Mantequilla/Chaos Unlimited (UK)

Bit different this one folks; definitely a sort of “cottage industry” project, an album recorded privately and distributed wholly by Chaos Unlimited, the UK’s darlings of psytrance mail order (without whom, let’s face it, over the years the UK scene would be looking decidedly anaemic.) Hoopy Frood is the sort of music you might stumble across by accident at a festival. Bridging the gap between progressive rock and psy-chill, it’s not going to be to everybody’s tastes but for certain members of the psy community, this could be a bit of a gem. Sequence kicks off with circular, guitar-led chillage; and a woohoo is in order ("woohoo!") because uncharacteristically, the guitar’s actually decent. Not the sort of skid row powerchord monstrosity to infect a lot of “dancefloor stormers.” Never Coming Down is one of the handful of tracks here that deploy vocals; and read that in terms of ‘it’s a song’ rather than the normal psytrance use of vocals as another instrument. Lyrically, it’s something rather yogurt-weavy, but pleasant: we suspect the work of hippies. Title track Psychonaut is delightfully awash with guitars, The Voice is a sort of hippy Noel Gallagher / Dido collaboration: an interesting one for sure, though even with repeated listens I’m not quite sure what the song’s on about. Haze is a real tickler: jazzy bass, sliced-up vox, and plenty of other noises all jumping about, making for a nice psy crossover track. Psychology is best described as Small Faces meets Twin Peaks meets Enigma with a sprinkling of semi-flamenco Muppet Show (yup, I told you it was psychedelic.) Impermanence tackles a sort of fast-paced digidub and comes out smelling of roses, Light and Breath is a sort of Vangelis-meets-Café Del Mar floatathon, which is rather spoiled by the sound of a woman moaning suggestively, followed by an overblown guitar solo. Closing Track Friends is a nice guitar-led ending, a bit like an acoustic Jimmy Page or (how’s this for an obscure reference) WG Snuffy Walden, who composed the Thirtysomething soundtrack. All in all a likeable, if puzzling album. Try before you buy, but those who have a soft spot for 70s prog rock should feel right at home with this. Although, as my old mum used to say, if you can listen to Can, you can listen to anything.