Concrete Rubber Band - Risen Savior (Reissue, Remastered, Bonus Tracks) (1974/2007)

Masses of bizarre burbling electronic embellishments find unity with abundant fuzz guitar, organ, and sweet male and female lead vocals. Despite the song titles, this is a very strange rock album (in the best way), which just happens to have religion as its subject. Some of the most `out there' psychedelic sounds can be found on this Kansas trio's mega-rare custom LP. One of the first groups to tinker with synthesizers and be experimental at the same time. The song, Wicked, opens side two with a bizarre amalgam of what sounds like synthesized, bubbling lava pits, frequency oscillations, distorted, sci-fi vocals and shortwave, static patterns. This is psychedelia at its most underground and extreme with all the ear marks of a bad drug trip which, given the dark subject matter of the songs, works just fine. Likewise, What Shall We Do? opens with a lengthy outpouring of some of the most vicious, distorted, fuzz guitar heard this side of Plastic Cloud, then relaxes into a spooky, dream-like ballad before it climaxes with a flying saucer effect that sounds straight out of Dark Side of the Moon. There are several fine and moody garage tracks here as well. Difficult to describe - highly listenable and quite quietly insane. All that aside, here is an official reissue of this massively rare 1974 release on the Missouri-based American Artists label (AAS1164), of which only two or three copies are known to be exist in private collections. Duncan Long, the main man behind the synths, guitars and song writing is now a published science fiction author. Of course he is!