Brainticket - 1972 - Psychonaut

Quality: 4 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4 out of 5

I guess that for all intents and purposes, this is Brainticket's pop album. It's lacking the extreme freak outs that color Cottonwood Hill, and while it pushes against the envelope, it doesn't gleefully plow through as the band tends to do on other releases. What we do get here are top notch, assured performances, and by far the band's best songwriting. This is pretty awesome, 70's-style psych rock. It's not a bad introduction to the band; sometimes it's nice to become somewhat comfortable with musicians before they completely blow your mind.

The first couple tracks are very liquid and chill. I especially dig the chiming piano line and delayed percussion that grace "One Morning." Things pick up noticeably for the balls out "Watchin' You." Dawn Muir's vocals cut through the thick brew, piercing with absolute conviction. It doesn't hurt to have a nice face-melting guitar solo thrown in the middle too. "Like a Place in the Sun" is a jazzy display of the band instrumental prowess while Muir is at her wackiest for this particular album. "Coco Mary" is a very pounding, driving track with a cool marimba break catching the listener off guard.

This is probably the most consistently listenable Brainticket release. The catch is that you're not hearing their 8th ring of Saturn, cosmically deranged sounds, but you do get some fine songs and
a band playing with almost telepathic communication. I suppose that in Can terms, this would be their Ege Bamyasi, and I don't feel that's a bad thing at all.

Brainticket - 1974 - Celestial Ocean

Quality: 4 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.5 out of 5

Although Cottonwoodhill seems to get all the freakish glory in the universe of Brainticket, for my money this is the better album. Although I suppose it's lacking a bit in the full on, balls-to-the-wall freakiness of that earlier album, Celestial Ocean is a more assured and graceful psychedelic voyage through parts unknown.

One big plus here is the much more varied sound present here. Instead of spending half the album on a bubbling groove, the band explores a much wider series of sonic vistas. There's a mystical vibe here that manages to evoke Egyptian pyramids, Mayan temples, and Indian countrysides.

The album functions on sort of a bell curve of energy. The tracks, while very different, form sort of a suite. The first three tracks, "Egyptian Kings," "Jardins," and "Rainbow" start things off on a lilting note. Joel Vandroogenbroeck and Dawn Muir share a strange, half spoken duet on "Egyptian Kings" while "rainbow" definitely brings up the images of that aforementioned Indian countryside. Then the gears kick up a notch on the next three percussive tracks that throw in some awesome modular synth squeals. It's almost as wild as the first album, but it's much tighter and has more of a sense of traveling somewhere. There are also plenty of shades of early Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream added in for fun. "Cosmic Wind" and "Visions" give us a beautiful coda, focusing more on acoustic sounds.

This is a more relaxed album than Brainticket is generally known for. I think that it's the sound of a band very much in a prime groove and is a must hear.

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Brainticket - 1974 - Celestial Ocean

Brainticket - 1971 - Cottonwoodhill

Quality: 3.5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.5 out of 5

Generally acknowledged as one of the more obscure krautrock classics, Brainticket was in fact more of an international band anchored by the Swiss organist Joel Vandroogenbroeck. On this debut album, the group set out to document an LSD trip as the Grateful Dead did on Anthem Of The Sun and Ash Ra Tempel would later do on Seven Up. I'm not willing to say that this album quite ranks up with those discs, but once Brainticket gets going about halfway through the first side, it's full of sonic weirdness worth hearing.

"Black Sand" and "Places Of Light" lay down the preliminaries. The opening "Black Sand" fares pretty well with some great acid guitar lead, wide open organ and Joel V's vocals (not typing that name again). The rhythm is tense and tightly wound, but it's noteworthy as the basic beat will uncoil and blow wide open for the three eponymous tracks. "Places Of Light" is probably the least of the tracks here gliding on a 70's Pink Floyd sort of spacey groove. There's a touch of jazzy flute, which doesn't really do it for me, and Dawn Muir's acid goddess vocals, which do.

The rest of the tracks are all entitled "Brainticket" (part 1, part 1 continued, and part two). Instrumentally the good news here is that the band builds its insane 'found sound' and synthetic experimentations on top of a pretty cool percolating organ, percussion, and funk guitar groove. The band news is they play the repetitive groove for 26 minutes of a 34 minute album. I guess the trick here is to let the groove carry you away as a mantra while you're showered with the totally oddball synth swoops and random sounds. We've also got Dawn Muir sounding as if she's taking the Woodstock brown acid; it's pretty amusing, but it actually kind of scares me too.

Cottonwoodhill is a wild album that should invade your ear at least once. There are some truly deranged sounds, but I personally feel like things get a touch too repetitive. I guess I like a little more meat with my aural dinner. That said, an awful lot of people seem to be willing to put this one on a pedestal, so give it a try.

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Brainticket - 1971 - Cottonwoodhill