Beyond-O-Matic - Your Body (1998)

San Francisco's Beyond-O-Matic plays a dreamy, sometimes quirky, electronically psychedelic brand of space music that has just enough freakiness, and even a fair dose of dissonance, to put it firmly in the space realm, but is somewhat undefinable in it's interpretation. The band consists of Kurt Stenzel (aka Stenzo) on vocals, keyboards, guitar, and delay loops, Franktus Evictus on drums and voices, David Gresalfi on linndrum, samples, and vocals, and the Reverend Peter Fuhry on vocals, cross5 guitar, thebeatles, acoustic bariguitar, long stiff finger off doom, toy piano, accordion, flute, metal clarinet, and delay loop effects. What's that? You've never heard of a thebeatles? Or a long stiff finger of doom? Well there are pictures of these nifty buggers on the band's web page and they sure seem to be homemade stringed instruments of some mutated fashion (I ask about them in the interview). The end result is a work that puts electronics in the forefront, but subtly incorporates this varied instrumentation to produce music that is beautiful and uniquely beyond-o-matic. "Your Body" is the band's third release.

"Your Body Warms Me Like The Sun" is the opening track and lulls the listener with a slowly repeating spacey guitar melody, a distant astral flute, and ethereal space whispery vocals. The guitar and flute continue but cosmic astral synths are introduced along with a steady percussion beat. The vocals are lightly efx'd at times and feel just as important from an instrumental standpoint as they do for communicating words.

On the more electronically adventurous side is "Scareotica/Ghosty", a percussive, slightly techno, but still completely freaky number with various intermittent voicings. Things really get interesting when the flute goes on an almost free jazz rampage in what seems like a duel with the percussion. Similar to this is "Clara", an even more percussive tune with lots of cosmic synth madness and haunting vocalizations. On the more purely electronic side is "Green Organ Preciface" and "Aquior", both journeys into deep deep space along the lines of Tangerine Dream. Green Organ is the more varied of the two as after about six minutes low key techno rhythms blend in to alter the course of our voyage. My favorite track on Your Body is "Buttercup", a structured, but busy track that seems to utilize the band's entire arsenal of instruments to create a mind blowing explosive freakout. Despite multiple layers of competing instrumentation, the song manages to remain highly melodic in a way that allows me to drift along with the primary melody but also groove to everything that is happening... which is a lot. Excellent track.

Beyond-O-Matic also exhibits an interest in 60's pop-psych on a couple tracks. "Postiface" is like an old flower power pop psych tune. "From Far Away has Middle Eastern string sounds giving it a hippie flavor, but the driving electronic beat puts it in a class all it's own. And the music uses it's nine minute length to get slowly, but increasingly more intense and introduce wilder shooting synths. Finally, the band covers the Madonna song "Frozen". I've never heard the original but suffice it to say that the band manages to beyond-o-maticize it quite well. So ends my Beyond-O-Matic review.


Beyond-O-Matic is a San Francisco based improvisational space rock band which started in the early 1990's. Core members are Peter Fuhry (vocals, guitar) and Stenzo (keyboards). Supported by several friends they work out dreamy emotional songs based on a variety of instruments where Fuhry's charming vocals are a unique aspect. 1994 saw the first release 'The Flight Of Luis Garcia', followed by 'Sonic Reclaimator' (1996) and 'Your Body' another two years later. All productions contain extended works which push sonic limits, yet retain humor.

Beyond-O-Matic went into hiatus in 1999 but re-formed after five years to produce 'Time To Get Up' (2004) featuring new mind-bending psych/space jams which were originally provided for free download. Now in April 2010 Trail Records officially released this album with re-edited versions of the songs.