The 2kDozen 500: #177 - The Time and Space Machine, "Taste the Lazer"

A luscious cover on this album, very lush indeed. Psychedelic colours and a kind of art deco font that suggest there might be riches within or that the label has a good design department. (I'm sure labels don't have departments any longer; that seems a very twentieth century way of structuring things.) It features Richard Norris too, previously of house/techno cross-pollinators The Grid in another life; and they were good, The Grid - they cross-pollinated in a most entertaining fashion.

This is more of a cosmic cowboy ride across the crimson skies, especially in the epic "Black Rainbow", a title I could never tire of. There are organs being leaned on, a woodwind-like refrain looping over and over and plenty of echo chamber around the guitar solo. The mind is very focused in listening. An alarm kicks off "Pill Party in India" and there's a sweet, dubby beat that appears and moves things on in very satisfactory fashion. "Out of My Head" is a live band version of a Chemical Brothers tune as yet unrecorded; it stomps with lysergic boots on, shaking up the dancefloor. Live drums don't sound as party-pooping as they can to my ears at times, especially riding the cymbal at the end.

Some of it motors around less successfully than other parts - "Explosions in the Sky" doesn't really go anywhere, for example. Nice bit of backward stuff, mind. It mellows a little for "Magic Mountain" with flutes and the like and ends on a track called "Good Morning", so as to map out the party to its obvious conclusion. The tracks with propulsive bass as those I like more. The quieter ones meander too long, rivers of negligent flow. Fun jams for them, but not pickling my process so much.

Rating: Lysergic out of Cosmos