Various – Shrunken Head Music (Double 7")

Krautrock, kosmiche and prog alert! Explore some inner space with this limited double 7” white vinyl!

More usually associated with the long-playing record, such genres as krautrock and progressive rock sit remarkably well on this double 7” single. As is customary with Fruits De Mer Records it's a selection of covers given over to modern make-overs. This double single opens with Frobisher Neck covering Brainticket's To Another Universe. Made with just a a Mellotron, it's impressive stuff, setting the tone of exploratory repetitiveness that characterises the rest of the EP.

Black Tempest bravely have a stab at Tangerine Dream's Rubycon Part 1, reining it in at five and half minutes in length. It works though, meditative drone giving way to motorik drive, all the while oscillating nicely.

Vespero show they're equally adept at covering Faust as they are Pink Floyd with their version of J'ai Mal Aux Dents. Repetitively hypnotic with conscious expanding guitar explorations and random vocal declarations. It's seven and a half minutes of driving band dynamics, with not a blues scale in sight.

Jay Tausig rounds the EP off with a version of Gong's The Glorious Om Riff. The opening vocal mantra giving way to the EP's most rockist track, with panned guitar breaks, synthesized sonics, and Coltrane-esque squally saxophone lines, all held together by a solid rhythm section. Get in! A truly satisfying collection, this may just be the pick of the crop in Fruit De Mer's current batch of 7” releases.

TRACKLISTING

1 – Frobisher Neck – To Another Universe (originally by Brainticket)

2 – Black Tempest – Rubycon Part 1 (Tangerine Dream)

3 – Vespero – J'ai Mal Aux Dents (Faust)

4 – Jay Tausig – The Glorious Om Riff (Gong)

Click here for more on Frobisher Neck.

Click here for more on Black Tempest.

Click here for more on Vespero.

Click here for more on Jay Tausig.

Click here for the Fruit De Mer Records website.

Vespero – Careful With That Axe, Eugene

Russian psych-prog band's salute to Pink Floyd on 7” coloured vinyl with double sided poster.

Although Vespero have appeared on the Fruits De Mer releases before, this is the band's first stand-alone single for the label, and one with which they've chosen to pay tribute to psychedelic and progressive godfathers (The) Pink Floyd.

The two instrumental covers will be familiar to all Pink Floyd fans out there, A-side being Vespero's version of the early PF classic, Careful With That Axe Eugene, with B-side One Of These Days, the opening track from 1971's Meddle.

Pink Floyd fans can be notoriously sniffy about others tackling the band's tracks (unless they're Australian and ape them note for note), but even the grumpiest PF enthusiast would be hard pushed not to like this single. Still recognisable as Floyd tracks but with a band feel and dynamic that's all Vespero's. No mean feat.

With both tracks approaching the eight-minute mark, this single tests the limits of the 7” format in a very satisfying way. Careful with that lathe, record cutting man!

TRACKLISTING

1 – Careful With That Axe, Eugene

2 – One Of These Days

Click here for Vespero on Facebook.

Click here for the Fruits De Mer website.