Cold Sun
Dark Shadows

"The sixties beatnik scene linked to peyote seemed to have always existed - it has been among the hippies since hippies existed and long before acid was invented. It was legal and could be bought in cactus shops or greenhouses. Things were much cooler then, before acid made its appearance." Bill Miller.

Austin, Texas decisively appears on the rock map in 1966, thanks to the dazzling debut of the 13^th Floors Elevators, and their fiery performances. Among the genuinely adoring audience, the very young Bill Miller and Tom McGarrigle are often seen; they are the founders and only permanent members of the band Amethysts. Miller is quite a peculiar character, with a particular fondness for the desert and the reptiles that inhabit it, for peyote, and for mystical religions. Musically, he is fascinated by the use the Elevators make of the Jug and decides to shift his focus to the Harp, building an electrified one that will characterize his entire career. Tired of the continuous defections by the various singers who passed through, the two begin to split the vocal parts and in 1968 they get in touch with the first drummer of the Elevators, John Ike Walton, upon his return to Texas. Walton decides to collaborate on the new project and immediately contacts his old friend Bill Josey Sr, owner of Sonobeat Records. The 1969 sessions at Sonobeat studios produce a master, which unfortunately Josey fails to place at Columbia, as promised and as he had just done for guitarist Johnny Winter, so much that by the spring of '70, everything was ready, but nothing happened. The band, which had meanwhile renamed itself Dark Shadows, continues without much success and "only" 3 years later, the new bassist Michael Ritchey manages to recover the old material at Sonobeat studios and gets an acetate made to listen to on his hi-fi system, despite not having participated in the recordings.

Both the tape and the acetate, which remains the only existing copy, disappear to reappear only in 1989 when Ritchey plays the songs for Rich Haupt and Mike Migliore of Rockadelic Records in Dallas. The two are literally blown away and immediately ask to be able to release them, so Ritchey puts them in contact with Miller, who is very reluctant to share his old material, but the three manage to convince him that it is great music. Even though they secure Miller's consent, there are some problems to overcome, the first being the band's name... Ritchey, the owner of the original tapes, claims it to be Cold Sun while Miller says they were intended to call themselves Dark Shadows and that it should have been the name for the release... Migliore manages to circumvent the obstacle by putting them both, effectively increasing the allure, with the cover designed and created by Rockadelic and the desert back with a gecko in the foreground as satisfaction for Miller's expressed desire. The record is pressed in only 300 numbered copies, which are quickly snapped up... "Over the years I could have pressed many more both in vinyl and CD, but I am happy to have honored the promise made to Bill of pressing only 300," Migliore will later recall.

The opening with "Ra-Ma" is simply dazzling, pure and crystalline lysergic fluid that winds like a snake through the sun-baked desert cracks, alternating moments of Californian psychedelia with furious stoner rides well before their time.  Certainly, they don't have the sounds of Kyuss or Sleep, but the desert, the reptiles, the peyote, the "heaviness" of the harmonic constructions, the sudden accelerations, the unhealthy air that one breathes... they are certainly the seed. "Here In The Year" is a very soft "Dylanesque" ballad, slightly marred beyond halfway by a brief space ride that ends in a noisy progression, while "See What You Cause" is pure Velvetian blues, due to Miller's love for Lou Reed's band, for whom they opened a couple of evenings during their Texas tour in 1968. The powerful rock of "Twisted Flower" and the more "country" one of "South Texas" are two other lysergic visions of the immense desert spaces, perfectly drawing the mystical wanderings linked to the peyote journeys to which they were devoted. "There was a strong chattering of geckos in this motel. Geckos have a voice. Peyote is more audio-oriented than any other drug I know. Tom McGarrigle's guitar sounded like a gecko's voice at that time," comments Miller. "For Ever" and "Fall" close the album, emphasizing even more than before how much Cold Sun/Dark Shadows are the true ancestral cry of stoner, with the over seven minutes of the second that grind most of the doubts one might have on the matter at high speed.

Seek it out... do not fear.