Motorpsycho - Phanerothyme flac mp3 download

What is the difference between this and the repress?

Phanerothyme is a disused and slightly earlier term for the chemical compounds we commonly classify as psychedelics; both come from Greek roots that mean about exactly the same thing, but the one turned out to be a little catchier; so, with this album, Motorpsycho are claiming some serious psych cred. It you’re at all familiar with the band, you know that they own this cred and then some, so you should be getting excited just about now.And if you look at the credits on the reverse of the cover, it looks like the pieces are all there for a really mind-blowing album. Seventeen musicians are credited, and the four key members of the band (if you’re counting, it’s the core duo of Bent and Snah plus long-serving member Gebhardt on drums, and they’re joined by Baard Slagsvold on keys) are just mixed in with the rest in alphabetical order. There’s more than a full string quartet here, and a respectable complement of wind a brass players. I am very ready to be impressed.As a way to gain some purchase on this monster of soul-clarifying rock, let’s start with the side B opener, “Go To California”. It opens with vocal harmonies. It’s eight minutes long. It has a long keyboard solo followed by a long guitar solo. Here’s what I think the process was behind the track: “Dudes, let’s get really, REALLY sober, turn on a metronome, and do a Doors jam.”So, sorry if I got your hopes up; this is a pretty boring album. There are some problems that characterise the whole effort: mushy arrangements, songs without bite, grooves that just fail to become hypnotic no matter how many times they repeat. For the big, jazzy arrangements and harmonies, the rhythm section of Sæther and Gebhardt just doesn’t cut it here; it’s as if they knew Bent’s normal bass tone would dash their delicate spiderwebs of layered sound to pieces, but along with the distortion they somehow also rolled off all of his attack making his parts a muddy cess which at least doesn't splash all over the strings. Look again at that credits list: though they are trying to hide, you can tell the main members of the band because their lines are much longer, as they are credited with more instruments. That’s basically this album: the main players won’t quite stand out, won’t quite construct a solid groove to serve as a foundation, and the big arrangements over the top might be amazingly subtle (at the very least they are quite competently put together), but they just don’t rise above the basic rock quartet. The album has a consistent sound, but that’s not enough to get this experience to be more than the sum of its parts; it’s simply a bit of a chore having to get through all these songs with very little to stimulate ones interest along the way.Not that there’s nothing good here: side A is a bit better, consisting of competent songs with some very nice parts (mostly instrumental breaks and bridges), but relatively speaking, single material for this album is a song which is not particularly offensive and then has a cool progression somewhere in the middle. I would actually say the stand out track is the last one, Gebhardt’s “When You’re Dead”, which has some interesting lyrics, and actually enough space in the arrangement to produce a lot of nice moments, without all the instruments just stepping on each other.The album art basically consists of some starkly striking art with big blocks of shade and light. It’s not bad and I especially like the picture on the back which captures beautifully the brutal charm of the kind of architecture you see in office parks and a lot of newer college campuses.In all, if you missed this album you wouldn’t be missing much. Maybe smoke like twenty bowls and give it a try? If you have any of the good drugs, I’d stick with the earlier “Let Them Eat Cake” where they got these bigger arrangements and jazzier songs right.Watch for: Huxley’s quote on the bottom left in small pink type on the obverse of the inner sleeve; again, if you do so, do yourself a favor and choose a different album.

printed innersleeves