RA CAN ROW

It's safe to say in the early '80s the mainstream rock scene in the Midwest was an AOR wasteland so it's nice to see an underground band out of Cincinnati called Ra Can Row playing instrumental space rock that's very little like the AOR and New Wave popular in the mainstream. "Things Beyond our Control" can remind you of Ozric Tentacles before that group ever existed. There's two brief uses of Mellotron that makes me disappointed it was used absolutely nowhere else on the album, but that's my only real gripe. The rest of the album sounds like King Crimson as a space rock group complete with Fripp-like lead guitar. The band apparently listed Pink Floyd and Heldon as influences so I guess Crimson wasn't too far off (given how much Fripp influenced Heldon and Richard Pinhas). The album blew me away. 1982 had never been a favorite year of music for me, doesn't help that Duran Duran and similar copycat synth pop bands were clogging the airwaves and the (then) brand new MTV. Ra Can Row doesn't even sound like a 1982 recording by avoiding what was trendy in the early '80s. So imagine what would happen if Crimson teams up with Ozrics, this is what you get. I can imagine some listeners may find it a bit noodly but not me. I wished music went this way instead of the Duran Duran route in the early '80s. Even the underground scene was more into goth and post punk so it's nice to see Ra Can Row doing the space rock thing. Worth getting, although an original LP doesn't exactly grow on trees.