It is difficult, especially now that they’re not a band anymore and won’t likely be again (though one never knows), to speak about Orange Sunshine in terms other than the superlative. Oh they’re the most fraaked out buncha freaks who ever freaked their way onto an 8-track recording machine! They’re the biggest garage psych cosmic blown-mind mushroom rock secret ever kept by Den Haag! Although I guess at least the latter is demonstrably true.

Nonetheless, 2007’s Bullseye of Being — which is not to be confused with 2006’s Ruler of the Universe — absolutely is the same thing. Five songs, four of them covers and one an older demo. Kind of a hodge-podge where a third full-length proper might have been. But it’s Orange Sunshine, whose acid-drenched take on early-heavy rock was groundbreaking in itself, and so even if it is four covers, it’s a ripper. And I’m willing to bet you weren’t just listening to Terry Brooks & Strange‘s “Ruler of the Universe” anyhow, and even if you were, Orange Sunshine push the 11-minute original into a 15-minute jamadelic opening track that even as a cover demonstrates clearly how ahead of their time Orange Sunshine were in how they took it on.

Again, four of the five tracks are covers on the 37-minute Bullseye of Being — which I guess is what Leaf Hound Records decided to call it for the 2007 release; the band streams it as the later title, so that’s how I’m writing about it — and the first of them is a 15-minute take on an 11-minute obscurity from 1973? With sitar and tabla? Well of course it is. “Demonise” is a play on Deep Purple‘s “Demon’s Eye” from 1971’s Fireball that ups the swing to a delightfully over the top degree that’s all raw fuzzy blues strut in the guitar of Arthur Van Berkel with the vocals of drummer Guy Tavares cutting through set to his own march, bassist Thomas Van Slooten underscoring the bopping groove on which the song is based and within which the entirety of Orange Sunshine feels ready to reside at least on a time-share basis, if not permanently.

There is one copy of Orange Sunshine‘s 2001 self-titled four-song CD-R demo for sale on Discogs, and it’s about $70 after shipping. “Demonise” and the Cream cover “Sunshine of Your Love” appear on there as well as on Bullseye of Being, but I’m not sure if it’s the same versions or not, as the band has said that these tracks were put together at the same time as their 2001 debut, Homo Erectus (review here), so it’s possible they were sitting around, ready to be included with “Ruler of the Universe” and the subsequent “Speed,” first by Ron Wray Light Show. The original version of that track, from 1970, is a two-minute lysergic wahfuzz blaster that only doesn’t realize how stoned it is because it’s also on acid, and, well, Orange Sunshine add about another 40 seconds to that ethic to make the song three minutes, like Monster Magnet screwing around with Hawkwind tracks — making it their own and retaining loyalty to the original as part of that.

“Sunshine of Your Love” is one of those generation-defining hooks — you just know it whether you own a Cream record or not — and so the challenge there is for Orange Sunshine to basically do the same thing they did with “Speed” and pull it off with a song that’s going to be almost universally previously known to their audience. As the centerpiece, it has familiar ‘brump’ in its chugging chorus riff, but doesn’t sound exactly like Cream or like it wants to. Orange Sunshine often walked the line between psychedelia and garage rock, and they could freely draw from either in a way that gives them flexibility with the source material that others might not have. That is to say, Orange Sunshine was a pretty casual kind of band. You never know somebody until you’re in the rehearsal space with them — and I never was — but they always seemed like fairly laid back cats, even if they clearly knew what they were about as a band.

Inevitably, “Ruler of the Universe” is a lot of the draw on Bullseye of Being, and well it should be. It is expansive and encompassing, a triumphant head-jam that’s not only the opener and longest track (immediate points) but that effectively puts the listener in the hypnotic state the band wants just so they can turn around and deliver the slap of “Speed” that follows. Especially for being ostensibly a covers collection, the entire affair drips with personality, and that’s not at all limited to the scorch of lead guitar and feedback burning around the riff of “Balls Knocking.” The curious lone original — if it is — is a classic heavy blues rocker that mashes two channels of dirty-toned soloing together only to emerge clean in the second verse after like what might’ve inspired Radio Moscow ever to get the blues in the first place. It was reportedly also an older recording than its 2006/2007 release would indicate, and it closes here, but I honestly don’t know where it comes from. All I know is that its tones are covered in hair and by the time it’s halfway done it feels like it’s melted the sky.

But if you can vibe with stretches of LSD-drenched noise and heavy vibes pulled right out of 1968, but like, an alternate 1968 where 1968 already happened, Orange Sunshine are already on that astral plane and they already have the volume all the way up, which you probably know because you can feel it in your capillaries. This wasn’t the last Orange Sunshine studio output, but it was pretty close to it. Motorwolf, and the accompanying recording concern that puts Tavares at the helm, still ostensibly operates, and Tavares is currently in Mercury Boys and a few others, as Van Berkel passed away in 2018. Orange Sunshine‘s last release to-date was the 2014 live album, Live at Freak Valley 2013 (review here). The story I will tell about them forever is that when I saw them at Roadburn 2010, they covered Blue Cheer three times. It was one of the most honest and ballsiest things I’ve ever seen happen on any stage anywhere.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

I’m changing meds. It has not been a clean process. It’s been a pain in the ass. I have a new hole in the wall. I was alone when I put it there.

