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Review & Full Album Stream: Frozen Planet….1969, The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition

frozen planet 1969 the heavy medicinal grand exposition

[Click play above to stream Frozen Planet….1969’s The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition in its entirety. Album is out Nov. 1 on Pepper Shaker Records and HeadSpin Records.]

Step right up, don’t be shy. One has to wonder when it comes to the sixth — count ’em, six — full-length outing from ellipse-inclusive Sydney/Canberra psychedelic improv specialists Frozen Planet….1969 as to which came first, the concept or the execution. That is, The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition is a somewhat weighty title, and obviously that’s on purpose as the classic power trio of guitarist Paul Attard, bassist Lachlan Paine and drummer Frank Attard, being entirely instrumental, lean on the cartoon artwork and the liner notes of the CD and LP — released by Pepper Shaker and HeadSpin Records, respectively — to tell the story. That’s not to say the record itself, which is comprised of one 39-minute title-track broken down into six subtitled parts and a six-minute follow-up called “Encore: A Herbal Miracle,” isn’t plenty malleable.

Indeed, in sound, open structure and form, Frozen Planet….1969 jam and jam and jam and jam their way into the greater reaches of Far Out, a naturalist production helmed by Frank keeping some human presence in mind behind all the willful instrumental meandering that, all things considered, isn’t nearly as effects-baked as it could be, even in the latest stretch of the “The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition” itself. But they go where they want to go, and of course, the live feel of the recording is one of its most essential facets. For something that’s at least in some part made up on the spot, that’s bound to be the case, which leads back to the initial question of which came first, the story or the jam.

Does it really matter to the listening experience? I suppose not. It’s possible to put on “The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition” without engaging Doctor Berner or reading in the liner notes about his traveling show selling the miracle herbal elixir to relieve pain and ward off evil, strengthen body and mind, and so on. But it’s not nearly as much fun, and Frozen Planet….1969 sound well like they’re enjoying the process of creating the album on the spot. Shouldn’t the listener endeavor to do the same with the listening experience?

Thus we meet the Swordsman, the Juggler, Sundae, Doctor Berner himself and the rest in the title-track. Conveniently, they’ve split the 39-minute piece up into subsections. On the vinyl it all plays together naturally, so whether one thinks of it as one or six different cuts is moot. On the CD and digital versions, though, we see the band purposefully linking the pieces together as the single jam that they are. The list of subsections reads accordingly:

The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition:
I. Oddball Sundae (00:00-05:15)
II. The Juggler (05:16-10:08)
III. Introducing… Oxandra Lanceolata (10:09-16:26)
IV. The Talking Juice (16:27-27:31)
V. Swords for Hire (27:32-31:47)
VI. Never Should Have Left Town with a Whistling Monkey by My Side (31:48-39:25)

frozen planet 1969 the heavy medicinal grand exposition liner

There’s a lot of information packed into those subtitles. ‘The Talking Juice’ refers to the potion itself. ‘Swords for Hire’ has a companion Swordsman as seen in an executioner’s hood on the front cover standing next to Oxandra Lanceolata, also on the cover holding — for some reason — a bonsai tree. The art is meant to evoke a comic book sensibility — we see Doctor Berner in the top left corner where the comic company logo and issue price might otherwise be — and that tends to give the whole affair a lighthearted feel suited to the music itself, which is laid back even at its most active points, the title-track getting funky in ‘The Juggler’ or jamming into a classic fuzz solo in ‘The Talking Juice’ after the “hubba hubba” of pulled notes and spaced-out guitar echoes in “Introducing… Oxandra Lanceolata.” Part of the fun of engaging with The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition becomes reading these things into it.

And yeah, if they had elected to do a futuristic sci-fi theme instead of an old traveling medicine show, it would probably be just as easy to hear a cosmic pastiche in the spacey wanderings that take hold in ‘The Talking Juice’ and the lonely reach of feedback in ‘Never Should Have Left Town with a Whistling Monkey by My Side,’ the bass and drums holding the jam together beneath the floating guitar overhead, but the point is they didn’t. The Attards and Paine created the characters and the theme they wanted to use and set about bringing that concept to life as a full experience of the album. That’s exactly why The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition works as well as it does. It’s a complete, multi-level realization of its central idea.

So which came first, the music or the theme? Hell if I know. What’s more important is that the two work side by side to give a whole impression through both the title-track and the complementary “Encore: A Herbal Miracle” that wants nothing either in narrative presentation or actual sonic execution. They finish the second jam with jazzy punches of guitar, bass and drums, odd-time strumming and kick cutting off suddenly to bring the record to its end, and by so doing, they reinforce the notion of The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition as a work of improv. It’s there while it’s there and then it’s over. There’s no real grand finale to it. The jam just concludes and then, presumably, it’ll be on to the next one.

Fair enough. The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition is Frozen Planet….1969‘s sixth LP since 2012, directly following 2017’s From the Centre of a Parallel Universe (review here) and Electric Smokehouse (review here), so they’re used to a quick turnaround. Whenever their next offering surfaces, the fact that they’ve put so much into the conceptual foundation of this one can only help them as they move forward, and whether they work with another specific plotline or not, the mere fact that The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition was approached with a sense of storytelling is bound to make the listening experience that much richer. It certainly does here.

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One Response to “Review & Full Album Stream: Frozen Planet….1969, The Heavy Medicinal Grand Exposition

  1. Rick says:

    so many great new releases this last few months.

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