The 13th Floor Elevators
The Psychedelic Sounds of

Summer 1966, Austin (Texas): for the first time the term "psychedelic" is applied to the music scene. The 13th Floor Elevators embody the most spontaneous and sincere idea of psychedelia, perhaps because they were among the first to use LSD, and its effects, as a driving force for music. Theirs was an attempt (one of the first) to translate into music the sensory revolution that acid intake provoked, to the point of becoming proponents of an "LSD mysticism" through which, as the notes of the LP state, it would be possible "to reconsider the Aristotelian division of human knowledge."

Nowadays, such statements might bring a smile for their naivety, as may some lyrics – "After the trip your life open's up, you start doing what you want to do" – but at the time they sounded very liberating, especially in a conservative state like Texas. The sound outcome of these mental openness experiments had nothing to do with the long jams of contemporary Grateful Dead, but takes inspiration from a garage-beat sound, accompanied by the constant gurgle of the electric jug (an electrified amphora). This very instrument with its disorienting sound – legend has it that the pitch changed according to the amount of weed contained in it! – gives the compositions a subtly unsettling and deeply hallucinogenic character.

The album contains high-grade psychedelic tracks such as Rollercoaster, Fire Engine (a piece that opens with a fire engine siren!), Kingdom of Heaven, or Thru the Rhythm, alternated with pearls of pure garage-punk like the opening You're Gonna Miss Me (who remembers the beginning of the movie "High Fidelity"?) or the fabulous Reverberation.

Unfortunately, the journeys of Ericson and his companions lasted the span of two albums and a posthumous one: police on their heels, drug excesses, and religious delusions led the group to disband and the leader to be admitted to a criminal asylum. Yet Ericson's insights remained, inspiring over the years the most disparate bands, a fate that sadly ties him to another psychonaut without a return ticket: Syd Barrett.