- -- Release information ----------------------------------------------- -- -
Artist : Parson Sound
Album : Parson Sound
Genre : Psychedelic Rock
Year : 2010
Label : Subliminal Sounds
Cat# : SUB-073-LP-BOX
Source : Vinyl
Bitrate : VBRKbps
Size : 221,2 MB
Runtime : 123:21 min
URL : n/a
- -- Tracklist -------------------------------------------------------- -- -
LP1
01. Tio Minuter (Ten Minutes) 10:33
02. One Quiet Afternoon (In The King's Garden) 10:26
03. From Tunis To India In Fullmoon (On Testosterone) 20:15
LP2
01. Sov Gott Rose-Marie - Parts 1-3: "It's Only Love", 13:11
"Till Indien" And "Sov Gott Rose-Marie"
02. A Glimpse Inside The Glyptotec-66 06:00
03. India (Slight Return) 12:53
04. Skrubba (part 1) 07:11
LP3
01. Skrubba (part 2) 22:09
02. Milano 07:54
03. On How To Live 07:07
04. Blσslσten 05:42
- -- Release notes ---------------------------------------------------- -- -
I might as well go ahead and divulge a tidbit or two upfront:
PΣrson Sound is a musical outfit with Swedish origins and a
predilection for psychedelia. Depending on the take, it's a
concoction capable of sending you on a run to the nearest
exit or reaching for the knob to crank the volume. What's
more, prior to this year, the majority of the music world had
never heard the name, much less encountered any of the music.
Hence, a little rundown is in order:
For a brief period during 1967-68, PΣrson Sound was a
frontrunner in the burgeoning Swedish music scene, leading to
a few shows accompanying Terry Riley, an opening gig for the
Doors and an invite from Andy Warhol to play an art exhibit
in Stockholm. Regrettably, no album was ever cut and the
band's activity ended almost as soon as it began-- although
later manifestations would emerge and continue under the
names Harvester (sometimes known as International Harvester)
and TrΣd, GrΣs och Stenar (translation: Trees, Grass and
Stones).
Up until this recent release, PΣrson Sound was basically just
a blip on a musical roadmap, their name appearing sparingly
in Warhol articles or Swedish musical histories. So I'll let
you in on a little secret. As January rapidly approaches, I
can say this two-disc set is by far the most unexpected
surprise of the year. Serving up a platter of archival
recordings (rehearsals, studio and live cuts), this PΣrson
Sound collection is drug-addled psychedelic mindfuckery at
its best. And that's just the beginning. Successfully
marrying the ideas of rock, jazz, and drone experimentalism,
this Swedish quintet sounds like it wasn't just trying to
break free of the limitations inherent in each genre; at
times, it sounds like they were trying to blow the doors off
the hinges.
Opening the first disc, "Tio Minuter" ("Ten Minutes") starts
out quietly enough, beginning with a hushed guitar atop
distant vocal chants. Don't let it fool you. It's a ruse. One
minute in, the band forsakes the mesmerizing guitar for an
intense, cacophonous clamor. Sounding as if someone suddenly
set the stage on fire, PΣrson Sound unleashes a grinding
series of brutal guitar riffs. Stretching out beyond ten
minutes, the band isn't content to remain in one sound
territory. The track builds from a mammoth sludge-fest into a
ringing guitar drone backed by the screeching sounds of Arne
Ericsson sawing away at his electric-cello. Everything
settles into a glacial pace near the end as the sounds of
ghostly tape-lagged voices glide over each other, an
invocation for the ether-regions (which makes sense-- sΘance
is a credited instrument in the liner notes).
The blissed-out trance work continues with "From Tunis to
India in Fullmoon (On Testosterone)," a miasmic sound orgy
that drips with ecstatic energy. It's a Bacchanalian noise
festival, an acid-drenched lunar ride in which everyone is
whipped into rapturous primal frenzy while Pan taps his hoof
and bleats out the age-old hypnotic spell. Driving forward
into free-jazz, "Tunis" finds PΣrson Sound openly and
aggressively exploring ideas through improvisation. The
entire track is a swirling sound-world, held fast by Thomas
Mera Gartz's pounding percussion. Guitarists Bo Anders
Persson and Ericsson immerse themselves in locked drones,
enticing out a series of resonating vibrations, while
saxophonist Thomas Tidholm reels off a series of rasping
moans and pain-filled squeals. Coalescing into a tight-knit
entity near the end, Persson hammers out a delirious buzzsaw
solo over the increasing urgency of Gartz's percussion. The
resulting din is pure astrophysical beauty.
"A Glimpse Inside the Glyptotec-66" leaves the instruments
behind, abandoning them for tape-looped guitar and Persson's
lagged-voice experiments. Recorded for 1966's Young Nordic
Music Festival, "Glimpse" is a surprisingly early collage for
guitar and voice that places Persson alongside contemporary
minimalists Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Having captured
several glittering guitar drones and sequencing them on tape,
he slowly adds pre-recorded tapes of voice mixed with his
live moans and vocalized syllables. "One Quiet Afternoon (In
the King's Garden)" is a massive squall of noise. Again
toying with pre-recorded tape experiments, PΣrson Sound
creeps along, drowning everything in a rumbling clatter (much
of it produced from the feedback-saturated tapes). Howling,
pre-recorded voices amble over each other while the tapes are
either accelerated to furious speeds or slowed to a dazed
crawl.
The second disc in the set both opens and closes with nascent
versions of songs that would appear later on International
Harvester's debut. Stretching to thirteen minutes, "Sov Gott
Rose-Marie" is centered on a reverie-inducing guitar solo,
but builds gradually into a frightening full-band chant of
the title. With three members repeatedly intoning the title
phrase, other instruments begin to pile up, climbing over
each other and saturating the space. The result is a
haunting, claustrophobic grumble filled with battered organ
keys, pummeled bass strings and the fading remains of an
earlier guitar drone.
A track that starts with smoldering embers, "Milano," moves
at an increasingly rapid piece as time elapses and PΣrson
Sound stoke the fire. Subsumed within the booming percussion
and electrically charged cello, Persson leisurely constructs
a guitar solo that moves swiftly from rattling mess to
drifting murmur. Moving in a recurring pattern, Persson's
guitar workouts are sprawling meditative journeys-- shifting
repetition often giving way to gradual movement and pulsing
breath. With only five tracks per disc, the average length of
each song is easily ten minutes or more, occasional
stretching to the half-hour mark (the lengthy spiritualistic
drone "Skrubba") and once or twice staying in the seven-
minute range (the acoustic "On How to Live"). In spite of
this, any concerns related to length tend to dissipate once
your head is fully submerged in the band's constantly
inventive surroundings.
During their brief stint, PΣrson Sound had a rallying cry of
"We, Here and Now!" that embraced their musical philosophy of
a defragmented universal language. The time elapsed since
their active years have seen a number of acts such as Amon
Dⁿⁿl, Acid Mothers Temple, Bardo Pond and Taj Mahal Travelers
traverse the same paths, garnishing accolades and
international success. For a fan of any of these bands, or
anyone fascinated by psychedelic, acid-blasted madness, this
is ground zero.
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