AQUA NEBULA OSCILLATOR | VINYL RECORD (LP)

A song title like Ready to Fly actually provides all the information necessary to categorize this album as the kind of psychedelic space rock that will bring you back to the ancient days of the 1970s when Hawkwind ruled and LSD was the hot shit to get up from the ground and trip through open space. Ready to Fly is certainly a typical up-tempo space rock song with a straight and hypnotic beat, oscillating synthesizer lines, swishing distorted guitars, and monotone chants buried under layers upon layers of echo effects. What was great in 1972 can still capture your spirit in 2015. But there is more behind this album, originally released in 2008, than meets the ear. It begins with a four-minute-long drone titled Ka, made of sitar sounds coupled with swirling synthesizers and strange voice samples. Next comes Ready to Fly, the prototypical space rocker, followed by Take a Long Walk, which could not be more different. Here we have folky psychedelic music that flows gently with a haunting, melancholic melody and some fine guitar leads lost in reverie. Early P.F., during their days as the hottest band in the 1967 London underground club scene, come to mind. The album continues with heavily grooving yet utterly washy and simmering power rock with vocals that mill into your mind, before returning to gently floating psychedelic folk with guitar sounds that feel like whale chants, swirling synthesizer noises in the back, and dark and melancholic vocal harmonies. If you like your spaced-out, heavy psychedelic music colorful, these French trips deliver the goods in a way that will please every acid rock fundamentalist focused on the '60s and '70s, as well as all the desert rock aficionados who were born too late for the freak-outs back in the day. This is the key to unlock the gate to a world of color, joy, and passion where love can be felt as a physical force. The 1960s garage psych of bands like The Third Bardo, the acid outbursts of embryonic P.F., and Hawkwind's straight-ahead space rock drive combined could hardly match with the music of their heirs.