BEYOND-O-MATIC – time
to get up
(CD, Trail)
Trail records is a
premier source for unearthed gems of psychedelic and progressive music. Both
don’t seem to be the foremost frontier for experimental or groundbreaking
music these days, but there is definitely a big stream underground driving
all kinds of music towards loser and transcendental structures. Apart from
the fact that ever since the late Sixties, early Seventies when psychedelic
really broke loose and started to transgress all kinds of musical genres and
heads ready to be expanded, it has never seized. Not during the punkrock and
industrial oriented Eighties, not during the grunge rock and acid house
busted Nineties and also not in the last century so overwhelmed by
electronic wizardry of lonely kids spending nights working on tracks in
their living rooms and alternative country bands exploring age old
sentiments and folk tales in new clothing. Today, it seems to me, bands are
getting bigger again, songs longer and arrangements more driven towards
dynamics more rooted in the movement of the planets than structural
mathematics. See also “krautrock from hell” by Electric Orange, if you
need more on this. (and please check out other Trail records releases, as
they are all well worth listening to if you like this kind of meandering,
inscrutinable psychedelic poprock, e.g. Siddartha or Sky Cries Mary)
“time to get
up” by Beyond-O-Matic, a four piece band with three people helping out and
two different drummers, was already recorded in 2003 and has been remastered
by Trail Records for this release. It is led by visionary Peter Fuhry, who
plays most instruments from all kinds of guitars to flutes and bass. To say
he is stuck in the early Seventies in mind is a compliment in this case.
Malcolm McLaren is dead, so nobody has to listen to his well-intentioned,
business minded truisms anymore. Fuhry has a vision that is psychedelic in
its core and is made of flights to outer space, fantastic women ruling with
an iron fist but also with the eternal knowledge of being able to give live.
He himself is probably the “child of fog” he is singing about. Whatever
you think of this, and I know it is easy to put it down as fantasy-clichés,
he is serious and consequent about it. And these days that alone is worth
something.
