The Steppes
Drop Of The Creature

I love the color that extends beyond the margins because everything that happens beyond the contours is wonderful and can only be reached through the "lost trails".

How many of you owe Claudio Sorge and his Lost Trails? Until the early '80s, as far as I'm concerned, the garage was that place where my father parked the car. After the first reading of the Holy Grail, nothing was the same again. Suddenly it became an industrial depot where ambiguous types with striped shirts, dark-lensed goggles, and bizarre names wandered: Fuzztones, Vipers, Gavedigger V, Droogs, Sick Rose, The Pandoras, Miracle Workers. And there was no more space for my father's Fiat 127.

Naturally, there were also the Steppes.

Brothers John and David Fallon were just over twenty in the '80s and had survived the time of standing-on-chair poetry and school interrogations. The only things they now remembered by heart were the tracks of "Fifth Dimension," the Rickenbacker catalog, and the legends about the Fab Four read in independent fanzines.

The visionary is always in search of fantastic shades in the gears of time. Beyond the ordinary paths of life, there are nooks you never reach by chance.

The Steppes, fantastic dream vendors, are right there, in that limbo halfway between heaven and earth, with psychedelic liveries colored "diamond-studded sky" and guitars soaked with kerosene and worn tires. "We were like a late '60s band catapulted into the wild '80s," says John Fallon in an interview full of memories. In his time machine, there is also space for our Italy where they embarked on the arduous task of playing two live shows in two different cities on the same night. John's story is a flight of fancy between roads, stages, and studio work and naturally leads to the stunning full-length (after the promising, self-titled EP in 1984) called "Drop Of The Creature".

"The sound and image merged in perfect union," asserts John, speaking passionately about their first album. And who could blame him? An intoxicating blend of psychedelic rock and acid folk spreads and dances over the lace of the fortress on the cover, with the Steppes in the foreground adorned with late Victorian trimmings and embellishments.

The record opens with the swirling, frantic "A Play On Wordsworth," grazed by six minutes of acid guitars chasing each other in a timeless land. A thick fog descends between the vinyl grooves, creating the ideal milieu for "Somebody Waits," a piece worthy of the best Irish-Folk tradition, with a marked aftertaste of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. The following "Holding Up Well" has an evident Doors-related ancestry, and its organ seems to be taken hostage by Manzarek's experienced fingers. How many of you see the Spanish caravan in the sinuous paths of the song? The influences are many, explicitly shown, and heavily touch all the pieces on the record. "Sky Is Falling" is an intricate arabesque of riffs and solos merging into a sonic orgy. Due to a somewhat funny resemblance, the refrain seems like the English twin of "Sotto il segno dei pesci" by our national Antonello. "Make Us Bleed" follows the typical construct of the paisley underground, as does "See You Around." "Cut In Two," lively yet roguish, offers an enticing dialogue between John Fallon's bottleneck and his brother David's bass. Cryptic soundscapes create an ideal parallel with the cold moors lost in the fog in Northern Ireland. The scenarios change briskly with pedal strokes, amidst cushioned fuzz and daring wah-wah. In "Lazy Ol' Son," a hypnotic ballad with oneiric plots, the specter of the Doors reappears, almost inspiring their personal "Moonlight Drive." It is followed by "Bigger Than Life," a folk track with a lysergic aroma, with extemporaneous echoes of guitars and sinister voices offstage, "Black Forest Friday," the most hallucinated and visionary piece of the LP, and "More Than This" with its militant antimilitarism.

The Fallon brothers spent much of their lives in the States, but on this album, their beloved rural Ireland is a tangible presence manifesting in every segment of the eleven tracks, lingering in the cover snapshot.

Cherry Red Records in 2011 acquired the rights to their albums and reissued their entire discography, rightly considering "Drop Of The Creature" a crucial link between the psychedelia of the past and the new lysergic bands that expand the genre's list.

"I am still an intellectual acid dandy, only now I no longer wear green velvet but tend to look more like a '60s private investigator!" said John Fallon in the final lines of the interview.

Once the microphones were off, he donned his tweed coat and closed the door behind him, getting lost in the fog, beyond the contours of reality, toward new lost trails.