PÄRSON SOUND

PARSON SOUND were a Psychedelic band out of mid-sixties Sweden who were influenced by the minimalistic and experimental sounds of Terry Riley. Every time I see a band mention Riley as an influence I need to just stay away. I'm just not into this scene of perpetual droning, very low on my enjoyment level. And you'll see this with the reviews here, those who rate it high because of how new this "sound" was at the time and how influential this band was, and then there are those like myself who hear over 2 hours of droning and not the best sound quality either and go "nope I don't need to hear this one again". A lot of the music here sound jumbled, hard to hear specific instruments.

Part of my issue is with how influential this band really was given they released no albums and this archival release wasn't heard until 2001. So some young musicians may have heard these guys at a festival or their radio broadcasts but this would be few and far between. The four key guys of this band Persson, Ericsson, Abelli and Gartz would continue in 1968 as INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER and release an album! Now they were getting their sound out at least and I gave that 4 stars in part because of this. It's better as well.

This two disc set contains music recorded at festivals, radio broadcasts, rehearsals, jams, and music played at a museum etc. A lot of improvs and jams and their motto seems to be "Drone or go home". While the music here comes mostly from 1967 to 1968 there is one track from 1966 which actually might be my favourite. In 1970 these four same guys changed their name again this time to TRAD GRAS OCH STENAR.

And while ALGANARD TRADGARD gets mentioned as a comparison because they might play at times a similar heavy brand of Psychedelia they do it far better in my opinion. This was good to hear though, one of the early ones of this style. Cool that Reine Fiske was involved with the art work and design, obviously he has a lot of respect for this music.