JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EYE

While my introduction to Nektar was with 1973's Remember the Future, I loved their sound enough to backtrack into their catalogue of past releases--and am so glad I did. Journey to the Centre of the Eye while being less polished, less of a seemless flow that RtF is, has some incredible music on it--and the utlra highs at the center of the album with the two "Dream Nebula" pieces and "It's All in the Mind"--and all this in a debut album! To achieve the extraordinary space-psychedelic sounds, Nektar chose some very heavily effected instrument tracks--particularly the vocals--as well as a heavy use of inter-channel panning effects. Unfortunately, there is a qualitative inconsistency as fade outs and fade ins start and stop several songs and the panning effect gets a little old as well--though might be considered masterful by some observers of the space-psych sub-genre. Still, this is an awesome beginning of a stretch of six years of great albums for this highly under-appreciated band.