DC Share Revival: October 2025

Thursday, October 16, 2025

Review: Various Artists - Psych Funk a' la Turkish Vol 2 (recorded 1974-77, released 2012)

Rating: 90/100 - Genre: Anatolian Rock,
Funk Rock, Progressive Rock, Psychedelic Rock.

Various Artists – Psych Funk Á La Turkish Vol. 2 was released in 2012 on the Turk-A-Disk imprint under catalog number TRKD2020 as a vinyl LP compiling Turkish 1970s and mid-1970s recordings remastered for the release.

The compilation opens with Ateş Bacayı Sarmış, credited to Rana & Selçuk; the track presents a repeating electric bass groove beneath a wah-guitar motif and layered male backing vocals, with a horn stab pattern that enters on the second verse and returns as a punctuating figure. The performance attributes a double-lead vocal arrangement to the credited duo, with a percussion palette that includes congas and a brushed snare that sit slightly back in the mix, producing a live-room ambience rather than heavy studio reverb. The credited Selçuk on this and adjacent selections is Selçuk Alagöz, who formed an orchestra bearing his name and recorded throughout the 1970s after gaining visibility in the Altın Mikrofon competition in the 1960s.

Yali Yali by Neşe Karaböcek places a staccato electric guitar ostinato against a four-on-the-floor drum pattern, while the lead vocal uses melismatic ornamentation common in Turkish pop of the era and the arrangement includes a discrete string pad that doubles the vocal hook in the bridge. Neşe Karaböcek’s published biographies list her career starting in the 1950s with ongoing commercial releases through the 1970s and beyond. Yali Yali has also circulated in DJ edits and modern remixes, indicating its rhythmic bassline resonated with later dance-floor curators.

Semiramis performs İyiler Kötüye Düşer as a mid-tempo arrangement built around a reedy electric organ figure that mirrors the vocal melody, with a production that foregrounds acoustic rhythm guitar and a muted brass line during the chorus. The lead vocal in this track uses a narrow dynamic range and microphone proximity that emphasizes sibilance and presence, consistent with 1970s Turkish studio techniques where vocal closeness in the mix was common.

Tatlım by Hayko opens with a tremoloed electric guitar figure and places a tone-bent saz-like lead synth over an R&B-derived drum backbeat; the vocal delivery alternates between spoken phrases and drawn-out sung lines in minor mode. The recorded guitar tones include an analog tape saturation characteristic that suggests the original tapes were transferred with an aim to preserve level compression and tape hiss.

Seyhan Karabay & Kardaşlar’ Nem Kaldı centers a syncopated bass riff against an off-beat acoustic rhythm guitar and a recurring bowed string line that enters in the second verse; the arrangement uses call-and-response backing vocals aligned to the song’s chorus phrase. The credited group name indicates a family or close-ensemble configuration (Kardaşlar translates as “brothers”).

On side B, Nil Burak’s Tatlı Tatlı arranges a triplet-based electric piano figure with a tambourine pattern accenting the second and fourth beats and a vocal that uses microtonal inflections consistent with Turkish makam conventions layered over Western pop harmony. Nil Burak’s published pop and folk crossover recordings through the 1970s and performed across Cyprus and Turkey.

Selçuk Alagöz contributes Malabadi Köprüsü, a track whose title references a historic Anatolian stone bridge and which features a bağlama-like picked pattern doubled by a reverb-wet electric guitar, with a modal melody that shifts between minor and dorian modes across its eight-bar phrases. Alagöz’s career notes state he led an orchestra and recorded both pop and Anatolian rock material in the 1970s.

Serter Bağcan’s 500 Altıne Hayriye Esom is presented as a long track on the compilation with a near-seven-minute runtime, structured around a cyclical organ vamp and extended instrumental passages that introduce a wah-guitar solo in the central section and a repeated vocal chorus that functions as a mantra.

Bana Gerçekleri Söyle by Gülden Karaböcek features an acoustic guitar arpeggio introduction, a tight snare backbeat, and a lead vocal that sits forward in the mix with a half-voice technique that emphasizes lyric diction; the arrangement introduces a string quartet motif on the second verse that doubles the descending vocal line. Gülden Karaböcek’s biographical records indicate she recorded prolifically through the early to mid-1970s and that she and Neşe Karaböcek are siblings who both issued records during the same era.

