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REVIEWS - PROGRESSIVE & PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC - http://progressive.homestead.com/prog7.html
AA.VV. The VegetableMan project Vol.4 - (Oggetti Volanti non Identificati - 2005)
Like before, on the previous compilations, most versions of Syd Barret’s “Vegetable Man” haven’t got much of the sphere of the original Syd Barrett in them, but this time I don’t care, because most of the better tracks are entirely different but still enjoyable enough to stand stylistically on their own, that it does not really matter if some things missed the original point. Most bands listed here are Italian, with some exceptions.
This might be one of the better and most enjoyable to listen to compilations fromthe label to date. It is compiled well with a variety of styles, mostly within the range of independent rock.
While the musicians were only allowed a short four minutes almost every musician or group took care and the time to arrange their versions well, something which gave benefit to the compilation, where the song might have been an excuse to present each group’s ability to arrange and give their music visions.
Very enjoyable, almost danceable, is the let’s say post-kraftwerk “robot” version from Italian band Miazia (-I cannot imagine a “vegetarian robot”, but who cares again, for this is just electropop fun). Gallery Of Lore’s heavy indie-wavepostrock is enjoyable too. Der Bekannte Post-Industrielle Trompeter is fine too. It is an almost absurd, far out-sider, fun-blurry experimental track with the use of a few brass instruments (trombone and trumpet ?) and background echoed vocals. UK psych band the Future Kings Of England bring it closer to the original, witha more careful-freaky psych version, without adding just anything to the original. Italian band Beat Babol, sound fundamentally also close to the original in rhythm, text and singing but has electronic wave arrangements, which make the song different in style, again to something slightly trippy and danceable, with a nice electronic outro mix. This is well switched into the next track, which is an oddity of a rhythmic speed-is-mixed-up tapemix by Su/Si_Lab. Their track became a nice in between track for a great indie-industrial surf version with wahwah guitar and a child like voice, performed by Kevin from Sweden. This is followed by a very good original acoustic song interpretation with let’s say free-flamenco-jazz acoustic guitar and some flute and whistle touches, by My God Is a Fluorescent Frog. With modern echoed rhythms and an industrial and indie-electropop touch, with muffy muffled distorted vocals, well mixed, is the track by Italian band Milanoans. This is followed by a weird fun version by the German psych band Fantasy Factory with some making-fun-of-it vocals, some brass and a stretch-and-pull-flute. This is followed by Dutch absurd-artist Danielle Lemaire, spoken in Dutch, and with rather noisy high-note nonsense. Hearing her interpretation text I’m not sure if she understood that ‘vegetable man’ is not about a salesman in vegetables, but about drugs and becoming a plant. (Perhaps the misinterpretation was deliberate but I wonder). Satantango brings a somewhat predictable and ok heavier female indierock version, with just a bit of freak-the-guitars. Starting with teenybop rhythms but in an independent rock style is Labyrinth Whistler with post-Floydian vocal arrangements, and a few more great and varied changes in arrangements with attention to details, like a more electric guitar jam part, and some mellotron. A fine version with respect for 60’s punk and psychedelia, made for a world used now to different styles. The band seems to be a combination of two bans : In the Labyrinth and Swedish Whistler. This is followed by a calmer independent version with its own vision of arrangements of electronic rhythms, guitars, and organ, ..by Goad/Opendead Eye. Posthuman Tantra after this are from Brazil. They work with dark sequenced rhythms, echoed distorted Portuguese vocals, with strange and filmic electronic sounds, -the song becomes hardly recognisable-, with a strong almost horrifying tension. Jacopo Gobber performed another calm independent version with some more use of electronica. Further we have UK based Kitchen Cynics with some simple, loner folkpsych fuzz and rhythmbox and arranged vocals. Geloso’s indierock version starts as a more primitive and simple version but it becomes more enjoyable further on. A great conclusion is Marsicano Sitar Experience with Laro Toledo from Brazil with first echoed and then plain sitar and some percussion.
Gerald Van Waes
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