Back in time, and way before the Internet, there was this great little Italian underground Neo-Psychedelic band, Effervescent Elephants, who were massively influenced by Eastern/Indian head music and the sounds of early Pink Floyd/Syd Barrett (the clue’s in the name kidz!!). Part of the 80s Italian Psych scene, they released a few great singles and a couple of albums before disbanding in 1991 and going their separate ways…………………..in the mid 90s there was a CD release of their complete works on the Italian label Mellow Records, (if you can find a copy), but otherwise their music is little known outside their homeland. The Effervescent Elephants returned to the studio for the first time for a long time in 2011 to record an album with Italian Psych/Prog legend Claudio Rocchi and with some spare studio remaining they decide to re-record some of songs they had played during the 80s, along with some previously unreleased songs...........................the results have now been released as the Ganesh Sessions on Area Pirata Records (the home of Italian Garage Rock). The Ganesh Sessions are raw, one take, live studio recordings with no overdubs and are Psychedelic as fuck. What these recordings may lack in polish is made up in sheer headswirling trippyness as the band re-live their 80s heyday.
The Ganesh Sessions consist of 10 tracks of Neo-Psych swirlyness (plus a bonus track; a lost remix of ‘Apollo e Le Muse’ by………err……Robby Rave from the original sessions with Claudio Rocchi) where the band re-work some of their favourite old tunes, cover a couple of Syd Barratt compositions (‘Astronomy Domine’ and ‘Maize’) and set the controls to the heart of the sun via India with the epic studio jam ‘Astral Raga’. It’s the sound of the Paisley Underground crash landing at the UFO club with a ton of mind expanding drugs……..and it’s all good stuff. The stand out tracks just have to be the Floydian ‘Confusion In Marrakech’, the Byrdsian Folk-Rock jangle of the Effervescent Elephants cover of The Strange Flowers tune ‘December’ and a re-working of their 1986 debut single ‘Radio Muezzin’. The psychedelic sounds of The Effervescent Elephants may be new to a lot of PsychHeads outside of Italy, however they are well worth checking out if you dig classic 80s Neo-Psych. Although still available as a download from the Mellow Records Bandcamp page here, all we need now is for someone to re-issue the CD of Effervescent Elephants - The Complete Works sometime soon.
The Ganesh Sessions are out NOW on Area Pirata Records, available on CD (limited edition of 300 copies) and as a digital download from the Area Pirata Bandcamp page https://areapiratarec.bandcamp.com/album/ganesh-sessions or directly from their webstore.
Hello
ReplyDelete