D.R. Hooker - 'The Truth' (Subliminal Sounds)

How do you argue with an artist who looks like this? D.R. Hooker's record is famous more for its obscurity than its music, which is unfair. It's Christian psych at its best, not built around heavy guitar crunching like the Fraction Moon Blood record, but mostly flowing pop-rock songs that show Hooker's talent for songwriting -- if only he had gotten a larger audience at the time! And his voice isn't bad either - not enough to stand out against the million other rock voices of the greatest decade (the 70s, of course, with this coming out in '72) but with an expressiveness that's enhanced by the occasional echo/delay flutters applied at the ends of key verses and lyrics. But it's the backing band that excels here. 'Forge Your Own Chains' has a great swing to it, showing a precision of rhythm but a languid pulse, almost funky. Opener 'The Sea' is beautiful, elegant in its vocal melody and accented with sharp guitars. I don't know who these guys were, really - the rhythm section are the Sheck brothers, one of whom is credited on an Edgar Winter recording, but not much else that's recognisable to a layman. 'The Thing' is maybe my pick of the album, with sharp riffs courtesy of Hooker's own guitar, crescendoing into a cacophony with some gurgling analogue electronics and a psychedelic sheen. Or maybe it's 'I'm Leaving You', where Hooker's Jesus-lite persona gets its biggest test, as he becomes a funky soul vampire crooning about the end of a relationship over a wall of screaming flanged guitars. It's pretty fucking secular, but then the whammy of the title track, followed by 'The Bible', is where he really lays down the Word. 'The Bible' builds into an almost orgasmic peak, with Hooker's intoning of 'The bible, the bible' being so hypnotic that when it all gets quiet for a second and revs back up it's a stunning effect. When listening to this I like to stare into the off-centred spiral on the label, and take in the smell of acrid Christ-smoke, wet ferns and sand that this album seems to give off. The whole thing ends with some deliberate, obvious backwards speech, which I'm not going to risk destroying my belt-drive to hear but I assume it's imploring us to praise the Lord, or maybe praise Hooker himself (you gotta wonder about anyone who dresses up like Jesus and self-releases rock music, right?). The big complaint here is the fidelity - I assume this is a bootleg like most of these private-press reissues (supposedly there were only 99 copies of the original) so it was probably mastered from a non-mint original. Or maybe it's supposed to sound like this - this wasn't exactly Abbey Road studios to begin with, and this is lo-fi or rather 'mid-fi' before any such term existed. There's a constant sense of having dust on my stylus, distortion around the edges and a pretty murky mix when things get thick (which they often do!). So I kinda wish there was a properly remastered version out there, but maybe there is, as this has been reissued a zillion times and I just got this '99 repress secondhand. Apparently he made a second album (which I haven't heard) with the promising title of Armageddon - maybe would be a nice pairing with the decidedly anti-Christian Comus?

Fraction - 'Moon Blood' (Phoenix)

There's something that divides people about this Fraction record. Maybe I swallowed the Kool-Aid pushed by The Acid Archives (which calls tracks 2-4 "among the most powerful music ever laid down", and that this is the "underground heavy psych monster to conquer them all") and other such private-press aficionados. Maybe this is really a third-rate amped-up Steppenwolf ripoff, a bunch of Christian meathead biker-rock garbage that would be intolerable were it not obscure. But whenever I hear 'Come Out of Her' I realise I must side with The Acid Archives, even if they do say that this bootleg copy sounds terrible compared to the official pressings. I'm not even a huge heavy rock guy - I don't own any Sabbath records even, and my sense of 'heavy' is probably different than most folks (I often cite Richard Thompson's 'Calvary Cross' as one of the heaviest tracks ever). Yet something about this album rips me apart. It's not so much the earnest, religious lyrics (which could all be easily about sex if you just substitute "vagina" for "God", though I guess most hymns could work that way too) as the extreme way that Jim Beach belts them out - it's like an unholy merger of Robert Plant and Jim Morrison, except I don't like either of those guys much. The recording really is good, even on this bootleg pressing, and I can imagine how a lesser production would dampen the impact of this. (Or, we can wonder how many other half-decent obscurities would have benefitted from better production). I can't deny the obscure nature of this is part of what appeals to me, but it's not obscurity for obscurity's sake. What's amazing about Fraction was that they existed at all, and I wonder what their lives were (are?) like, committed to this very uncompromising style of rock music but fervently theological in their execution. Maybe, as a nonbeliever myself, I like flirting with the idea of Christianity because it's the most 'out' trip of all, and the truest rebellion that I could enact in my life. I wonder what, if any, drugs were consumed - you'd think their beliefs would forbid it, but this sounds hand-in-hand with so many other heavy psych records which quite frequently partook. I'm with the Archives on this - this is a beast, an utterly singular record that's not an every-day listen (and may not offer many lessons in 2015) but hard to ignore when it does see the turntable.

Aphrodite's Child - '666' (Vertigo)

Any record that starts out with a chant of 'defile the system!' before exploding into a trumpet-accented psych-pop song drenched in fake crowd noise is A-OK by me.  Add in the presence of a young Vangelis Papathanassiou (yes, that Vangelis), a weird inner gatefold painting of a car jacknifing through a brick wall, and the cryptic liner note of 'This work was recorded under the influence of "Sahlep"' and I'm even more interested.  Did I mention it's a double-LP concept album based on the book of Revelation?  While not as Satanic as the cover/title suggests, it's a scorcher.  The album, while long, is pretty evenly split between catchy songs, instrumental  rock, and a few 'out' jams thrown in, most notably the song that is just an infinity symbol (awesome idea, dudes!) which has the sexiest female orgasm vocals this side of Brainticket.  Though there's some slight Jesus Christ Superstar tendencies, A.C (hey, another A.C band!) employ enough wigged out guitar solos and perfect psych production to make this a total classic.  The bass thumps in just the right way, and there's some obligatory Greek instruments to remind you of the flavor of this trip.  What strikes me now is how catchy these songs are - Vangelis has some real pop hooks up his sleeve that are best situated alongside West Coast psych like Moby Grape or Jefferson Airplane.  There's a few goofy genre excursions, such as 'Who Can Find the Beast?' -- which is a bit too 'Bad Bad Leroy Brown' to be convincing (these are Greeks, after all).  Side four opens with the big jam, with some axetastic riffing and mixed-in moments from earlier in the record, before ending with the pure pop of 'Break'.   This was a smash hit and deservedly so; if you haven't heard this, seek it out and hold onto your (Greek Orthodox) Bible.