| Cali beat-scapist Nobody, always looking for thicker hookah smoke to engulf his psych-tinged suntan music, has spent the last half-decade slowly becoming less Freestyle Fellowship and more Free Love. Teaming up with fellow Golden State space cowboys Mystic Chords of Memory, Tree Colored See… is an arresting mix of dusted hermit-hop and fairy-dusted country-folk - successfully breathing new life into two dying scenes. The sand-flicked melodies and seabreeze croon may have had a little too much warm California sun - Bread, Pablo Cruise, Doobie Brothers - but the bedroom approach, suffocating reverb, post-rock vibraphones and forest-fun lyrics are far more honest and innocent, like if Free Design burned one with 13th Floor Elevators. Much in the early-morn-jacket vein of reverby Byrd-brains Beachwood Sparks (Mystic man Chris Gunst's previous redwood-haunting collective), the echoplex drives home a "laid back as fuck" m.o., but a shaking gourd drives it home. Oh yeah, and the hip-hop beats certainly set this stuff apart too. See's rhythmic core would be just a bowl of downtempo flute loops, were it not for Nobody's neck-snapping snares, intuitive shuffles, backmasking and live fluttering woodwinds (courtesy of Pharaohs drummer Derf Reklaw). It's not "naïve" or "childish," but could appeal to either end of the "Puff The Magic Dragon" continuum. - CMJ |
1XLP/Out Of Print