SPIRITS BURNING 
620468
CD
REFLECTIONS IN A RADIO SHOWER

SPACE-ROCK (PSYCH)

If the first one was a runaway success supergroup project, this one is, if anything, even better! To fill you in on how this, and the other Spirits Burning album came about - The idea was that Don Falcone, the mastermind musician behind the project, played musical phrases and ideas onto a DAT tape, then gave that tape to another musician, who in turn added his part, and then he passed that on to someone else and so on – and lo! – The tracks were created. The fished product here is a seamless, classy and 200% quality album – A masterpiece of creation that will give hours of satisfying listening for years to come. It eclipses the first one (and THAT was a gem) and can quite easily be said to be genuinely an essential purchase for a wide variety of music fans across an equally large stylistic range. Just like the ‘New Worlds By Design’ album, this is consistent, enjoyable, brilliantly assembled, produced and thought out, and it honestly sounds as if each individual musician was present in the studio when each track was conceived. It just doesn’t come any better than this!

The list of participants on this one could hardly be more impressive: Daevid Allen (Gong), Karen Anderson (Psi Club), Robert Calvert (Hawkwind – sampled), Michael Clare (Daevid Allen’s University Of Errors), Knut Gerwers (The Moor), Carl Howard (Bron To Go), Kenneth Magnusson (The Moor), Mushroom, Roger Neville-Neil (Farflung+Hawkwind lyric writer), ST 37, Stephen Palmer (Mooch, Blue Lily Commission, Spaceship Mooch), Doug Pearson (Primordial Underground, Dogbreath & Mushroom), Neil Pinnock (Mooch), Trevor Thoms (Nik Turner’s Inner City Unit), Paul Williams (Quarkspace & National Steam), Pete Wyer (Mooch), Don Xaliman (Melodic Energy Commission) and more. Musically, we’re talking quality and range, breadth and class, dimension and expansion. With 16 tracks and more line-ups than you can shake a stick at, detailed reviewing is a pleasure, but I don’t have the luxury of space here, so I have to keep the track-by-track descriptions to the bare facts. The album opens with a four-minute piece featuring a Calvert spoken intro, a Hendrix sample, a dual guitar lead from Allen & Thoms, ’72-era Gong-like bass, swirling synths from Palmer in an early Hawkwind-y style, plus bass, samples and more, creating a brooding piece of psychedelia-meets-Kraut/Space Rock with a ’73 atmosphere and it’s one steaming gem of an opener. The four-minute track 2 is a languid slice of space-ambience-meets-’72-era Gong with some gorgeous guitar work from Allen over a loping bass-line from Clare, around and behind which the synths, samples and percussion from Falcone fill out the mix to create one sensational, slowly rhythmic ambient instrumental masterpiece. Track 3 features no less than ten players, including a reading from Calvert (‘Centigrade 232’), another Gong-style bass-line, a single-line chorus and the whole thing feels like a mix of classic space-rock/psych ambience with classic early seventies Gong, as Falcone, Howard, Palmer, Jerry Jeter on lead guitars, Pinnock, Anderson & ST37 create a sparkling array of layers, melodies and textures. Track 4 is a three minute instrumental that revolves around treated keyboards, guitars, bass & drums, coming over as a slightly dark, but rhythmic piece that echoes the sadly unrecorded Laswell group Zu that transmutated into Material with some hints of Eno tracks around the ‘Another Green World’/’Apollo’ periods. Track 5 features an almost King Crimson-like line-up with bass, keys, Mellotron, Chapman stick, electric guitar & drums, while musically it has hints of ‘Clear Light Symphony’ as much as anything else (if you know that classic album), with some splendid work from all the musicians including Magnusson, Clare, Thoms, Williams, Falcone & Teed Rockwell on the Stick. The three minute 6^th track is a piece composed and largely played by Mushroom, remixed by Falcone, with added Mellotron way up front from Magnusson, and short it may be, but total class it certainly is – with a sort of laid-back jazzy, proggy ambience. Track 7 features Allen sounding for all the world like Robert Wyatt on the wordless vocals and then just like his old familiar self on the song itself, while his lead guitar cascades down like slow-motion rain showers. Falcone, Pearson & Palmer provide the keyboard/synth backdrop on this shade-under three-minute slice of ambient/Gong-like magic. Track 8 is an eleven-minute job, with the lion’s share of the work from Mushroom, Pearson & Falcone, guitar from Thoms and it is a quite epic composition that starts with solid percussive rhythms and phased, almost Neu-like guitars that drops to a melting pot of samples, loops and keyboards - all really spacey and atmospheric, as the band begins the main body of a piece with solid layers of samples, hot guitar figures, as much textural as melodic and a laid-back series of echoed guitar/synth lines. The track slowly progresses on some kind of vast intergalactic voyage, as assorted sounds, landscapes, layers and textures pass by - all so psychedelic, but in a very spacey manner. Gradually it picks up steam to turn into one giant cauldron of guitars, keyboards, samples, synths, bass, drums and more, the individual instruments almost being indistinguishable in the molten musical soup that is unfolding gloriously around your ears - An altogether stunning musical creation. Track 9, at a touch over six minutes, and includes no less than sixteen participants, sounding for all the world like some lost gem from an early Amon Duul album with drums, guitars, bass, percussion and flute creating that all-important early seventies Krautrock-esque atmosphere, as guitars shoot off and drums/percussion provide the solid rhythmic backdrop, with a hint of very early Can in there too. The following six tracks have assorted line-ups, and deliver some absolutely cracking psychedelic-space-Krautrock music that mirrors the feel of what has been heard up to now, and is every bit as riveting listening as what has gone before. The longest is the one song featuring a hugely expansive backing from guitars, synths, keyboards & drums, the three lead guitarists being Thoms, Joel Crutcher & Mark Stone. While the just under two minutes of track 15 are thoroughly chilled-out and feature Falcone, Palmer & Xaliman on synths, plus Rockwell on Chapman Stick, they are so wondrous that you just wish there could have been a lot more of this one, and you do this for much of the rest of the album too, I have to say.  Finally, the last eleven minute track features Allen, Anderson, Clare, Falcone, Rockwell, Wyer & Thom The World Poet - It is an instrumental piece that is the album’s most psychedelic gem, with the guitars, synths, Stick, drums & bass creating a sort of ambient-psych-Crimso style melting pot of textures, swirling leads, expansive backdrops, textural and subtleties, and again, it’s a chilled-out ambience that is almost unique to what is essentially a rock band at work. Totally satisfying, it has a spacious quality to it all, as ever totally demanding your full attention – and getting it with interest. 

Weight: 150.00 g