John Beckmann, the driving force behind the Mortal Prophets, is many things—a sonic explorer, outside-the-box creative, left-footed musical traveler—but with this enticingly titled new album, The Laurel Canyon Lost Sessions 1966-69, he can add sonic shaman to the list.
While this isn’t, as the name suggests, a long-lost recording from back in the day, it is certainly the next best thing. Beckmann and his band of musical adventurers set themselves up in a room in Laurel Canyon – a place where, as he puts it, rock gods once roamed – and soaked up the vibes, let the sonic spirits of the place enter their consciousness and conjured up the sounds of the past. The result? A series of tracks that never existed (until now) but which will still sum up a time, a place, a mood, and a mindset.
Ten instrumental tracks that feel like the last echoes of West Coast psychedelia soaking into the red soil before the singer-songwriters became the thing and the money men took over. An acid trip travelogue through places real and imagined, physical locations and states of mind, and all made with authentic ancient analog artifacts.
Moog synthesizers sound like the distant echo of the Big Bang finally washing up on the Pacific shores. Hendrixian wah-wah pedals howl at the moon, and the distortion and reverb dials are turned up to eleven. “Orange Sunshine” wraps Bachian keyboards around a restrained surf groove. “Sunset Strip” captures the freaky energy and atmosphere, the innocence and the lurking danger of that place in its heyday. “Astral Rays” comes on like a five-piece band, all peopled by Hendrix’s sonic doppelgangers – okay men, it’s over the top we go!
John Beckmann may have made a name for himself, blasting out apocalyptic blues and haunted americana, but this masterpiece of hallucinogenic reimagination shows that he is the musical master of anything that he turns his mind to.
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