit more sophisticated with the Arabic-like fusionesque 'Saucers', one of the finest and most articulated tracks in the whole OT repertoire. The title track is really strange, or more accurately speaking, weird and disturbing in its intro part: after that, the electronic spacey jam thing resurfaces while some of the initial weirdness is maintained via the sounds of what seem to be radio voices and machines operating. 'Bizarre Bazaar' returns to the realms of Arabic ambiences, with an added touch of latin jazz, always keeping that electronic spacey foundation working as a recurrent basis that the harmonic layers are supposed to expand upon and the rhythm section is supposed to reinforce. This is the catchiest track in the album, but some more catchiness is to be found soon in 'Space between Your Ears': this one starts as a techno- reggae number, comprising hypnotic sound tricks and eerie lines on guitar and woodwind, until a harsher section begins and creates the most incendiary jam in the whole album. An energetic live rendition of the exotic 'Throbbe', a habitual classic in OT setlists, closes down the album. Generally speaking, this is a "business as usual" album, yet it would be unfair to revile it or even not to give it a good rating, since the repertoire is high-quality and exciting: my rating for "Strangeitude" is somewhere in between 3 and 3 1/2 stars.