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Rating: Here's a bold statement: it's the best psychedelic album I've ever heard, TIE'.
And thank goodness it's a mini LP: so much stuff, complete, it's the full optional of psychedelia, and in less than half an hour you're thoroughly cooked. The guru of this revelation goes by the name of Mark Nine, a guitar-illuminated figure in the Agharti of Los Angeles' underground scene.
Briefly: We already find Mark9 in the early '80s engaged in recordings with metropolitan poet Randall Kennedy and a cassette of the Galaxie of Prizes, where we witness a brilliant reality. Stunning tracks like "A Rise From The Ruins", "Never Ending Night", "Heroin", are documented on "Viva Los Angeles", that magnificent 1986 compilation released by Viva Records in Rome, an event recognizing that powder keg (which exploded) that was the Californian trance.
Master guitarist, also of John Frusciante, and many other things, Mark Nine is a seller of those glasses with which "you could see through clothes", advertised alongside other improbable gadgets on the last page of trashy magazines from the '70s. Only this time the glasses work: the Ministry Of Love thoroughly explore, providing a complete spectrum, the psychedelic world.
They are assisted by an important presence: the appearance of William Faircloth, future singer of the Red Temple Spirits, another gutsy group spreading the lysergic word. William lends his perfect voice and completes the act along with drummer Roger Beall.
The formula is brilliant and quite simple: playing the old psychedelia of the '60s with a futuristic touch. Seems easy, huh? Let's simply call it neopsychedelia.
The electrically charged cathartic passages offered in a very lucid manner, of all compositions, fully engage, stirring the strings from the lowest chakras up to the pineal. The cunning in playing the guitar of such Nine is disarming: it evokes the spirit of Jimi and all those who have a carnal relationship with the instrument.
Produced by its own label, Underworld Records, transparent green vinyl streaked with black stripes (there's also a blue version), the usual limited edition of 1000 copies, if they get there, a kaleidoscopic photograph of the combo where they invite you into the mirror of yourself: it exudes from all sides the desire to explore unexplored regions of our psyche with a healthy high-voltage shock.
After a few listens, it brings out the Buddhist smile: in the first track, the soothing “Nuclear Stone Age”, it starts with a calling card that puts us on alert, but it's already in the second track, the galloping “Psychic Nation”, that we exclaim Me cojoni! The first side ends with a mantric ballad of stellar beauty: "You’re Not On Your Own". On the second side, "Living In The Moment" might provoke reactions like: "wow that's deep..." but it's so lulling that we'd remain in illusion if we couldn't drown with abandonment in this opiate liquid.
And finally, the stratospheric “This Magic Kingdom” where the multi-instrumentalist Nine, doing it all himself, superbly showers us with a refreshing acid bath. And to think that back then we could have availed ourselves by mail of his guitar course, 400 pages of lessons, the infamous MEGAMETHOD!
And there they are finally on the back cover photo, sitting on the zebra couch, ecstatic in their own way, with the impression that they want to say: "Care to join us for a stroll?"
Peace & LSD to everyone!
Tracklist
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