LAMA RABI RABI

With this album, the Japanese group Ghost hints definitely and full Indian music and psychedelics. Indeed even down to the album title's calligraphy, the music of the album takes a very meditative role and

While the opening track does start to a very bucolic and pastoral start, it soon develops in a sort of Indian raga and seems to drag on slightly. Funnily enough, the first minutes of Rabi Rabi seem to take the theme of the opening track, but elevate to an almost violent rock music level, definitely contrasting Mastillah's insistent ethnic folklore. This second track is really one of the group's strongest ever, only topped by the lengthy title track Hypnotic Underground. Like most Ghost albums, there are some very uneven moments in this Lama album, like the loose folky/dopey Into The Alley, the slightly whimsy/hippy Mex Square Blue (with stepping drums), the heavy Bad Bone are all correct and entertaining, but the particularly irritating musical saw of My Hump Is A Shell, the boring closing Ashen Fable being much weaker. On the other side, the Zep/No Quarter-like Marrakech, at least at first, ending in a good almost jujuka groove, the banjo-laden Lost Rose and the sitar-track of Abyssinia (old-day Ethiopia) and Agate Scape are well above the average.

Still be a good freak-out album but relatively over-rated and usually hinted as the group's best effort, this writer would disagree and direct you towards the much more recent Underground album, with its stupendous title track. I'd say this one is best enjoyed with a big fat Jamaican doobie.