School is hard. We had a meeting with The Pecan’s kindergarten crew. Behavioral plans, etc. It’s just hard. I think that’s how it’s gonna be. Like, forever.

The dog is good.

We’re having brunch on Sunday, you should come.

Next week is Quarterly Review. I’m telling you, but really I’m telling The Patient Mrs., whom I’ve not been brave enough to inform in-person yet. She’s right next to me on the couch as I write this. 50 records. Solid week.

That’s about the long and short of what I’ve got. It’s raining today. I’m looking forward to picking The Pecan up at school and hopefully not needing to leave the house again after that.

Whatever you’re up to this weekend, have fun, be safe. Make sure you implement your behavior action plan in ways that are clear, measurable and malleable, and don’t forget to hydrate. See you back here on Monday for the Quarterly Review and more.

FRM.

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Let’s step out of time for a little bit. We’ll all take a collective breath, close our eyes, and imagine ourselves walking on a long path. It’s a long path lined with trees that leads to a beach and at the beach we’re totally alone. You can see planets up in the sky like big smiling faces and imagine the people there waving to you, far away. Far, far away. Distant, but big. You walk up and feel the change from the path to the sand under your feet, the looseness of the ground. There’s a breeze, because of course there is, and the sound of the water and the smell of salt and that ambient wetness that comes from being near the ocean. It feels like the place life came from, and it is.

We’re there and we’re all alone and it doesn’t matter because there are as many realities as we need to make these things happen and each one we inhabit is our own and we’re all there on this beach and we open our eyes and look out at the water. There’s however many suns you want, and the planets, and life, and water. Now imagine you’re there all by yourself and you realize you have something in your hand, and what is it?

You look down at your hand, right or left, maybe both, and you see you’re holding this lump. What is it? Oh wait, that’s bullshit. You remember now. You’re holding all your own bullshit. Look at that lump of bullshit. It’s been hanging out and festering and finally you got tired of all your own bullshit and you decided to take it for a walk and lose it once and for all. You take that lump of bullshit and you throw it as hard and as high as you can over the water and it sails like who knew bullshit could fly? But there it goes and it’s kind of fun to watch that big old lump of bullshit go higher and higher over the water until finally the arc crests and it starts to head down, far out and deep, past the continental shelf into the darker recesses of this infinite sea, and it’s so far gone by then that you don’t hear the splash but you still see it and then it’s done. All your bullshit, you just threw it away.

Maybe we all wash our hands in that sparkling water, salty but clean, and sit down for a while and just breathe in and out and tilt our heads back and close our eyes and feel the sun on our face. Maybe that’s what we do because there’s no more bullshit weighing us down and everything is beautiful around us and we don’t even have to look to know it, it’s just there and we can breathe it in and feel it in our lungs, feel the lungs take the oxygen out of the air and pump it through our blood, alone on this beach, the planets and suns and stars whatever all above, visible, shining impossibly, whatever. We’re all there, alone, breathing, living, no bullshit.

You open your eyes and look to either side of you. Maybe you’ve never felt this kind of freedom before, but now, your shoulders hanging natural and your breath coming easy, it’s there. You’re there. Everyone’s there. Nobody’s around.

—

Santa Cruz, California’s Mammatus released their self-titled debut in 2006 through Holy Mountain, Rocket Recordings and Leaf Hound Records, three labels the names of which alone should speak to the record’s essential nature. Comprised only of four songs, the record begins with “The Righteous Path Through the Forest of Old” (9:23) and moves through “The Outer Rim” (5:09) en route to “Dragon of the Deep Part One” (8:23) and “Dragon of the Deep Part Two” (22:12), the journey taking place enough of a preface for what’s become known as neo-psych that it renders the designation laughable. It’s not neo-anything. It’s out-of-time.

Comprised then of guitarist/vocalist Nicholas Emmert, drummer Aaron Emmert and bassist Chris Freels, with Zachery Patten and Mike Donofrio recording, Mammatus‘ initial explorations have become and well should be the stuff of cult psych legend. This record, its movement and progression between its songs, the way it sounds like one long stretch, a molten 45-minute flow broken into parts but united in its purpose and immersion just the same, is the stuff of should-be-worshiped-as-classic scorch. From the opening surf-in-space strum of “The Righteous Path Through the Forest of Old” through the bullshit-swallowing noisier reaches in the midsection breakdown of “Dragon of the Deep Part Two,” there is nothing so appropriate in the hearing of the album but to let go and trust the band to take you where they will because they’re going anyway.

