What a weird piece of music: Already the first track You Shouldn't Do That, that clocks in at about fifteen minutes, greets you with repetitive, chanting vocals, proto-stoner rhythm guitar and driving drums, like a spaceship racing on hyper-speed through the universe - and on top of all that is a saxophone! Welcome to Hawkwind! Welcome to In Search of Space!
And really, this is an astonishingly whimsical record. Not the most accessible, as you might have guessed by now, even with their hit-single Silver Machine included as bonus track. But all in all, certainly a captivating, even hypnotic melange of the LSD- and space-age aesthetics of their time.
If you like trippy music far away from the usual conventions, In Search of Space is definitely for you. Its maybe not quite on the level some of their later records, like Hall of the Mountain Grill, but still a strong piece of music with a lot of character and atmosphere.
This is probably the best band you have never heard of. The Psychedelic Avengers were founded in 2004 as a collaborative project of a number of artists and bands, the best known ones probably being Colour Haze and Vibravoid. I think their goal is best described with their own words on the back of their first album: 'This is the first psych-o-phonic, in-head science fiction b-movie for inner-eye-listening pleasures, which is being transvisualized via the soundtrack to your very own imaginary space, psych, teen, mutant, love, trash, porn, noize sci-fi movie'. And yes, its really all that!
The songs usually feature lengthy, pulp-inspired titles like 'The discovery of the lost transdimensional time-space vortex on the iceplanet of Vistar 7' (and that's not even one of their weirdest) and are colourful mixtures of stoner, psychedelic and electro, combined with radio-play like sequences to drive the story ahead. The result is more than compelling.
Be it the tranqulity of space, trippy warp-jumps, radio broadcasts from deep space, or tense battle-scenes - the Psychedelic Avengers are utterly immersing and entertaining. So many different moods, so many different musical worlds to discover.
From the two albums they released, their second ...and the Decterian Blood Empire is the more refined and coherent one. The tracks are more focused, with the overarching storyline of the peaceful civilisations of the Galaxy having to defend themselves against the... you guess. it. The album doesn't gives up any of its inventiveness and diversity though. It just flows and takes you on a wild ride through the ups and downs. An amazing "Space Opera" in the sense of the word.
A pity the Psychedelic Avengers disappeared into obscurity (or into the depths of space) after this album. They really created a masterpiece I love listening to again and again.
As if to prove how obscure this album is, there is only one song from it on Youtube:
