Tag: psychedelic rock

beatles - magical mystery tour
CD, Vinyl

The Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

Man, 1967 was a busy year for The Beatles.  Only a few short months after Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band came the ill-advised television special Magical Mystery Tour.  If you’ve ever seen the film, it’s a poorly contrived mess; a huge departure from the fun of A Hard Day’s Night and Help!.  Fortunately, the new songs that accompanied the film were still pretty damn great, and so we can still hold our head high with Magical Mystery Tour the album, even if the second side is filled with previously released singles. Continue reading “The Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour (1967)”

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beatles - sgt pepper
CD, Vinyl

The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Retired from touring in 1966 and given the freedom to explore other avenues of creativity, The Beatles regrouped and went into full-on experimental mode, crafting a vaguely conceptual album about a fictitious band with which they could embrace new technologies and make music unfettered (to a point) and untethered (to a point) from the musical zeitgeist their previous work created.  Thus was born Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the only album to ever inspire a film starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees.  If that’s not a legacy, I don’t know what is. Continue reading “The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)”

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beatles - rubber soul
CD

The Beatles: Rubber Soul (1965)

This is where it starts.  When I think about The Beatles, I think about Rubber Soul.  I think about the sudden jump in production experiments, the way albums stopped being collections of songs and started becoming albums.  The jump from your frolicking boys on Help! to the grown, curious men on Rubber Soul is perhaps the biggest creative leap in the band’s discography.  The main thing on everyone’s mind is still women, but I don’t know if a better batch of songs have ever been crafted about the subject, at least as it pertains to the pursuit of said subject from a young, curious man’s perspective. Continue reading “The Beatles: Rubber Soul (1965)”

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acid mothers temple and the cosmic inferno - starless and bible black sabbath
CD

Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno: Starless and Bible Black Sabbath (2006)

Less than six months after the sprawling IAO Chant From the Cosmic Inferno, Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno came back with another play on a classic song, this time one *slightly* more well known.  Starless and Bible Black Sabbath play on both King Crimson and the Birmingham blokes responsible for some of the greatest riffs known to mankind.  But if there was any doubt as to which direction this album was leaning, one look at the cover should tell you all you need to know, with main man Kawabata Makoto creating his own twisted version of the eponymous debut album. Continue reading “Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno: Starless and Bible Black Sabbath (2006)”

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acid mothers temple and the cosmic inferno - IAO Chant
CD

Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno: IAO Chant From the Cosmic Inferno (2005)

Sometimes things need to marinate for a spell before the flavor really comes out.  Sometimes, as is the case with Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno, it takes over a decade.  Back when I bought this CD I wasn’t at all prepared for the slow psychedelic burn that IAO Chant From the Cosmic Inferno was – my recollection at the time was I heard it had amazing guitar heroics and had a vibe similar to Boris, whose Pink was my only source of comparison.  After one or two attempts it promptly went back to my CD tower, then was relegated to a binder when I needed to make more room for music I was listening to more often.  Continue reading “Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno: IAO Chant From the Cosmic Inferno (2005)”

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