Album Notes

THE SEVENTH RING OF SATURN – S/T (LP/CD)

As they often say during football commentaries "It’s a game of two halves’", and it certainly is with this glorious slab of vinyl, with side one containing some sweet psych-pop nuggets, whilst the flip side has some very psychedelic spaciness running though its grooves. I guess this analogy may be slightly stretched with the CD now, but hey, I’ve started now.

Opening with the delightful ‘In Time’, the band have a fine sense of melody, the song up there with the likes of Tyrnaround or The Petals, complete with a lysergic coating of perfect hue. Continuing the theme, ‘Colonel Green’, repeats the trick, you can almost see the oil blobs on the wall. After this excellent brace, the band step into covers mode, getting to grips with songs by Vangelis Papazoglu (a composer from the 30’s) and George Harrison. Starting with ‘Yedikule’, the band have turned the song into an eastern flecked guitar workout, the song reaching the inner corners of your mind, an interesting change of pace that lifts the album up a couple of notches. Following on, the cover of ‘Sour Milk Sea’, takes us back to the psych-pop and will have you grooving ‘round the living room.

Finally, ‘Alice Sunshine’ slows everything down, a dreamy slice of neo-psych that presses all the right buttons, with flickering synth and hazy flute adding to the magic. Right, I’m off to get some half-time oranges, see you on the other side.

As though they have undergone some strange mutation, side two sees our heroes leave the planet and head for distant galaxies, with two long deep space improvisations. Opening with a dustfall of electronics, treated guitar, and all manner of scrapes rattles and noises, ‘The Cassini Division’, is a haze of noise that fills the room, the band obviously enjoying themselves immensely. With a brief nod to side one, ‘Pillsbury Palace’ begins in 60’ psych mode, another perfectly formed pop gem. This time however the band have filled the middle of the song with a long intense drone, (sounding more like My Cat Is An Alien than The Beatles), a sound so dense, yet distant, it threatens to engulf the room entirely, turn it up and see what I mean. Then right at the end the song returns as if it had never left, a shimmering guitar solo spreading light as the band finish off in grand style. An away win and no need for penalties.
(Simon Lewis - Terrascope Online - December 2007)


"The Seventh Ring of Saturn crafts deep psych rock and pop grooves that could have easily been culled from a long-forgotten cache of outtakes from Lenny Kaye's Nuggets comp., swimming in improv noise and freak-out."
-- Chad Radford (in Creative Loafing, May 31, 2007)