The compilation closes with Ali Kocatepe’s Hey Gidi Dünya Hey, a track anchored by a syncopated piano comping figure, an electric guitar that alternates between single-note licks and chordal stabs, and a brass arrangement that punctuates the chorus with short staccato phrases; the production places the vocal slightly back in the stereo field with reverb tails on the final syllables of each phrase. Ali Kocatepe’s career records his roles as composer, performer, and later as a record company founder.

Across the compilation the mastering choices preserve tape dynamics and leave transient attack in drums relatively intact while bringing midrange presence forward, a technical approach evident in the prominence of mid-band guitars and organs in nearly every track. The release packaging includes a printed insert with photos and liner notes and credits the release as an expertly remastered set from original sources.

Psych Funk Á La Turkish Vol. 2 assembles ten tracks that pair traditional Turkish melodic elements—microtonal ornamentation, modal vocal inflection, and bağlama-type picking patterns—with electric instrumentation, funk-derived basslines, and period horn arrangements.

You can listen to the full album on Youtube. And you might also like following reviews I wrote:

Sources:

Sunday, October 12, 2025

Psychedelic Jukebox: [1967] The Painted Faces - Anxious Colour

The Painted Faces’ Anxious Color arrives in listening as a small, urgent relic from mid-1967 that betrays more careful craft than casual hearsay about teenage garage bands of the era would suggest. The record’s provenance—an issue on Manhattan (Manhattan 808) with Anxious Color backed by Things We See, released in June 1967—places the band in the narrow window when American regional scenes were experimenting with modal guitar lines and lyric images that lean toward restless unease.

From the first seconds the track stakes out a mood: an insistent bass figure, clipped rhythmic guitar, and a lead line that favors minor-modal bends over conventional pentatonic rock phrasing, which pulls the ear away from the brighter, three-chord pop of many local acts and toward a cooler, more unsettled register. The arrangement is economical—verse and chorus alternate without an extended instrumental detour—yet the performance compresses a sense of mounting tension into a roughly two-and-a-half minute single.

Formed in Fort Myers, Florida, the band who recorded Anxious Color emerged from local circuits where young musicians cycled through small studios and short-run singles; the group’s lineup at the time of the Manhattan single consisted of Jack O'Neill (vocals), Jerry Turano (lead guitar), Harry Bragg (drums), John McKinney (rhythm guitar, later bass) and Craig Guild (bass) and George Schule.

The song’s lyrics resist simplistic reading: images and turns of phrase suggest a speaker trapped in a restless perception, lines that foreground sensation and a searching tone. Paired with the guitar’s Eastern-tinged bends and the rhythm section’s forward motion, the lyrics create a feeling of anxious momentum—an emotion projected more by the record’s moves than by explicit explanation.

The record’s local performance history offers another thread: in south Florida the A-side received significant airplay and topped local charts for multiple weeks, which helps explain how a relatively obscure Florida group registered on the wider collectors’ radar later. That local momentum seems to have been cut short by the same pressures that felled many American bands of the period—lineup instability and the draft—so the single’s initial reach did not translate into sustained national touring or further promotion on the scale required to break a band into the mainstream.

The record’s afterlife is worth following closely because it reframes the original release without inventing provenance. Beginning in the 1980s and accelerating through reissues, the Painted Faces’ small catalog was anthologized for garage-collectors’ labels and compilation projects; a 1994 compilation titled Anxious Color and later reissues collected singles and unreleased studio cuts, which allowed new generations to assess the band’s work beyond the original 45.

You might also be interested in following song from the Psychedelic Jukebox: "[1966] The Outcasts - Set Me Free".

Sources:

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

"I saw the best Minds of my Generation..." - Allen Ginsberg between Poetry, Protest and Spirituality

Allen Ginsberg arrived on the American poetry scene from Newark, New Jersey, with a formation in modern letters that combined classroom study and intense friendships formed at Columbia University; those early ties with Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady helped shape the circle later labeled the Beat movement, and Ginsberg’s first wide notice sprang from a single, public act of reading that rippled outward into print and legal contest.

