BLOW YOUR MIND

Here again, Sébastien Gramond reverts back to his psychedelic roots, all the while maintaining his keyboard-heavy newer sound. As was also heard on 'Space Chrono', Gramond was trying to mix his styles together to create a more solid and concrete sound with which to draw upon. Unfortunately, as it was only remotely successful with 'Space Chrono', it is the same with 1995's 'Blow Your Mind'. A well-played foray into Gramond's drug addled mind, 'Blow Your Mind' shows that no matter how promising a musician may be, a great album is never promised for certain.

From the first track 'Make Love In The Sky Onwards', one can tell that Gramond is a highly drug- centric artist. Singing in a French-accented, somewhat weak and muffled tenor, Gramond tells how he will eat magical mushrooms for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and always just the right amount. While plenty of fantastic albums have been made over the years that revolve around the intake of psychedelic compounds, Gramond's lyricism rarely succeeds at making it anything more than tacky, and even a bit humourous at times.

Musically, the album is a step up from it's spiritual successor 'Space Chrono', feautring some of the best jamming and improvised guitar work Gramond has done to date. Ranging from progressive hard rock to reggae to even a few moments that could be seen as being almost 'metal' in nature, the album is highly varied throughout its four tracks. However, something that is not found in the album is a sense of flow, which generally hurts the overall effect of the album, instead feeling like a compilation of four relatively strong tracks.

A skilled musician but questionable vocalist and lyricist, \Blow Your Mind' is also weakened by a pedestrian production value, really restricting the instruments and performances from coming alive. That being said however, the music is quite good here; some of the best I have seen from Gramond so far. Everything aside, there are still issues holding Gramond's music down.