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Reviews

The Spacious Mind — The Drifter
(Trail Records 020, 2003/2018, CD)

by Jon Davis, Published 2019-05-05

The Drifter Cover art

From all the reviews lately, you might think that Russia is the home of space rock these days. But here’s a new release from Sweden’s The Spacious Mind to remind us that trippy psychedelic rock is unbounded by geography. Their take on the genre takes many of its cues from pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd, but also brings in dreamy vocals that wouldn’t be out of place on a Fruits de Mer product. Exposé reviewed several of this band’s earlier albums back in the 90s, but we sort of lost track of them through the 00s, when their output consisted of a series of CDR releases with limited distribution. Now Trail Records has stepped in to give us a sample of tracks from those limited releases — 73 minutes of blissed-out musical trips spread among four studio and two live tracks. One thing you quickly learn about these guys is that they are never in a hurry to get anywhere. It’s all about the journey, and they provide listeners slowly evolving pieces that build up from silence, groove for a while, and then devolve back into the void. For the most part, it’s instrumental, with organ (more of a Vox or Farfisa sound than Hammond), echoing guitars, simple bass lines, and steady drums. Bass and drums do a great job of varying their parts to build up tension as the rest of the band ramps up the energy, usually with a guitar solo. The overall vibe is closely related to Pink Floyd on Saucerful of Secrets or Meddle, though without any shorter tunes to provide contrast. Still, these guys are really good at what they do, and if you’re longing for that pre-Ozrics variety of space rock, you can’t do much better than this.

Filed under: Archives, 2018 releases, 2003 recordings

Related artist(s): The Spacious Mind

More info
http://trailrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-drifter

 

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