Here we are, some 15 years after the fact and Mammatus‘ first still feels like it’s rolling through cosmic outer reaches inside the head. You want to call it hyperbole, fine. Your loss. This is an album for communion; both a preach to the converted and a call to convert. In the patient swirls of “The Outer Rim” there so much space tucked into just five minutes, and then “Dragon of the Deep Part One” adds even more feedback, overlapping feedback, before it launches into its own ultra-lysergic jam. What an album. What a band. Hot damn.

And you know “Dragon of the Deep Part Two” comes back from those open spaces in its middle. They bring it around to this massive fuzzy crunch, kick the slow wah and groove out huge in a before-Sleep-got-back-together paean to the power of rolling tone up and sharing the ensuing smoke. It’s all gorgeous and it all comes apart and gives way to noise like the universe spreading too wide and whoops, there goes the molecules that make up matter, cell walls breaking down and all that and what difference does it make anyhow we’ll just get another universe there are so many.

Mammatus. Mammatus. Live and breathe.

—

Thanks for reading. Hydrate. Watch your head. Have a great and safe weekend.

FRM.

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Orange Sunshine, Love = Acid Space = Hell (2003)

Talk about a few records dying for reissue. Not that Netherlands-based acid rockers Orange Sunshine haven’t kept up pressings for their three studio full-lengths, 2001’s Homo Erectus, 2003’s Love = Acid Space = Hell and 2006’s Bullseye of Being, through their own Motorwolf imprint, but I’m talking about wide-distro, color-LP, all that do-it-up nonsense that sells out on preorders before anyone’s heard a note. Can’t say the band wouldn’t deserve such fare. As it happens, 2016 marks 15 years since their debut came out, and they’ve been steadily kicking ass all the while, proffering dangerous groove and garage-derived heavy in the spirit of the free-swinging classics. My prevailing memory of them may always be seeing them at Roadburn 2010 (review here) and bearing witness to a set that featured not one, not two, but three Blue Cheer covers. That’s the kind of band Orange Sunshine are. They’re the kind of band who might cover Blue Cheer three times if they feel like doing so.

As an ethos, it’s hard to argue, and whether it’s the harmonica-topped shuffle of “I’m a Man” or the megafuzzed interlude “Population III” — presumably a sequel to the 1969 album from Blue Cheer guitarist Randy Holden, Population II (discussed here) — and subsequent 15-minute closer “Hey Mama,” they live it all over Love = Acid Space = Hell. That finale is a jam worthy of Cactus, which is not praise I deliver lightly, and it comes only after Orange Sunshine have scorched their way through “Ain’t No Way” (which nods at Thin Lizzy‘s “Boys are back in Town”), the freaked-out “H-Theme” and the proto-punk “Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am,” making the vast, vast majority of the retro-stylized heavy rock that’s come out of Europe in the last decade sound positively safe by comparison in terms of songwriting and production. Kids wanna sound like the first Witchcraft record. They should wanna sound like Orange Sunshine.

The last few years have been quiet in terms of studio outings, but in 2013, Who Can You Trust? Records issued a tape called Burnout at Roadburn, and Lay Bare Recordings followed that up in 2014 with Live at Freak Valley (review here), so Orange Sunshine — the power trio of drummer/vocalist Guy Tavares, guitarist Arthur van Berkel and bassist Mehdi Rouchiche — haven’t been completely absent, though any major-scale touring or studio work seems to be on hold as van Berkel has battled Crohn’s Disease. Still, their records, the two live outings and a couple other odds and ends singles are all available for downloading/streaming on Bandcamp, so there’s plenty to dig into either way, whether or not more shows up eventually.

—

A snow day today has been much needed and much appreciated. In addition to being able to sneak in a couple extra posts about new Causa Sui and Heavy Psych Sounds stuff, it’s just been good not to have to drive to work and to be able to sit on the couch with The Patient Mrs. with our laptops and the dog, hang out and still be reasonably productive. We’re not supposed to get a foot even, so shoveling shouldn’t be too terrible when the time comes.

I didn’t get that Borderland Fuzz Fiesta mixtape up this week. Should be able to make that happen next Wednesday, so keep an eye out for it. I’ll start putting it together this weekend. Also next week, reviews of Spidergawd and hopefully Rotor, a track premiere from Talmud Beach on Tuesday and videos from The Vintage Caravan and Merlin, along with whatever else should happen into my purview between now and then. Heard a cool demo this week by Brooklyn newcomers River Cult that I’d like to write about. Might be time to resurrect On the Radar since I can’t seem to find time to do a proper post of radio adds. We’ll see.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend, whether you’re snowed in or not. If you need me, I’ll be in my pajamas as much as humanly possible, rounding out the third season of Star Trek (yup again; my greatest fear is that the new series due in 2017 will be a gritty reboot of The Next Generation) and trying not to spend money. See you back here Monday if I can actually go that long without posting something.

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