VESPERO / FOAM

I really liked the first album by this psychedelic and rather progressive band from Astrakhan, Southern Russia released last year by RAIG. Now the band has a new live CD out released on American based Trail Records and this disc surely works extremely well too! On this improvisation-based gig instead of a drummer they had two percussionists, which brings in some more ethnic flavour to the music. The group has often been compared to Gong, but this album also occasionally brings to mind Dead Can Dance, for example. Other influences of the band include Amon Duul II, Pink Floyd and Can, among others.

”Ouverture”, the album’s opener is an ethnic and hypnotic trip deep into the depths of human mind. ”Instruments of the Road” starts off with psychedelic synthesizer noises and then grows magnificently until the excellent female vocals join in at around the four-minute-marker. Dark and mystical stuff. ”Figures” brings to mind early Gong and pours nicely into my consciousness, as well. The over 11-minute-long title track begins in a tranquil and mystical mode, has some great female vocals too and sounds quite a lot like Dead Can Dance. There are also some Oriental influences in there. ”Skat” is a nice instrumental with excellent guitar work and at 4:33 it’s the shortest track on the album. ”Float” really floats really nicely and sort of reminds me of for example Ash Ra Temple including spacey synthesizer and towards the end some nice, ethnic sounding clean guitar.

As also the sound quality is really good, Foam is an excellent live album in every aspect and you really should check it out if you’re into psychedelic, jamming and spacey music with tribal, hypnotic overtones.

Psychotropic Zone