The poem Howl — written in the mid-1950s and first read at the Six Gallery event in San Francisco in October 1955 — was taken into print by Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books in 1956; that publication provoked official seizure of imported copies and led to arrests of the bookstore manager and Ferlinghetti himself. The ensuing municipal prosecution focused on whether the book could be judged obscene under the law; after testimony by literary experts and a scrutinizing opinion by the court, the presiding judge concluded in language that has been repeatedly cited since: “I do not believe that ‘Howl’ is without redeeming social importance.” That ruling cleared the publisher and established a legal standard protecting works that possess even limited literary or social worth, and the trial’s publicity widened public attention to both the poem and the questions it raised about expression and censorship.

Observers who were there and participants afterward wrote and spoke about the case in ways that illuminate the people involved and their motives: Ferlinghetti reflected on the episode in later interviews and recordings with civil liberties advocates, often noting that the state’s reaction had less to do with a handful of coarse words than with the poem’s critique of mid-century conformity; as he put it in a recorded talk preserved by the ACLU, “It is not the poet but what he observes which is revealed as obscene.” That public defense by a small, independent press and its founder framed the trial as a contest over the civic space for frank, direct testimony in art.

Ginsberg’s circle was both literary and itinerant: his friendships with Kerouac and Burroughs and his companionship with Peter Orlovsky were part of a web that mixed collaborations, long conversations, and cross-continental travels; the Six Gallery reading itself produced quick, decisive publisher interest — a telegram from Ferlinghetti asking for the manuscript is part of the small, well-attested lore around the poem’s first publication — and from that moment Ginsberg’s vocation as reader, correspondent, and public poet intensified. His work kept drawing him into debates and gatherings, and his appearances and publications after the mid-1950s show steady activity across readings, journals, and small presses.

Across the 1960s and afterwards, Ginsberg moved between poetry and political engagement: he composed and circulated anti-war texts such as Wichita Vortex Sutra and advocated public tactics for protest that emphasized open, affirmative spectacle; the phrase “flower power” is commonly traced to Ginsberg’s efforts in the mid-1960s to convert demonstrations into scenes that dramatized peaceful protest. He also turned toward institutional teaching and formation, co-founding the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics with Anne Waldman at Naropa in Boulder in 1974, which became a sustained site for workshops, readings, and cross-disciplinary exchange.

Music and performance were recurring partners for his readings: in the late 1980s and into the following decades he worked with Philip Glass on an extended project that became the theatre piece Hydrogen Jukebox, and across years of recorded readings Ginsberg brought musicians into his sessions and albums — names that appear on those records include Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney among others — which placed his spoken voice into settings shaped by accompaniment and studio practice. As Glass remembered of their early encounter, “I happened to run into Allen Ginsberg at St. Mark’s Bookshop ... I composed a piano piece to accompany Allen’s reading,” a small exchange that grew into a multi-part music-theatre work.

Ginsberg’s engagement with Eastern devotional currents: he joined the public chanting led by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada on more than one occasion, most famously at street and park gatherings in New York that introduced many passersby to public kirtan in the mid-1960s; a widely noted episode on October 9, 1966 in Tompkins Square is often cited as an important early moment in the movement’s public presence in the city, and multiple transcripts and recordings record conversational moments between Ginsberg and Prabhupada in 1969 where Ginsberg joins or echoes the formula Hare Kṛṣṇa.

You might also be interested in the article I wrote about "Timothy Leary's practice of "The Psychedelic Experience" (1964, an adaptation of the Tibetan Bardo Thodol)".

Sources:

Monday, October 6, 2025

Review: Mixed Grill - Cry for Peace and Love (1979)

Rating: 90/100 - Genre: Afro-Funk.

Mixed Grill’s Cry For Peace And Love arrives as a studio project assembled out of Lagos session rooms at the end of the 1970s, produced for Odion Limited and distributed with Decca involvement. Recorded backing tracks were laid down at Decca’s Lagos facilities, then taken to Abbey Road for overdubs, remix and lacquer cutting. At the heart of the record’s propulsion is the bass-and-vocal presence of Ken (Babá) Okulolo, whose career before and after the sessions places him among the working pillars of Nigerian highlife and Afro-rock; his playing here supplies a steady forward motion that the arrangements lean on. The percussive plan is assembled from multiple hands: Gasper Lawal (credited on congas and percussion) brings the multiple-voice approach of a practiced session percussionist, while conga touches credited to Friday Posso and the drum-kit work attributed to Mike Kolins produce the layered groove the band uses as an organizing device.

