BORN

I still remember the buzz over ASTRA's debut "The Weirding" back in 2009, the advertised retro sound packed with mellotron made it a must have for me back then and it delivered. A 5 star album for me and I mention it because the dynamic duo of Brian Ellis and Conor Riley led the way on that one and this is their new project called BIRTH. I wonder if they named the band after the song "Birth" from "Quipu" a Brian Ellis solo album from 2011?

In some ways I like this even better than "The Weirding" we do get a different rhythm section and I'll say this the drummer had my attention early on, the man can play. That would be Paul Marrone previously in RADIO MOSCOW but also playing on a different Brian Ellis solo album from 2015 along with the bass player Trevor Mast who is here on "Born", so yes the rhythm section has a history with each other.

Another connection is the band PSICOMAGIA listed here under Jazz with three of the four band members here being on the lone album they released. And there's some Jazz flavours on this record which blows me away. Psychedelic bands in general aren't considered to be complex or featuring prodigy- like players by a long shot but BIRTH is different these guys are into a lot of different styles including Zeuhl(see Ellis solo album from 2011) and of course Jazz Fusion and we get some electric piano here and walking bass. But this is dominated by late 60's early 70's psychedelia and this is as legit as it gets.

Conor by the way is on the latest MONDO DRAG record from 2023 which I hope to review in a week or so. We get six tracks over 41 minutes and there's a typo with the track length on "For Yesterday" which shows 8:08 and it should be 9:08. This album is so consistent and uniform but within that they do change things up as both Conor and Brian are multi-instrumentalists. I really like the vocals too and the overall package with the lyrics included and art work is pretty cool.

Voted 14th overall by the collaborators for 2022 which is impressive for a psychedelic record. It's in my top five for 2022 so I'm even more impressed.