Randy Holden
Population II

What would happen if Jack White were in charge of unleashing the fury of a wall of sixteen 200 Watt amplifiers at full power and his adventure companion Meg was actually able to play the drums? In flight (at the release of this album, temporarily, soon to be permanently) from Blue Cheer's "New! Improved! Blue Cheer", Randy Holden gives us the answer in this 1970 album, crafted with the most primordial and magmatic material of rock, bursting with energy like a young universe inhabited by the brightest Population II stars (hence perhaps the cosmic and somewhat enigmatic title?).

As "Guitar Song", the track opening the collection, tells us, "Population II" is a visceral declaration of love from a guitarist for the sound of his guitar, launching into monolithic riffs and killer solos. The beginning, entrusted to shades between blues and jazz, evolves into a track that already contains all the seeds of doom and stoner, reminiscent of what Holden had already done with Blue Cheer, but also open to a darker and more devastating evolution, power chords and riffs repeated cyclically, alternating with solo parts where the hyper-amplified guitar complains powered by its own feedback, over which stretches the vocalism sometimes wild, sometimes in trance (as in the spoken parts, not far from some Hendrix stuff) of the guitarist himself. Holden becomes one with the sound he unleashes, heavily and nimbly rhythmically driven by Chris Lockheed's drums, dragging us into a whirlwind of mutant blues, psychedelic proto-metal, a true Holy Grail for all the Air Guitar players of the world.

The album's atmosphere is thus marked, truthfully making the work a bit monotonous in the long run. Yet you just can't help but get excited when the disruptive and Sabbath-like riffs of "Fruits & Icebergs" (sic!) kick in, a reworking of a track written by Holden for Blue Cheer and already appeared on "New! Improved...", combined with Jeff Beck-like sustained laments and real guitar whistles in a track that, listened to at full volume, erodes little by little consistently and terrifyingly effectively, and which is connected to the subsequent "Between Time/Fruits & Icebergs (Conclusion)", lost among tribal dances, the Traffic of "Give Me Some Loving", the Rolling Stones of "Jumping Jack Flash" and solos that seem to permeate and make every single air molecule vibrate. "Blue My Mind" presents itself as a slowed-down and powered-up version of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song", perhaps with banal lyrics that lose significance in front of the harmony between guitar and drums (if you happen to see the inner image that animated the old gatefold album cover, with Holden and Lockheed overwhelmed by the former's legendary amplifiers, you get the idea of listening to this track), while the finale is entrusted to the long marathon of "Keeper of My Flame", ten minutes of hard garage/west-coast riffs, almost Native American reminiscences, Steppenwolf-like hardness less accelerated, double bass drum passages, harmonics made to whistle by feedback, vocal delirium in which Holden seems to transform his own larynx into his guitar, and three very troubled final minutes where everything slows down and extremes.

Like Population II stars, Holden too, with this work, does his part to synthesize his heavy metal elements, creating a sound still highly coveted today, and in many ways unmatched. Absolutely find a way to let yourself be carried away by the drifts of this mighty Big Bang...