Something has crawled up my sleeve like a dangerous insect, telling me to find out more real good music that’s heading across the Pennsylvania highway with cosmic wonders and the realms of fantasy. That band of course is Spectral Sorcery.
This was like nothing I ever heard before. Three tracks that clock in between 21- and 10-minute pieces that come straight out of the stories from Heavy Metal magazine, Ayn Rand, Frank Herbert, and mellowing wonders that’ll make your jaw drop momentarily.
Their debut album Hyperspace Odyssey, will get your seat belts buckled and prepare to hurtle through the cosmos with space maddening effect with dooming arrangements, psychedelic power, wah-wah effects, keyboards, and sludge-like effects to keep you on the edge of your seat. And believe me, you might want to prepare for the adventure that’s waiting for you.
Starting out with the title-track clocking in at 21-minutes, you get a sense of the Hammond Organ going into this droning effect, synths, spaghetti westerns, and hypnotic arrangements with blaring psych guitar textures, sending you into this Hawkwind-like effect, coming out of the wood works. There are nods to Lee Dorrian’s Rise Above label, plus a bit of The Amorphous Androgynous’ We Persuade Ourselves-era, but putting us on the edge of time into hyperspace, going through the stars and into parallel universes, waiting for the doors to be opened.
If you’re here to think this is about Star Wars, think again, they aren’t singing about Lucas’ franchise, they know their science-fiction stories very well, top to bottom. With ‘Dream of Arrakis’, inspired by Herbert’s Dune franchise, is edgier, hard, and pulls no punches.
At first you think the synthesised vocals is a nod to Tangerine Dream’s Cyclone-era, but once the heavy guitars coming strolling through the spice, all hell breaks loose. It’s solo’s come at you, hard and hypnotised to see what will happen as take a dosage of the mélange with its hallucinogenic effect, preparing to take you into this mind-blown dimension, followed by some trippy sequences in full motion as the synths delve you into the acid trip, unfolding in front of your very eyes.
Closing track ‘Spelljamming Time’, sees Spectral Sorcery walking into the psych-bebop effect that speaks of Miles Davis’ ‘All Blues’ background. With its return to the organ, bluesy-sludgy guitar arrangements, driving down into the unknown, you never know what to expect as the reality starts to kick in, knowing there’s no turning back as you head into the darkness and face the truth within.
