Monday, March 20, 2006

South African Psych Article Posted on Deep Water

Kevin Moist has been kind enough to post part one of my inchoate ramblings on SA 70s rock on his Deep Water web site:

South African Head Music Pt1 - Astral Africans and Freedom's Truth

Intro to hopefully whet your appetite:

It’s difficult to imagine a more unlikely place for a fertile “head music” scene to emerge than South Africa in the late 60s. With racism and nationalism conjuring a cloud over social and artistic expression in a land isolated from the main stream of Western culture and commerce, it must have seemed that precious stones and metal were all the expedient West wanted from them. But natural forces respect none of these constraints, and the Summer of Love was a force of nature, a vibration that shook the world, with few places untouched by its promise of a passageway through the cosmic eye — Love, Peace and Understanding a possibility if you made the jump. A fertile sub-culture in South Africa did make the jump, creating a unique body of recorded psychedelia and progressive rock. But unlike that other Great Southern Land, Australia, not much escaped to the rest of the world. Unsupported at home, and unable to export their thing, the South Africa head bands generally winked briefly into existence, released what they could, and were gone. Almost.

New Reviews Now at PT Online

Here is a link to my latest scribings for the Ptolemaic Terrascope:

Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood "Canisanubis" on MYMWLY CD-R Label
One Ensemble of Daniel Padden "Live at VPRO" on Brainwashed Handmade

Random quote from the Brothers review:

Free magic constructs draw up plans for a forest temple in lines of light and warding while demon forces circle inwards to the hypnagogic chimes of 'Preying in Circles' which definitely conjures the feel of mid-period AMM. 'Augustifolia' is like the Supreme Dicks stripped back to folk, blended with elements of middle-Eastern jazz and surrounded with ghost voices. True to the theme of this release, every time you think you have a grasp of its structure, everything runs through your fingers like quicksilver and heads off somewhere else. 'The Silk
Wolf Whose Arrow Spirit Speaks' is a centre of sorts for 'Canisanubis', standing
perpetually on the verge of coalescing into a Can inspired groove, but staying
tantalisingly free of doing so, thus remaining master of its own destination.