Beyond rhythm there is a compact set of melodic and punctuating voices: guitar work attributed to Berkley Jones, James Eyefia (and others in the session roll), a small horn cast with Brother Dele, Fred Fisher and Sharp Mike, and keyboards credited to a player named Lemmy; those players arrange short horn hits, tightly strummed guitar figures and keyboard coloration so that the record privileges cooperative ensemble moves over extended single-player displays. Stylistically the album sits between Afrobeat’s rhythmic frameworks and the late-1970s disco/boogie and funk practices that were being absorbed into Lagos studio work at that time; contemporary reappraisals of Nigerian pop from that era place Cry For Peace And Love inside the same moment in which producers and labels experimented with slicker groove formats while keeping percussion at the center. That crossover intent—Lagos feels served up with a polished mix for international ears—is clearly audible when the drums and congas are examined against horn hits and four-on-the-floor propulsion.

The album’s title piece, Cry For Peace And Love, functions as an outward-facing thesis: the arrangement sets bass and hand percussion into a mid-tempo pocket while horns and layered background voices lift a repeated chorus phrase that operates as a communal hook more than as a private lyric sequence. Instrumentally the track places an elastic bass motif at front, supports it with multiple conga parts and a measured drum-kit pulse, and allows short flute or horn ornaments to punct the vocal lines; the overall production keeps the dynamic profile steady so the record can be used on dancefloors or radio without dramatic peaks or troughs.

A Brand New Wayo is the record’s most overt call to movement: it rests on a taut, repetitive low end and a syncopated guitar pattern that sits between highlife strum and disco comping, with conga layers and sharp horn stabs adding punctuation. That arrangement invites long vamps and repeated hooks, which is why DJs and editors have returned to this cut for 7" edits and digital re-sculpts—the track’s structure makes it pliable for club use while retaining recognizably Lagos rhythmic phrasing.

Funky People shifts emphasis more squarely toward groove construction: harmonically the arrangement pares back so that the rhythm section can press the pocket, with short horn motifs and interlocking guitar figures acting as meter-markers rather than melodic expositions. The mix leaves space for conga interplay and kit fills to ornament the ongoing vamp, which makes the cut a durable platform for DJs who need a steady syncopated groove to spin or edit. The track’s repeated frames function as a workshop for rhythmic detail—small percussion gestures are allowed to surface without interrupting the main pulse.

No One Can Rule The World introduces a briefer anthemic sweep through its chorus and melodic phrasing; the title line is delivered as a communal refrain, and the arrangement supports that by foregrounding call-and-answer vocals and horn figures that shape short, memorable hooks.

The album’s closer, Don't Cry Papa, pulls the dynamics down and opens space for more lyrical melody: flute passages (credited to Tee Mac on the release) and vocal harmonies take on a consoling role, and the rhythm section settles into a measured pocket that lets melodic lines carry the emotional weight without abandoning the album’s rhythmic language. The sequence of backing instrumentation and the reduction in percussive density at the end read like a deliberate coda, a moment in which the players move from the danceroom toward a softer register.

Two technical points are worth stating plainly for anyone working through the record in musical detail: the first is the way the rhythm section is built from overlapping percussive voices—drum kit plus multiple congas and auxiliary percussion—which creates polyrhythmic interplay as the album’s organizing device and allows horns and keys to function primarily as color and punctuation. The second is that the finishing work at Abbey Road, where overdubs and final mixes were executed, makes the record sound like a Lagos take refined for export; the Lagos tracking supplies drive and immediacy, and the London work supplies a level balance and clarity that was meant to make the grooves travel.

Biographically, Mixed Grill is not a single, continuous touring unit with a long catalogue but a session-name: the LP gathers seasoned Lagos players who passed through established studios and who also worked with other acts. Many of the participants—most visibly Ken (Babá) Okulolo and Gasper Lawal—went on to distinct careers and have separate discographies and projects, and modern reappraisals from compilers and labels have treated the LP as part of a Lagos-era cluster of records that were assembled by producers with export ambitions.

