Red Crayola
The Parable of Arable Land

I would have liked to say something different, but I can't help but align myself with the opinions of other reviewers and enthusiasts. "The Parable of Arable Land" is one of the most shocking albums ever.

We are in 1967, deep south of the USA, Houston to be precise, the creation of guitarist Mayo Thompson, the Red Crayola, and about fifty people among friends and relatives, called "Familiar Ugly". The historical context is well-known, the years of hippie culture, emerging psychedelia, sexual revolution, excessive drug use.
The Red Crayola do not seek immediate notoriety, they do not come from fashionable environments like the contemporary Velvet Underground, they have different goals: trying to free music from any stylistic, structural, and conceptual constraints. They submit themselves to real "Acid Test" sessions where live recordings of the "Free-Form Freak-Out" instrumental orgies at 100 hands, a collection of noises generated from any object that comes to hand will be made.

This immense masterpiece is alternated by the use of these improvisations with pieces, let's say, that have some completeness. The effect is absolutely disorienting: the songs emerge from the most ferocious chaos remaining ethereal, surreal objects.
Like the first piece "Hurricane Fighter Plane" which, thanks to a bass riff, rises from the first violent "Free-Form Freak-Out", irresistible the voice of Mayo that resembles an Elvis on acid. Obviously, the album is very fragmented, at every moment the trance the group was in is perceived, instrumental dissonances, vocal delirium, screams, sound blocks bouncing from one channel to another. There are explicit messages and stances like in "War Sucks", a violent diatribe against war. The psychotic magma dissolves into other free movements becoming curious dissonances immersed in a cosmic darkness, echoing the concept of a lysergic journey through echoes, dissonances, noises, silences, curious sounds.

There are not many comparisons to this music. One might notice some references to Zappa, American psychedelia like 13th Floor Elevators, the avant-garde of Cage and Varlese, immensely admired by Mayo Thompson, but believe me, this remains a unique masterpiece in the history of rock, "surreal noise" is how I would define this music.
And I will venture even further. This album is astonishing at least, if not more so, than the masterpieces of '67 (we remember the debuts of Pink Floyd, Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, and "Sgt. Peppers"), and in my opinion, it deserves total and complete attention and dissemination.
Believe me...