DRAGONTEARS - 2000 Micrograms From Home

Released in March 2007 and entirely helmed by Lorenzo Woodrose, leader (guitar, vocals, organ) of Baby Woodrose, this album stands as their most deeply "psychedelic" incarnation, as well as the band's return to the welcoming fold of Bad Afro after the brief detour of "Love Comes Down", itself an excellent record cut for Playground Music.

Dragontears, then, as yet another side-project (following the old, now-defunct Disconnecred Flowers, Pandemonium and Spids Nogenhat) of Guf Lorenzen, featuring, under colourful pseudonyms such as The Moody Guru, Fuzz Daddy and The Hobbit, current members of the splendid, crepuscular On Trial (Lorenzo was an early member) as well, busying themselves with mysterious gadgets like swoops, bubbles and audio hallucinations, alongside more traditional banjo and glockenspiel.

The experimental intentions of Dragontears are plain to see: this is 40 minutes across 6 tracks, seamlessly bound together by visionary, hallucinated passages, in which the unmistakable epic/acid stamp of Baby Woodrose is diluted into a stagnant, liquid psychedelia built from guitars, reverb-soaked organs and vintage analogue timbres and instruments. A treacherous sonic swamp whose quicksand softly, yet inexorably, drowns the psyche.

The most emblematic portion is undoubtedly the eighteen (!) minutes of "The Doors Of Prescription", hypnotic and minimal, a hallucinated mechanical fresco that lets all our psychoses and secret fears resurface: it fades away only to conjure their ectoplasm back up in the visionary closer "Heliodrone". "Hobbiten's Drom", by contrast, is fairy-tale-like and populated by elves. "Microdof" and "Doubstains" lose themselves in the recesses of a dazed, redundant garage sound; "Borderline" thrives on powerful lysergic refractions in the vein of 13th Floor Elevators.

"2000 Micrograms From Home" is only an experiment (Baby Woodrose's new album, "Chasing Rainbows", has just come out these very days), but it breaks down plenty of perceptual doors beyond the confines of traditional garage, and takes on the shape of a parallel sensory dimension.

You'll wish those 40 minutes could regenerate themselves over and over, leading you by the hand into an endless trip.

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22/10/2007