Cassette Review: "Psychic Pinball" by Protovulcan

Psychic Pinball

First off, it's time for the way of the truth.

I never listened to this on the cassette version that showed in the mail. It was stared at for a time by me...with a confused look on my face.

What is this thing for?

After realizing it could be played in my wife's pretending to be vintage stereo, I emailed the band and said...umm... help me.

They shot over some digital files and here we are.

Make a tape someone said. I can assure you this is a tape.

Protovulcan is a well, they call themselves an acid rock band played on keyboards. Ok, we'll go with that. This time around, they flirted with the idea of having lyrics on their album. It's a good change, but expect to hear some Jim Morrison sound alike screaming about a monarchy of lizards.

Like the rest of the band, the vocals are very synthy. (If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was because someone is a bit ashamed of their voice, but I don't.) Regardless of the why, it sounds amazing and fits in perfectly with what they've been doing.

As for release dates, where to buy it, and the like, I'm a bit in the dark, but get to bugging them on FACEBOOK and get a copy.

EP Stream: "Hot" by Stew

Well, in case you haven't noticed, we're now ankle deep into FALL BACK, or as I call it, the greatest 8 weeks of the calendar year, because most of my commute is in the dark.

If you're complaining about that, think about what our good friends in Sweden are dealing with right now. It's almost all dark over there. Me, I'm envious.

In the meantime, let's talk about "Hot" by Stew. If you're into that old time groove that doesn't specifically ape a particular artist so much that the singer says so on the record...

You may wish to check this out. You'll dig on it like a bowl of oatmeal.

Check out their FACEBOOK if you're not convinced.

LP Review: "Blue Haze" by Iron Lamb

Blue Haze

There's a dollar store movie theater in St. Louis Metro and we saw Deadpool 2 there. My buddy hadn't been there in a number of years and I told him, be prepared to see the theater that time forgot.

In that particular case, honestly, it was throwing shade on the place. Hey, I go to the dollar show kind of frequently, but the place could be a little bit nicer.

In some instances though, that can be a great compliment. Iron Lamb is a band out of Sweden. I've said it before and I'm not ashamed to repeat myself, Sweden has a brilliant, blooming Acid Rock Scene.

Iron Lamb fits right in with some of those amazing bands over there and it appears that The Sign Records has chosen to snatch them all up and deliver their dulcet tones all across the world. As it's always what's old is new again, there's been a great outpouring of love for current retro bands.

What sets Iron Lamb apart from their contemporaries is their ability to sound like they came out of 1977 without sounding like anything you've ever heard from 1977.

Release: 10/26/18 FACEBOOK ORDER (coming soon)

LP Review: "Never Enough" by The Company Corvette

Never Enough

When your friend and humble narrator was just a lad, music lovers didn't have this thing called choice.

Our music came from the radio, then we could buy the tape or the vinyl. One hit wonders didn't last long back then, because an artist had to make an entire album's worth of tunes.

This was for the single fact that we had no ability to skip a track.

Well, we couldn't really do it for years as for me, I missed out on the original vinyl era and when I was purchasing it was all about cassette tapes...and that was hard.

Then enter in the CD. My father many times talked about how it was so easy to skip tracks now. The singer in my band in the mid-90's refused to switch to CD, because he didn't want to purchase anything that wasn't good all the way though.

Album Review: "Magical Dirt" by Radio Moscow

Magical Dirt by Radio Moscow

Please set your Wayback Machines for 1967.

For today's album review, we have the latest release by Radio Moscow.

Formed in 2003 in Story City, Iowa, of all places. They have been writing and recording for over ten years now.

Magical Dirt is their fifth studio album and their first release since 2012's 3 X 3.

For people who have grown up in this day and age, millennials, this record might seem very strange upon the first listen. Radio Moscow are delightfully retro in 2014, as they were in 2011 when I discovered their release, The Great Escape of Leslie Magnafuzz. Based on this album, not much has changed....

"Hic Abundant Leones" by The Tower

Every now and again, bands have a back story that creates wonder. Guitar Wolf is a Japanese punk band who were raised by wolves.

Gwar (RIP ODERUS!) is (was?) a group of aliens bent on human destruction. Kiss...well who knows really what they were.

The Tower though, I think has all of those beat. I can say nothing better than what they have, so I'll just quote them for you:

"It was back in 1938 that the brothers Erik and August and their friend Viktor migrated south. They left the small village in the northern forests where they grew up for the big city and the university, to study the science of harvesting the earth. On the fields beside the burial mounds in old Uppsala they met Tommie, a Soviet refugee. He showed them his sole possession, a blues vinyl from 5300 BC, suspecting that it would fit their melancholy northern souls. The four sat down in a barn and played a blues jam which lasted until 1945, when the war ended and the post-apocalyptic nuclear winter began…"

There is honestly a whole lot more....but let's just get to the music.