ONE WE MISSED: Brown Spirits: Solitary Transmissions (Soul Jazz/digital outlets)

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ONE WE MISSED: Brown Spirits: Solitary Transmissions (Soul Jazz/digital outlets)

This album by a Melbourne, Australia instrumental trio with footholds in the rolling groves of Can, a touch of spaced-out pop came to our attention quite by chance.

There was an ad on the back of a copy of The Wire from June and the description ticked a lot of Elsewhere boxes: Can meets Hawkwind, psyche/krautrock, DIY attitude and punk/post-punk intensity . . .

The reference to Hendrix and Cream was highly misleading (okay, they are all trios but that's where the link ends).

And this doesn't quite match the post-punk intensity descriptor either.

But there's certainly a restless and relentless energy here (Dead End Exits), a little trippiness (Ode to Dorothy), the 13 minute-plus Who's at the Door and multi-instrumentalist Tim Wold bringing a lot of musical colour via guitars, keyboards, Moog and sitar.

Two of the pieces (Space Race and Dead End Exits) were previous singles and this doesn't often rise to the associations with King Crimson, Miles Davis (?), Sun Ra and Soft Machine.

But . . .

Discovering this album by chance lead Elsewhere back to their earlier albums on their bandcamp page (Vol. I, Vol. II and, yes, Vol. III) where you can catch material like Lysergic Library, Flying and Falling, Back to Atoms, Finite Universe, Suite: East Meets West, Express Train to Jupiter, Tumultuous Clouds . . .

I think you are getting the picture.

.

You can hear and buy albums by Brown Spirits at bandcamp here.



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