THE CYCLE IS COMPLETE

BRUCE PALMER is best known as the bassist for the 1960s band Buffalo Springfield, the anthemic band that spawned the solo career of Neil Young and Stephen Stills who would both go on to the big time, however the other members aren't exactly household names. BRUCE PALMER's origins began in Nova Scotia, Canada before moving to Toronto as a child where he met Young and found a mutual interest in music and played together in a Toronto based garage rock band called The Mynah Birds which featured the charismatic Ricky James Matthews on lead vocals who would later be known as the funk master Rick James. The two set out to drive to Los Angeles in Young's hearse to actively seek out Stephen Stills who they hoped would collaborate with them to form a new band that jumped into the brave new world of 60s psychedelic rock.

Buffalo Springfield was successful but the career was brief only lasting from 1966 to 1968 although the band produced one of the most recognizable songs of the entire1960s with "For What It's Worth." Although PALMER didn't ever reach the success he achieved with Buffalo Springfield and sort of dropped out of the music world altogether later on, he did collaborate with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young as well as Neil Young's Trans Band in the 80s. Lesser known in his career is his sole solo album that PALMER released in 1971 titled THE CYCLE IS COMPLETE, a psychedelic jamming session excursion between PALMER and a bunch of session musicians that featured four long tracks and journeyed more into the realms of the psychedelic world of Krautrock than anything Buffalo Springfield ever cranked out.

Fitting right in with the post-hippie idealism that waned around 1969 when the flower children grew a little and started seeing the world through a more nuanced lens, THE CYCLE IS COMPLETE was more like a deer in the headlights moment when only pure escapism was called for and the four tracks that are presented on this album offered the perfect psychedelically tinged gateways to transcend to another reality without any political charged lyrics or motives other than simply blissing out to groovy rhythms, rotating instrumental performances and the intermittent vocal contributions by Rick Matthews aka Rick James. And no this album contains no funk whatsoever! His vocals on this one are more steeped in the psychedelic soul variety that also existed in the shadows of the more dominant psychedelic rock scene.

The lengthy near 17-minute opening number "Alpha-Omega-Apocalypse" kicks things off by offering a dream state that finds a steady bass groove accompanied by a rotisserie effect of instrumentation with lush flute and oboe sounds backed up trippy organs, congas and even a violin in a world where the psychedelic plays gleefully with jazz, folk and tribal percussion in a primeval atavistic state of timeless cosmic bliss as if the band had channeled this music from an ancient yogic practice. The flow of the music resembles the structural or should i say non-structural freeform approach of much raga rock. The track names were inspired by San Francisco psychedelic artist Rick Griffin and his colorful posters that utilized images of the Kabbalah thus offering a magical mysterious air to the project. PALMER's duties extended beyond a mere bassist as he covers all guitars both electric and acoustic.

After the short near 2-minute "Interlude" which focuses on a structured piano piece, the 8-minute "Oxo" pretty follows a similar freeform approach of a repetitive cyclical bass groove providing the backbone while a tapestry of flute, violin, organs and oboe freely weave around the rhythmic drive with tribal drumming backing it all up. Nebulous and rather aimless this jamming session is a bit busier and condensed than the lead opener. The violin engages in some freaky gymnastics screeching about like a pissed off cat while the flute just sort of drifts in and out like a butterfly randomly sampling nectar in a poppy field. The closing "Calm Before The Storm" at slightly over 10 minutes calms things down with a dominant acoustic guitar leading the way with the backing of an uncredited mellotron performance. The tracks ends the album in a dreamy low key ethereal mood having neutralized all hostilities and cares.

This album is probably of no interest to Buffalo Springfield bands as its basically an album's worth of unstructured freely improvised jams that have no agenda rather than creating a tapestry of sound that offers a nice escape into the ethers for nearly 37 minutes of your life. It honestly sounds like one of those early German hippie commune types of albums where non-professional musicians gather around a bonfire and simply let loose with whatever suits their fancy. It's certainly a pleasant transcendental drifting off sort of album but certainly not one that will appeal to stalwarts of more structural psychedelic rock composiitons. It comes across as a farewell to the drug induced 60s as the new decade began and propelled the world of rock into ever more challenging complexities. Overall this was an album i really loved upon the first listening experience but it's not one that has held up well as it doesn't have much to offer beyond the weirdness factor. It's fun as an occasional spin but not an essential piece of psychedelia by any means.