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Rating: In 1995, Mercury Rev was going through a phase of significant changes: the singer David Baker, who, although not an active part of the songwriting process, represented the element of freak anarchy, had recently left the group; in addition, the duo Donahue-Mackiowiak, the band's main minds, desired a stylistic change.
From the piercing guitar feedback of their beginnings, still balanced by a crooked melodic vein, of the first two albums (“Yerself Is Steam”, “Boces”), they transitioned to the baroque and dreamy atmospheres of “Deserter’s Songs”. From that point on, the MR chose to continue along the path of Deserter’s, completely abandoning the mad and unsettling component of their early works, with results that were not always exhilarating.
Between these two phases, there is an album: “See You On The Other Side”. A difficult transitional album that shows a clear decline in inspiration. It is indeed situated halfway between noisy psychedelia and dreamy pop, failing in its attempt to combine these two souls.
But also in 1995, the band created the side-project Harmony Rockets, intended for the release of “Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void”.
A 40-minute jam, recorded live in New York. It is total improvisation, but without exceeding in onanistic experimentalism. The phrasing between guitars and horns seems to find a new meeting point between psychedelia with a kraut flavor and free-jazz. An uninterrupted flow of melodic disorder. Floating avant-gardism. Astral hypnosis. Ecstatic catharsis.
“Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void” is not the soundtrack of a hallucinatory movie; it is the movie itself. A film for the ears, for the mind, and for everything else you want. A cosmic journey without the need to leave Earth's orbit.
Words, by now, are overused to describe the genre in question, making any further description superfluous for fear of fueling certain clichés. Therefore, all I can do is refer you to all of this.
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