COTTONWOODHILL

A truly strange record. I acquired it on vinyl in the early 1970's from a friend who had recently been to Europe and had acquired a copy in Germany. (I don't know if it was ever released in the United States.)I traded him a Led Zepplin and a Pink Floyd album for it, and I believe I got the better of the deal. The first two tracks,"Black Sand," and "Places of Light" sound like normal enough European prog-psychedelic music of the late 1960s early 1970s and they suck you in gently, and then comes the mindblower! The insistant riff that never lets up, the freaked out chick ranting and raving incoherently, the sound effects- crashing sounds (an auto accident?), police sirens- this is one messed up trip. Many an acid head experienced this sort of bummer, but I don't think it had ever been put on record quite this way before. One could call this proto-techno-industrial, or whatever you want to label it. When I did a late night college radio show in the 1979 I would drag Brainticket out and throw it in the mix with Talking Heads and R.E.M. and whatever else the "hip" college kids were listening to back then and blow their smug little minds.