Album Review: Samsara Blues Experiment, Demos & Rarities
Posted in Reviews on January 16th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Issued both as a standalone and as a bonus CD with the 2LP special edition reissue of 2010’s Long-Distance Trip (review here), the 10-song 68-minute Demos and Rarities is a collection clearly intended for Samsara Blues Experiment fans, if it needs to be said. However, I’ll also note that I am a fan, have been since I first heard the 2008 demo (discussed here, review here) the two songs of which, “Singata (Mystic Queen)” and “Double Freedom,” would become such staples for the Berlin-based outfit throughout their tenure. And perhaps since that tenure came to a close in 2021 with End of Forever (review here), something like this feels more sentimental; the ‘posthumous’ release, capturing mostly the earlier days of the band, when they were the four-piece of guitarist/vocalist/sitarist/keyboardist Christian Peters (who had previously been in Terraplane), bassist/engineer Richard Behrens (who recorded those two demo tracks and others here), guitarist/percussionist Hans Eiselt and drummer Thomas Vedder, and when they were just setting out on their exploration of heavy psychedelia that would grow increasingly sure and progressive as it went. It was, in so many ways, a simpler time.
As far as I’m concerned, the presence of those demo versions of “Singata (Mystic Queen)” and “Double Freedom” are more than enough to justify the CD’s existence. Samsara Blues Experiment aren’t out here trying to cash-grab — because who’s got cash? — but I think part of who the band was all along was to make an effort to take stock of where they were at, to be cognizant of their own progression, where they were moving forward from across each release, and so looking back after it’s over feels pretty consistent in terms of their general mission. The latest inclusion here is a 2013 acoustic version of “Singata (Mystic Queen),” recorded by Behrens around the time he left the band — his last LP with them was 2013’s Waiting for the Flood (review here), though he also appeared on that year’s Rockpalast (review here) live album, on which the acoustic “Singata (Mystic Queen)” first appeared as a bonus track — and the quick rocker “Back to Life” that showed up on the 2011 compilation Cowbells & Cobwebs (review here) was tracked in 2010, but everything else here is before that, with the possible exception of the 56-second finale “Singata Retro Queen,” undated with its “Strawberry Fields Forever” organ — what might be an interlude but makes a fitting reprise here in complement to the 2008 and 2013 versions of the song.
With that outro/interlude/not-quite-a-song-more-of-a-moment-that-happened-to-be-recorded, the way the tracklisting is laid out, “Singata (Mystic Queen)” opens, is the centerpiece, and closes Demos & Rarities, and fairly enough so. It and “Double Freedom,” which follows twice — the second time is a corresponding-but-recorded-much-earlier acoustic 2007 Peters home demo, layered with sitar, keyboard and hand percussion and a meditative vocal — were and remain signature pieces. But there are other, dug-out-from-deeper inclusions as well, like the 2008 home demo “Wheel of Life,” a later version of which would show up on Long-Distance Trip, the aforementioned “Back to Life,” a nine-minute demo of “For the Lost Souls” from the same record with an especially warm and complete feel, and the 2008 home-recorded “All is One” sitar piece that runs over 12 minutes and, but for “Singata Retro Queen,” caps the offering. As the CD liner note says, it is “not to be confused with real Indian raga,” but its jammy, exploratory feel captures something about the ethic of the band in their early stages, who they were and where they were coming from. They were by no means the first heavy psych band, but they always had a personality of their own and pushed against the confines of genre more as time went on. Demos & Rarities shows the roots of that ethic.
And really, that’s about all I’d ask it to do. If these are the odds and ends from that era of their time, from before and around the 2008 demo release and that of the 2009 USA Tour EP that had the two demo tracks as well as “Red Rooster Jam (Live),” which was recorded in Berlin at their second show, and the acoustic version of “Double Freedom” that’s also here. That’s what this release is. It’s the place where you, as the curious Samsara Blues Experiment fan present or future, can find that material compiled. This seems like a no-brainer, but even in an age of infinite information thrown at you with infinite intensity, so much is regularly lost, and Demos & Rarities works against that, toward its own purpose of preservation. I don’t know if it will be the absolute last Samsara Blues Experiment release or not — no doubt there are other live recordings, demos, alternate versions, remixes, etc., that Peters and company could mine as they see fit — but it’s a particularly nostalgic look back. Even the cover. Just look at that picture. They were kids. And it would, inherently could, never be like this again.
The depth of fuzz in the “Double Freedom” and “Singata (Mystic Queen)” demos was an announcement to the converted, and those tones, those jams, still resonate, even raw as they sound now looking back. Not everybody is going to get that, and so I’ll go back to noting Demos & Rarities as a fan-piece, whether it’s encountered digitally, as an added incentive for the Long-Distance Trip reissue or with the digipak on its own, but the sweetness of melody in the acoustic “Double Freedom,” the rolling, heavy-hitting shuffle of “Back to Life” — they never had another song like that — and the nascent vibes in “Wheel of Life” and “All is One” as they’re presented here are engrossing. On an academic level, this is a band who had a significant impact early in a generational wave of European heavy psychedelic rock, and worth appreciating as such, but I’ll readily admit that as I listen through, my primary experience isn’t academic so much as enjoying the glance at the beginnings of the band and the work they did at the time as they felt their way toward what would develop over time as their sound. From an act who spent so much of their time ardently thinking and moving forward, and who may well be done ‘for good’ as they were, the unreluctant look back is a thing to be valued. It feels rare, and indeed, Samsara Blues Experiment were a rare band.
Samsara Blues Experiment, Demos & Rarities (2023)
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