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Rating:
This is my album of 2019...no stories, no bullshit, no mind games!!
End of story...
Released exactly four months ago; I'm only now talking about it because I got hold of it, physically, just a few hours ago. Due to a misunderstanding with the decade-long "musical pusher" of my Domodossola. The only little shop of auditory trinkets still alive in this Ossola, now abandoned to its ill-fated destiny; and I'm not just referring to Music.
I had agreed with Stefano: to send me a "uasup" message as soon as he got hold of this work of art. For a few weeks, the musical support had already arrived at his store...but Stefano thought that good Lorenzo (alias De...Marga... and/or Genital Grinder) would pass by to pick it up without any phone notice. It's easy to imagine that this way, we entered a vicious circle that prevented me from listening to the second long-distance work of The Claypool Lennon Delirium much earlier.
This morning, by pure chance, I met the friendly supplier...and finally, South of Reality is in my hands!!
I longed for this moment; I had been waiting for weeks to handle, with relative enjoyment, the support. Open the cardboard package, savor that familiar and "spicy" smell of the inner booklet. Read all the chronicle notes of the album, etc...etc...and finally dive into the listening. A single listen, which is not yet completed while I quickly jot down two or three immediate thoughts about the album.
Where do I start? Where do I begin?
I've already written that it's my album of the year; because you know very well that I've always rooted for the fisherman Les Claypool; first with the PRIMUS and then with all the multiple projects this genuine phenomenon launched; my personal hero...things written dozens of times here on the site. But repetita iuvant, as the wise and moderate Latins used to say.
With him is Sean Lennon, who needs no introduction.
They record in the serene calm, relatively speaking, given the presence of Les's restless children, at Rancho Relaxo owned by the flamboyant and histrionic bassist.
They do everything themselves; with very few external help. They take care of the mixing, production, recording whatever and however they want. A "free" spirit snakes throughout the album's duration. The work is divided into nine tracks for about forty-eight minutes of Psychedelic Space Progressive Rock that looks back, plunging headlong into the alien and alienating music of past decades. With particular and subtle privilege for the sixties and seventies.
Traces of Hawkwind; highly drugged incursions into Barrett-era Floyd. It's the spirit of uncle Frank from Baltimore that is always well present and alive; a flow of emotions; a musical fluid that flows peaceful, mellifluous, dreamy, overflowing with heavily drugged psychedelia. Marks of the Fab Four that emerge in Sean's sung tracks where his noisy guitar takes the lead.
A sound now acidic, now turned east, soon after splattered...but always very clear and focused. It's necessary at this point, to credit what I've just typed, to listen and mention one of the cornerstones of the batch. Namely the eight minutes of "Amethyst Realm" with that six-string sound that's the legitimate child of the best David Gilmour.
The lush brushstrokes, the killer bass slaps from the world's best bassist, are not missing. Les remembers to pay homage to his Primus as happens in the constrained, timewise, title track. It feels like standing in front of a murky outtake from the remote recordings "of the sailing in the seas of cheese". A goofy, splashed, spatial version close cousin of "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver".
All that remains is to finish listening to the album. With debaser, I stop here.
Target hit!!! Top marks...and how could I not...LITTLE FISHES...
To Better Things.
Tracklist and Videos
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