Lobby Loyde
Obsecration

Lobby Loyde: born in 1941, left us in 2007 due to lung cancer.

An Australian rock guitarist and singer-songwriter, he cut his teeth in the Purple Hearts and the Wild Cherries during the 60s.

But it was in the seventies that he became legendary: first guitarist in the pub-rock group Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, then in Coloured Balls, where he definitively shone with the 15-minute psychedelic hard-rock blues guitar tour de force “God”. He also briefly played in Rose Tattoo, before forming his own band and dedicating himself to a solo career.

Angry Anderson, singer of Rose Tattoo, would remember him this way:

More than anyone else, Lobby contributed to creating the Australian guitar sound, well before Angus Young, Billy Thorpe, The Angels, or Rose Tattoo. More than anyone else, Lobby inspired Australian rock bands, pushing them to take a step forward and play as loud and aggressive as they could. People are still trying to copy him to this day.”

It's no wonder then that his second solo album, “Obsecration,” released in 1976, is a true revelation, enthusiastically received by both critics and the public.

With its seventeen minutes Obsecrations Part A to D gushes from the dream's cracks like venomous pus from a festering wound, unveiling a mighty hard-rock guitar riff.

As the track progresses, the sound becomes as swift as it is blazing.

Thick and mighty, its texture is an encrustation, layer upon layer, of dirt so ancient it has fused with the skin, clinging like a husk.

The foul animal fumes emanating from the guitar are accompanied by the rock'n'roll howls of the singer: a werewolf dazed by liters of home-distilled whiskey guzzled down during murky full moon nights.

They are filthy cries, incoherent outbursts from a dockworker: the voice is hoarse from smoke and the tank top, now yellowed, sticks to the back.

Sweating lewdness from every pore, the barking is accompanied by the strumming of a progressive keyboard and the forceful bellowing of a saxophone.

A gimmi-page-like guitar solo bursts in halfway through the piece, winding sinuously along the twisted paths of the sound labyrinth.

Its primordial nature galvanizes the body, pushing every muscle to keep time until the psychophysical stagger.

As the energetic spasm of the rabid animal settles, the atmosphere becomes sunny and relaxed, and the guitar casually sketches a lysergic melody.

These are the last drops of blood dripped by a dying sun.

They drip like tears, tinting the waves before the star sinks into the ocean's oblivion.

In the entirely instrumental song A rumble with seven parts and a lap dissolve the blues effluvia emanating from the abrasive guitar envelop us in spirals of smoke.

The two minutes of the frantic instrumental dance A rock’n’roll Sunset resurrect the corpses of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry.

Goin’ to Louisiana is a fragrant rock blues that roots itself in the fertile ground of the primordial black music of New Orleans. The canine howls of psychedelic blues smeared with lard are carried across the ocean and echo in the pulsating silence that cloaks the Australian canyons. The air is humid and nauseating, saturated with sweats degenerated into powdery miasmas.

But it's Dreamtide that's the masterpiece of the album: an immaculate soul rock ballad and, at the same time, deeply venal... transcendent, yet extremely carnal.

A mud puppet washed away by flurries of crystal rain, until the raw crystal gleaming beneath the sludge is exposed.

Its fifteen minutes of duration are all a gentle rolling and unrolling of instrumental layers, of whispered promises laid on the meadows… and only half kept.

The music transports us to ponds with phosphorescent reeds, lulling us gently with the strumming of an acoustic guitar with a rustic aftertaste. It’s a swing on which glimpses of endless fields can be seen, where the notes are morning dew pearls trembling with life, dripping from the very wings of the wind.

It's a spell that hardly fits the suffocating landscapes of dusty blood-colored rocks vibrating in the Australian canyon heat; it rather evokes the blades of light washing the soft hills of Van Morrison's Ireland, tearing through the sky streaked with lead-colored clouds.

During the idyll a sleeping saxophone intermittently moans heart-wrenching laments; the electric guitar chirps effervescently, imploding into a thousand multicolored echoes; the piano dreams of love, sketching essential ideograms.

These are sounds spreading in the air like flowers pushed by the breath of the wind in a hollow trunk.

Planted in this instrumental humus as wet as it is fertile, the singer's verses sprout, bursting from the guts; the love passion (I know my love is real) is vomited from the stomach in a continuous merry-go-round recurring cyclically, second by second.

They are verses as poignant as they are solemn, the yolk of the flower to which the instrumental corolla is sewn. They are the very dough of the dream floating in the universe's placenta.

In the echo of the guitar flames the spark of Eddie Hazel among the dying embers.

The pace quickens as men hasten their steps. They want to capture time to imprison it in an hourglass, to place it on the bedside table, to spend a lifetime counting its grains.

With the pursuit of the zenith, from soul-rock we pass to hard rock, in a frantic and spasmodic sequence.

The drums fidget frantically, the guitar moans at the approach of the much-coveted climax, crackling acidic while the blaze flares up.

The singer's paper heart burns among the flames of the guitar fire, spurting, first scorching and then incinerating the hourglass.

The saxophone screams incoherent laments, drunk with passion; filthy choirs of black farmers keep time.

The music has devoured time.