a musical flashback from B. Jone

King Black Acid And The Womb Star Orchestra
Royal Subjects
(Cavity Search CD)

The epic King Black Acid has returned at last to deliver a sonic sacrament to all his Royal Subjects. Comprised of “selected compositions from the motion picture Zig-Zag, Royal Subjects is an hour-long semi-conscious mystical journey filled with exotic tastes, textures and temperaments floating on a dense cloud of warm, opiated smoke.

The patient and seductive ride begins slowly via the minimalistic sound collage that introduces “60 Cycles Numb.” Then the drums fire up just before wide washes of precise, heady guitar chug gorgeously along and Daniel Riddle’s stoned-Ziggy voice arrives to pull you off your feet and send you gently spinning through space. It’s rich, squishy, transcendent, translucent, and just plain trippy. The spirit of a slightly funked-up Floyd is called upon to carry out a “Grand Mal Pleasure.” A slowly circling, jazz-inflected groove is struck and laid down to support passages of talking guitar, shimmering synth and tinkering bells. It’s an off-balancing instrumental piece that fades away as delicately as it entered, leaving you wondering if it was really there at all.

“Only Wine Will Tell” features the smoky vocal tremblings and cooings of Jennifer Folker. As the home-on-the-celestial-range sound sculpture swims seductively along, her voice is layered and then relayered to become a bemusing and fragmented character ripe with sadness and solace. The heart-melting violin of Aaron Hoodbrown enters the picture to slow the pace and switch the mood from somber to sorrowful, and it’s a pleasing pain. The following “Passing Through the Photon Belt” is a sheer sheet blowing in the warm night’s wind before the didgeridoo-armed “144 Thousand Member Acid Army (I, II, III)” arrives and climbs though the open window. Their tactics are soft and hypnotic at first, but once you are deep enough under, they begin a frantic tribal ritual filled with ancient rhythms, slices of strong-arm guitar, disorienting and intoxicating keyboards, as well as Folker’s angel-from-the-dark-side chants. Sounds collide, bounce about, and dance together, working themselves into a frantic froth before abruptly vanishing, allowing tranquility’s return.

“Exit Ground Level Pt. 1” is surely a score for the apocalypse. Ethereal and eerie at the same time, washes of methodically molded and distorted sounds rise and fall with a dissonance and frequency that elicits a cautionary and curious sense of disquiet and despair. The eight-track expansive escapade comes to a close with the title track in which sea-storm sounds gradually give way to that of a rusty carnival. Then guitars languidly drift in, the wind returns, and you are tumbling weightless through King Black Acid’s sweet and sticky sonic stew with your eyes rolled back into your sockets, smiling in orgasmic delight.

Truly brilliant. Passionate, spiritual, sexy and intelligent, Royal Subjects will transport you to places filled with beauty and riches like you’ve never dreamed.