The Arcanum

Guru Guru – Ufo

If listening to bands jamming makes you break out in small, red, itchy bumps you’re going to want to look toward some later mid 70s work for satisfaction, say the jazzy psych rock of Dance In Flames or full on Fusion oriented Guru Guru of the late 70s on Globetrotter. This is not that however. This, Guru Guru’s 1970 debut album Ufo, is a wonderful and heavily acidic mess.

On the first side we get three songs, all teetering on the edge of the unstructured abyss; flirting with uncontrolled free fall into an ocean of acid so thick and fuzzy there is no swimming out of. Stone In and Girl Call both start out a little sleepy. Some tremendously fuzzed out guitar moaning and groaning here, and some freely wandering drums and bass there (and some AUAUghghauauGhhhHh ‘vocals’ dribbled out on Stone In! Always love to hear). Both songs start to coagulate into the nearly gone, hectic and frenzied, point of no return, freak outs discussed earlier, but ending just before free fall, or at least Stone In fades out and Girl Call is rather abruptly, but kinda, effectively cut off. Also have to stop and mention how much I love the guitar distortion on Girl Call, some truly deranged, heavy, and fuzzed out wah wahs. Next Time See You At The Dalai Lama starts off sounding a bit more structured than anything else on the album, and seemingly more deliberately paced. The structure and pace does start to falter and waver, Ax, Mani, and Uli all rambling and coasting off into the cosmic brain, then coalescing for a slight time, before succumbing to the drift again.

Now, to flip this f**ker over, and here we find that the inevitable has happened. You dance and prance for so long on the edge of psychedelic insanity, that falling into the vastness of kosmische sea will occur. The first of the two songs, sharing the album name, Ufo; sees our intrepid oceanic trawlers completely immersed into nebulous and hypnotic soundscapes. Guitars, electronics, percussion, and effects all dither and scratch around and about, occasionally swarming together into a truly wild proto industrial/noise piece here. A musical rendition of a grimy, old piece of space junk limping through the cosmos. While plenty of classical composeurs ;) were fiddling around with long and exploratory pieces of music, I find they never seem to actually be all that enjoyable, or reach the depths that more amateur works do. When you fiddle with the unknown the known ain’t going to cut it. The final track Der LSD/Marsch is more grounded, but no less prescient. The first half, Der LSD I guess, sees some strung out guitar calling out over foggy, sunken graveyard, while some plodding bass and wispy and haunting, electronically treated flute(?) (Kraftwerk!?) slowly flow around. This all mends together into possibly the most cohesive our intrepid group have sounded, or it just seems so after the past 12 minutes. Marsch is appropriately titled, because after making it out of vast cosmic, oceanic, expanse it’s a long walk back. Guitar, bass, and drums all have moments of cohesive, buoyant, forward drive, but fall into a tired and languid sounding plod on occasion.

Proclaims the group on return “Soon the ufos will land and mankind will meet much stronger brains and habits, lets get ready for that.”

Davenport Family were a collective of freak folks and psychedelic noise(unmerry)markers that hail from the Madison, Wisconsin, USA areas’ underground noise/psych scene. Davenport Family (DF from now on) carry on in the tradition of the first Amon Duul, Ya Ho Wha 13, Siloah, Zendik Community, etc. That is to say, making loose, krautrock inflicted, improvised and primitive free folk/psych/rock of the utmost heathenistic variety and quality, minus the cult aspects of Father Yod and Zendik, and more of the ‘light up a campfire and start clunking and clogging away on whatever instrument you have on hand’. It’s safe to assume most DF releases were recorded outdoors, in barns or some such other place. This applies to the community gathering only however, don’t let my description of campfire gatherings and B.Y.O. instruments lead you into thinking this is going to be a summer of love, peace dude, hippie affair. DF’s brand of communal folk freakery often times doesn’t merely flirt and toy with undercurrents of darkness, but fully embrace them. Though DF aren’t as dark, think of the similarly minded collective from Belgium, Silvester Anfang and their self-styled ‘Funeral Folk’. This final offering from Davenport Family, before changing name to Second Family Band, and continuing on in the same manner, offers a magnificent send off.

The nearly 33 minute jam that is At the Foot of Zodiac Mountain starts out life slowly at first. Electronics, guitar and vocals queasily and darkly groan away, often drenched in reverb and various effects. While drums and various percussion freely thump and clang, sparse and distant, before gaining momentum and tribalistic rhythm, rising in intensity against the backdrop, which has turned into a frenzy of buzzing and thrumming, feedback and noise, before falling apart and re-congealing into the void-like morass. This presents itself as a cycle, that of lysergy, slowly building into uncouth paganist noise, but upon the feverish plateau being reached, the tribal percussives, cracked and moaning guitars and electronics, whooping and hollering, everything inevitably and slowly slides back into abyss of zonked out and evilly twinkling sparsity. By the time the final recorded cycle has spasmed out into the darkness, you’ll want to join in (or you stopped listening 5 minutes in cause you hated this wonderful mess, fair play).

I unashamedly love these communal groups who jam out wild, percussive, psych freak outs, and this dark and gloamy, paint spattered little cassette offering sits at the top of this niche pile.