[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDQbIWo94uU&w=500&h=305]
Paired now as a single disc by Gear Fab Records, these albums were initially pressed on the Design label in 1968 and 1967 respectively.
Containing all instrumentals, the Love Machine’s Electronic Music To Blow Your Mind By!!! and Flower Power Sitar’s Rajput and the Sepoy Mutiny offer not a lick of information about the artists behind the mayhem and psychosis. And the reason why is because they were exploitation endeavors, which were quite common at the time. Producers would enlist a group of studio musicians, slap a name on them, and put together records peddling whatever sonic fashion was hot at the moment. We’re only in it for the money, to quote Frank Zappa …
As their neon-lit handles imply, the Love Machine and Flower Power Sitar hitched themselves to the psychedelic bandwagon, and did so with goofy grins and gleams in their glassy eyes.
Streaked to the bone with weirdo sound effects, resembling a mishmash of gunshots, slamming doors, high winds, jet planes in flight, and rushing waters, Electronic Music To Blow Your Mind By!!! dials in on cutting edge frequencies by the pound.
Bearing brain-altering titles like “Zenquake,” “Inner Ear Freakout,” “Bells For Eternal Zoom,” and “The Shadows Of Vibrate,” the album twists, turns, tumbles and topples with warped and wiggy jams. Visualize the Ventures, the Deep and Pink Floyd exchanging ideas and riffs, and that pretty much sums up the mood and direction of the album.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQzYWCz_j4g&w=385&h=280]
Not surprisingly, Flower Power Sitar’s Rajput and the Sepoy Mutiny is stocked to the stars with the stinging, exotic tones of sitars. Although the package is dominated by raga rock rumbles, splashes and flashes of jazz and lounge-laced pop periodically creep into the crevices.
Some of the songs on the record are “Flower Bed,” “Beautiful Beautiful Flower,” “Do It With Flowers,” and “Flowers Flowers Everywhere,” which not only promote the flower power theme of the era to the max, but will perhaps further encourage listeners to plant a garden. Fans of the Gurus, the West Coast Pop Experimental Band, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, and yes there we go again with the Ventures, are sure to dig this disc and its many charms.
Buzzing with every acid-scented trick in the book, Electronic Music To Blow Your Mind By!!! and Rajput and the Sepoy Mutiny serve as the missing link between silly and stunning, making them essential to any psychedelic aficionado’s record collection.
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