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I have always considered the London band as a quintet of Martians who landed by mistake on planet Earth aboard their spaceship completely lined with acids and equipped with "mushroom" beams.
This album is their first, dated 1997, and the title alone indicates the mental state of the confused Albions. In short, you can say anything about their "shattered neurons" condition, but it's the final product that explains why certain music can only be created in particular types of situations and especially when chemistry flows through the veins.
The formula is a classy psych-acid-fuzz-rock, very expansive at times powerful and technical at the same time; it starts with the onslaught of "The Astral Project" and "Magic Carpet," then transitions to the liquid-rubbery intro of "Saruman's Wish" and the 2 minutes and 30 of "Song Of The Purple Mushroom Fish," entirely acoustic with a clover flavor where the mind is transported to a dimension made of bubbles and "rubbery Venuses".
Noteworthy are the next two tracks, "Aquatic Fanatic" and "Lothlorian"; the former gives back the guise of "classy hitters" to the orange goblins, while the latter encapsulates in just over a minute what Dead Meadow has been aiming to achieve for years.
Towards the end, we have "Land Of Secret Dreams," "Orange Goblin," and "Star Shaped Cloud"; the pattern remains the same, transitioning from moments of pure psychedelia to impassable walls of sound where monolithic guitars lay the groundwork for Ben Ward's strictly filtered voice.
I wonder if this "planet ten" really exists; I believe it does, but perhaps it's purely the imagination of this orange goblin who has been coming back to annoy me for a few days and keeps turning up in my CD player and refuses to leave.
Let there be stoned!
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