COTTONWOODHILL

Pulsing psychedelic organ runs and acid-dripping riffs, thick grooves and drums that fit the grooves just right, heavy acid drenched guitar riffs and solos (Similar to Can in sound but more driving, and there's some funk influence in there too!), flute (in Places of light), trippy lyrics sung by a woman with a great psychedelic voice who goes though many moods being very poetic and clever at other times (over the course of the song "Brainticket") freaking out about "the source" and ranting/droning/rambling about various other things, really trippy hallucinatory sound effects and soundbytes, this is the sound of Brainticket's first album. The first two tracks are killer! The following three-part "Brainticket" is a fair bit less musically interesting not to mention that it engages a riff that, throughout the 26 minutes of its duration, does not change much in basic nature but is simply elaborated on by an array of weird sound effects and recordings, a lot of freaked out psychedelic spoken word and plain psychedelic utterances, laughter etc. sung/spoken by the crazy, diverse and emotive voice of their female vocalist, Dawn Muir. "Brainticket" launches off with the sound of glass breaking, footsteps, a car door open and close, a "chikit-voooomuuumuuuuuuum and a psychedelically modulated siren that almost fades into the distorted and subtly changing electric organ riff. Many cool things happening across this track. This album also contains some very great clever, psychedelic, intellectually stimulating and emotionally/situationally evocative poetry.

While the music on this album is very good (especially on the first two tracks) and I personally enjoy it greatly, two things bring my rating down to 4.5/5. First, the album is merely 34 minutes. Second is the lack of much instrumental interest over the course of the 26-minute "Brainticket", as well as its selective listenability and ability to get slightly tedious (if one is not in the right mind state). With another two songs of "Black Sand"/"Places of Light" quality, however, this album would surely gain a fifth star from me.

Very radical sound.

If you like psychedelic music and or krautrock (and definitely too if you like psychedelics), you will most likely greatly enjoy this album.