It reads:
From The Doors onwards, the spirit of freewheeling jazzy improvisation in rock music has been both a blessing and a curse. At its best, especially in the work of its German proponents, but also The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd and – slightly further down the scale – Hawkwind, it’s immersive like no other music, revealing celestial vistas of the unconscious mind while never relinquishing the essential beat-based nature of rock music. At its worst, it’s flat, lifeless and paralysingly boring.
There is rock of both kinds on Invocation… but thankfully it’s weighted heavily towards the former. When Julie’s Haircut get it right, they really get it right. Zukunft motors the album into life brilliantly, driving and dynamic but mellow, with pulsating bass and Can-like percussion perfectly balanced by nocturnal organ tones, beautifully judged sax, minimalist guitar and understated spacey noises. It’s timeless, immersive space-rock of a very high order. By contrast, some of the Can-like vocal tracks are slightly less successful, the hushed chant of The Fire Sermon rendering the music repetitive without quite managing to capture the groove it hints at.
It’s not all spacy though; the funky, foreboding Orpheus Rising is drenched in late 60s countercultural atmosphere and is hypnotic in an entirely different, Black Widow-like way, while elsewhere there are shades of Vangelis, Spacemen 3, Amon Düül II and even Miles Davis; a heady brew indeed.
Read the rest here: Record Collector
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