You might also like following reviews I wrote:

Sources:

Sunday, October 5, 2025

Psychedelic Jukebox: [1967] The Misty Wizards - It's Love

The Misty Wizards emerged from Detroit’s folk-psych milieu as a short-lived duo formed by Ted Lucas and Richard “Dick” Keelan, two musicians who had come through the same Retort Club/coffeehouse circuits and who moved from the multi-member Spike Drivers project into a pared-down pairing that foregrounded sitar and modal ideas within concise pop forms. Their only commercial imprint is a Reprise 7" pairing, catalogued 0616, released in 26 July 1967, the A-side It’s Love running about 2:09 and backed by Blue Law Sunday.

Credits attach the composition credit for It’s Love to Ted Lucas and show an unusual split of production attributions: the A-side is tied to Harvey Brooks while the flip is tied to Jerry Ragovoy. Musically the record compresses raga-inflected gestures into a radio-length pop format: prominent sitar figures and drone-like motives sit alongside tambourine accents, insistent bass patterns and tight drum parts, while the vocal presentation alternates lead and supporting lines in a way that includes both masculine lead parts and supplementary vocal parts that reads as a counterpoint to the lead voice. Both principals (Ted Lucas and Richard “Dick” Keelan) were openly interested in East-Indian practice and modal methods; the duo pursued sitar study and that Lucas in particular engaged with teachers in the Los Angeles area.

Promotion for the single was modest: label listings and collector traces document DJ/promotions and college/freeform radio pickups but there is no evidence of national pop-chart placement or broad trade success in the mainstream periodicals of 1967; the song’s circulation in later decades owes more to specialty radio and curated reissues than to an initial hit run. That later circulation explains how the record survived: It’s Love has been anthologized on various WEA/Rhino-style and sitar-themed compilations and lives on through uploads and small-label reissue series, which moved the single from local obscurity into the reach of crate diggers and program hosts on specialist stations and shows.

After the partnership the two men followed distinct pathways: Keelan relocated to Canada and became connected with the Perth County Conspiracy circle documented in Canadian scene history, while Lucas continued to issue recordings and has reappeared in archival reissue activity and local feature pieces that trace his post-1967 work and continuing engagement with modal guitar approaches.

Ted Lucas spoke about musical honesty and the effort of mastering instrument practice in an contemporary reportage: “You can’t b.s. on an instrument—it's impossible! Everything that's there just comes out. What I got to do is just get my head together enough so that when I play I can just be what I am—Hey! What a groovy title for a song! ‘I Wanna Be What I Am!’ Where’s a pencil?” This on-the-record line from Lucas is one of the few direct participant statements available in the press and it helps place the single in the mindset of practitioners who treated exotic instrumentation as an active study rather than a gimmick.

You might also like following song from the Psychedelic Jukebox: "[1967] John Martyn - Rolling Home".

Sources:

Friday, October 3, 2025

Review: Duke Ellington & Count Basie - Battle Royal (The Duke Meets the Count) (recorded 1961, released 1963)

Rating: 90/100 - Genre: Big Band, Swing.

Duke Ellington and Count Basie meet on record in a way that rewards sustained listening: the session recorded in July 1961 at Columbia’s 30th Street studio presents two orchestral philosophies in conversation, and the album that resulted — issued under titles such as First Time! The Count Meets the Duke and Battle Royal (The Duke Meets the Count) — is as much a lesson in orchestral behavior as it is a collection of swinging performances. The two leaders arrive already formed by biography and long professional practice: Ellington, born April 29, 1899 in Washington, D.C., carried a lifetime of composition for big band, film and concert formats; Basie, born August 21, 1904 in Red Bank, New Jersey, embodies the Kansas City approach that prizes groove, riffing and compact solos.

The two bandleaders’ methods intersect on the album in instructive ways. Ellington’s practice was to write with named players in mind and to exploit orchestral possibilities: his charts turn players’ timbres into compositional colors and use short, crafted solos as structural devices. Basie’s practice emphasizes a spare, thrusting rhythm section — Count’s light, economical piano, Freddie Green’s consistent four-to-the-bar guitar, and a drummer-and-bass partnership that prefers space and forward momentum — with riff-based arrangements that put groove before exposition.

