CAILLOU

Ten seconds into this album you'll find yourself rummaging through the attic and digging out your worn, crimson, mid-length Montgomery Ward leather jacket, growing a mustache and hoping you still have that small packet of quaaludes from that trip to France back in your senior year. Did I just step into 1970? Wait ... (double take), this came out in 2013? Can't be! Sounds too authentic. Caillou have really captured the zeitgeist of the late 60s and early 70s both in songwriting, but moreover in record production. I would love to know more about the band and how this album was produced -- but as it stands, little can be found online.

This is probably my favorite current Zeuhl album next to Chicago's Ga'an. Though Ga' an is steeped in the traditional Zeuhl with those cosmic, trippy vocalizations and repetitious themes, Caillou is instrumental with leanings towards Mahavishnu Orchestra. The instrumental mastery is epic. The synth sounds are exciting and spacey, the drums are a wash of vintage cymbals and seething with that Glyn-John's method of drum recording, and the bass sounds like my stomach after a 24-hour fast for the doctor -- hangry! There's so much dirt, grime and fuzz about this album, you'll need to take 3 showers just to get everything out of the cracks. A very exciting, instrumental record!

Wishful concert pairing: Caillou and Universal Totem Orchestra opening for Ga' an. Three modern day Zeuhl giants.