Steeplejack
Dream Market Radio

THE REVIEW

The Steeplejack - one of the best Italian bands from the '80s neopsychedelia wave - are still active, as demonstrated by the recent "Dream Market Radio" (2014) released in collaboration with three small and talented underground labels: Area Pirata, Psych Out, and Rock Bottom.

They were one of the few groups from that creative period that could truly be defined as psychedelic. The album is divided into four thematic parts and is an authentic hallucinatory and psychedelic journey that will project you towards ancient and unknown constellations. The influences remain the same: early Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, 13Th Floor Elevators, Captain Beefheart, dirty blues, and acid American folk. The whole is revisited in a personal way with great originality and visionary talent. The initial "Matter Of Dreams" is a lysergic ride that opens up phantasmagoric horizons.

It's like returning to the atmospheres of the mythical "No One’s Land" from "Pow Wow" (the 1988 masterpiece album) as if time had never passed. The following track "There Was A Time" is also beautiful, while "(The Horse Of The) Knight Errant" is a long acid blues track - where we encounter the ghost of Captain Beefheart - that becomes abstract, creating hallucinatory landscapes. "Gallows Pole" is a raw reinterpretation of a traditional blues. "Longitudes And Latitudes" is a very "Barrett-like" track: it is a small psychedelic gem.

The album as a whole does not falter in tone and always maintains the proper tension. "Behind The Sun" is another stellar ride that reminds of "Under A Thumb Of Stars" also from the immense "Pow Wow". "Ladybird" is instead a wonderful acoustic and folk composition. It is music that resonates with the echoes of nature as in "Song For The Last Level" where we're accompanied by the chirping of cicadas, and it's rich with intimate and mythical moments like in the acoustic "Wild Oat And Stones". With "All The Time All The Time All The Time", we enter into improvised lysergic territories with Curadi's guitar recalling the legendary acid improvisations of the Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Grateful Dead. The album closes with a distorted cover of "Kandy Korn" by Captain Beefheart and "Dam", another liquid and abstract track.

The attached CD also contains a ghost track, a live version of "All The Time All The Time All The Time". "Dream Market Radio" is a monumental album, a great fresco of psychedelia that confirms all the value of the ingenious Steeplejack.