Secret Saucer is not a band, but a marvelous spacerock collective
assembled for a weekend long session of improvisational jamming.
Distilled from the sessions is a single 68 minute pass-the-bong
instrumental CD, with the less effective material swept in the
dustbin. Most of the tunes derive inspiration from the early Floyd
"deep space drift" school of spacerock.
In fact a good portion of
this could easily have come out of the jam sessions for any post-
Syd/pre-DSOTM Floyd offering. Constructs are kept simple, motifs
are repeated, tempos are slow and groovy. Guitars have lots of delay
on them, keyboards bubble psychedelically like its '69 becoming '70,
and nothing has to go anyway in particular...accept relentless move
into the heart of the sun. It's the kind of album that buddies sat
around listening to with the lights low way back when, occasionally
bursting out with a "yeah!" when the guitarist explodes into a
slow-burning solo.
A "chill" album if you will, but not one that comes
out of today's downtempo genre. Probably not something I'll come back
to very often, but definitely worth keeping in mind when it's 2am and
time to slow the heartrate way down as the partygoers head home but
it's not yet time for bed.
Who would like this?
Bongheads, definitely.
Who would not like it?
Speedfreaks.
Reviewed by Steven Davies-Morris on December 24th, 2006
