Black Market Karma - In My Child Mind (E to A) (Flower Power Records)

There is something of the sixties echoing through this latest release from the excellently titled Black Market Karma. But it is a version of the sixties that seemed to only exist in the music of the likes of Spiritualised and Spacemen 3; a later take on the era, a nostalgic reinvention of sorts, a dreamscape mainly of their creation.

But that is fine. What is music for if not to build new and imagined worlds? To create sonic spaces where all eventualities are possible? To answer the What Ifs? of what’s gone before. And if their blend of rose-tinted, flower-powered nostalgia is a beautiful pastiche, a description of a decade never experienced by those carving out its new soundtrack, who really cares? And in any case, it is an idea that they more than tip their hat to on the title of their tenth album, Aped Flair & Hijacked Ideas, for which this track is a forerunner.

So, happy in their mission to invent and infuse rather than replicate or study, the band is free to make a sound that is part past glory and part forward-thinking (music being cyclical); part adventure, part mapped out journey; part tribute, part experiment. And once you accept it as an untethered thing playing by its own rules, to be enjoyed rather than judged, you quickly see what a brilliant song it is.

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