The date was recorded on July 6, 1961, at Columbia’s 30th Street studio and produced by Teo Macero. The engineers and producer used the stereo field deliberately, placing the Count Basie Orchestra predominantly in the left channel and the Duke Ellington Orchestra predominantly in the right so listeners could hear interplay without sonic congestion. Recording both full orchestras in the same room — rather than separating or overdubbing parts — meant the session became an acoustic forum where ensembles traded phrases and colors in real time; the studio’s large, tube-rich acoustic and Macero’s attention to clarity let individual brass thrusts and reed replies read cleanly across the mix.

Personnel matters in every bar. The combined cast runs to roughly twenty-plus horns plus a doubled rhythm section; among the names present are Cat Anderson, Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves, Harry Carney, Freddie Green, Thad Jones, Frank Wess, Sam Woodyard, and Sonny Payne, with Billy Strayhorn present in arranging roles on certain charts and Juan Tizol contributing valve-trombone color on Wild Man. With that many named voices available to arrangers and the producer, each arranging choice — who solos when, which rhythm engine drives a passage, whether a reed voicing takes an Ellingtonish role over a Basie riff — becomes musically meaningful. The session engineering typically preserved the two bands’ identities while letting soloists from one group answer or complement soloists from the other.

The program alternates Ellington heads and Basie standbys in a pattern that invites comparison: the opener Battle Royal is written in a blues-inflected Ellington idiom that emphasizes sectional call-and-response and short, pointed ensemble hits; the mix places high-register trumpet proclamations opposite darker reed replies so the track reads like a staged exchange of timbres more than a long solo showdown. Next, Thad Jones’s To You brings tighter, modern brass voicings into the room and makes space for a brief trombone spotlight; the chart functions as a compact vehicle in which harmonic color and crisp ensemble work are the primary pleasures. Take the “A” Train is used here as a large-band showpiece: the familiar AABA melody remains the anchor but solo space is distributed between Basie-side and Ellington-side players so that phrasing contrasts — clipped, percussive attacks versus more legato alto lines — become the point of interest rather than reiterating the tune’s words.

The Basie repertory on the date gets revoiced in ways that expose how the two orchestras respond to classic material. Corner Pocket (a.k.a. Until I Met You), a Basie staple by Freddie Green, remains groove-centered and keeps Freddie’s steady guitar pulse in the pocket while short trumpet and tenor choruses trade riffs; when Ellington’s voicings are applied to Basie riffing, the effect is a hybrid that reveals what each band prioritizes in phrasing and tone. By contrast, Wild Man, linked to Ellington’s Paris Blues work, unfolds as an episodic vignette with drum punctuations, cameo woodwind lines and cinematic gestures that make the track feel like a compressed soundtrack movement. Frank Wess’s Segue in C permits modal or static harmonic movement so reed colors — including flute passages associated with Wess — can float over a steady foundation, and B D B (Ellington/Strayhorn) behaves like a clean, arranged blues with short, shaped solos. Jumpin’ at the Woodside reasserts riff-driven swing: shouted ensemble figures, compact solos and Freddie Green’s comping return the listener to a communal Basie pocket that functions as the record’s kinetic payoff.

The session documentation and liner-notes identify which players take which choruses, and the producer and arrangers distribute solos so that each voice functions as a contrasting point: Alto lines from Hodges read differently next to Gonsalves’s tenor punches; Cat Anderson’s high-register trumpet cuts through dense ensemble voicings where needed; Harry Carney’s baritone anchors long tones that alter the color of entire sax sections; Freddie Green’s guitar acts as the hidden pulse that keeps the groove steady without seeking the limelight.

The production and room are integral aspects of how the music communicates. Columbia’s 30th Street studio had a large, live chamber that lends a natural bloom to big ensembles, and Macero’s approach for this date emphasized live capture and a clear separation in the stereo field so that listeners could treat the record as a comparative listening exercise. Modern reissues, remastering work and annotated liner notes — notably the expanded CD editions with notes by Aaron Bell and Phil Schaap — have clarified session logistics, added alternate takes and offered the annotations necessary for micro-study: who solos where on which take, how ensemble hits tighten across takes, and what editorial choices produced the issued masters.

You might also like the reviews I wrote for:

Sources:

Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Psychedelic Jukebox: [1967] The Id - The Inner Sound Of The Id

The Id arrived in 1967 as an odd, deliberate creation: not a conventional garage band album but a studio project assembled around Jerry Cole, steered and packaged by Paul Arnold, and issued by RCA as a single LP whose centrepiece is the extended closing track The Inner Sound Of The Id.

The backstory helps explain the record’s look and tone. Jerry Cole was already a first-call Los Angeles session leader who moved between surf instrumentals, television house bands and high-profile studio work; his résumé and impulse to gather trusted sidemen shaped the project’s personnel and execution. The players credited, Glenn Cass (bass, backing vocals), Norman Cass (rhythm guitar, backing vocals) and Don Dexter (drums, backing vocals) alongside Cole — are the practical core of what listeners hear.

Recording activity sits in the mid of 1966 (July–August), with the finished LP brought to market by RCA in the early months of 1967. That timing helps explain why critics at the time perceived the album as a mid-sixties studio artefact even as it arrived in a year that would see more celebrated psychedelic landmarks; the record itself was assembled from a larger batch of tapes, pared down to ten tracks for the RCA release. Paul Arnold’s role as conceiver, arranger and credited composer on several items complicates authorship: printed credits name Arnold as the creative impresario while Cole and Glenn Cass appear on composition credits for at least the title piece.

That provenance is not clean. The documentary trail shows a tangled paper and tape history: appropriations, repackagings and the circulation of alternate masters across budget labels became part of the record’s afterlife. Outtakes and masters connected to the Id sessions were folded into a raft of low-profile releases — from Alshire/101 Strings orchestral overdubs to bespoke budget LPs with invented band names — which scattered source material across the marketplace and created archival confusion that reissue producers would later have to undo. Cole himself voiced anger about the handling of those masters in interviews: “Paul Arnold absconded with the RCA royalties from The Id and then proceeded to sell that other material to a lot of people at various labels. It really got out of hand ... .”

Against that legal and commercial fog, the music remains the reason the album survived as a cult item. The centerpiece song, The Inner Sound Of The Id, occupies roughly ten minutes and functions as an extended centerpiece for the LP: a collage-like, long-form piece that refuses conventional verse/chorus payoff and instead exploits repetition, layering and small instrumental gestures to create a sustained state. The track’s instrumental pallet is compact but stretched: Cole’s electric guitars supply single-note shards and occasional yardbird-inflected outbursts; the low bass locks into cyclical ostinatos; drums are frequently placed back in the mix; organ and keyboard washes provide bedrock colors; and a sitar part appears not as disciplined raga but as an exotic drone and ornament. Listening closely, the parts are recorded and mixed to overlap as blocks of sound that interlock and rub against one another rather than to spotlight continuous solos.

Harmonic practice on the piece favours pedal points and modal planes over pop chord progression, so the music’s motion is generated by repeated fragments and color shifts instead of functional cadences. Rhythmically, the song foregrounds persistent ostinati and small metric quirks that sustain forward motion rather than conventional drum fills or obvious tempo changes. The sitar is used as a coloristic device—an aural hue—rather than as evidence of authentic Indian performance practice, a choice that places the piece within the era’s widespread Sitarsploitation without implying technical fidelity to Hindustani technique.

The spoken word vocals on the title track function chiefly as an additional instrument: lines are sparse, chant-adjacent and fragmentary, deployed to increase density and trance-like repetition instead of carrying extended storytelling. The vocal material is an atmospheric utterance. The human voice here is woven into the aural layering and alternates between close, intimate placement and distant, highly-treated rendering; echo, tape layering, and deliberate toggles between dry and heavily-processed presentation ... . The production is one of the song’s most telling features: engineers and producers use echo and tape overlays to create a push-and-pull effect in which instruments move in and out of focus, producing a felt interiority that matches the conceptual psychedelic claim of the material.

Placed in the wider 1960s field, the title piece sits where West Coast studio professionalism met the period’s appetite for long duration forms and Eastern timbres: it connects to mid-60s raga-tinted pop and to other experiments that stretched short-form songs into sustained passages, yet it retains an American, session-band workmanship that keeps solos clipped and grooves tight rather than allowing extended live improvisation to dominate.

You might also like following song from the Psychedelic Jukebox: "[1967] The Hollies - Maker".