Aphrodite's Groove
Digital Download
TEDA 9
Release Date: April 2021
Norwegian psyche/space rockers Tangle Edge have released quite a lot of material during the past year in streaming/download format, but this live set from 1986 may be the crown jewel in the group's ongoing digital archive collection. Aphrodite's Groove was recorded direct to cassette 4-track in Narvik, Norway. Some of the material on this special digital download album was originally released as a limited edition cassette in 1986 by Mushroom Records. For this new expanded edition, the group has restored and remastered the original cassette tapes for optimal sound quality. The result is quite spectacular, and Tangle Edge fans can now enjoy virtually the entire concert uninterrupted and in its best possible aural format. In a sense, Aphrodite's Groove is Tangle Edge's Space Ritual: the live sound of a band captured in all its psychedelic glory, primal energy and lysergic frenzy. Heavy, edgy, raw, and relentless, Aphrodite's Groove features Tangle Edge at their most unhinged and uninhibited, playing at times with an almost reckless abandon. In this early incarnation of the band, Ronald Nygard (guitar), Hasse Horrigmoe (bass), and Rune Forselv (drums) function as a stripped down power trio, very much in the spirit of Guru Guru (especially on their monstrous UFO album) or Ash Ra Tempel circa 1971. There are even times when they approach the frenzied acid meltdown madness of the early Jimi Hendrix Experience and Blue Cheer. As a result, Aphrodite's Groove is nearly 90 minutes of stoned out sonic overload and stoned in psychedelic high voltage. Always known for their wildly inventive and provocative song titles, Aphrodite's Groove is comprised of some of the group's earliest unreleased material. The opening track, "Guardian of the Past," begins in somewhat muted fashion but quickly develops into a frenzied psyche guitar jam, while the almost Kaleidoscope-like "Inside the Pagoda" develops a sense of mystical grandeur with its middle eastern scales and modal variations. The wonderfully schizoid "The Pope of the Frozen Ones" is King Crimson-esque in structure but completely acid freakout in execution with its flailing drums and Nygard's atomic crash and burn guitar mayhem. "Chew" is equally frenetic, a virtual maelstrom of sound, with some very effective metallized wah guitar and crushing supersonic bass grooves from Horrigmoe. Nygard's shrieking guitar solo will all but sear your cerebral cortex. The album's dense, murky mix, instead of being a liability, actually adds to the sunless gloom of tracks like "The 7th Heaven on the 11th Floor" and "Algaea Meets the Pinworms." The former is essentially an early version of what would become "Solorgy" on the group's debut album, In Search of a New Dawn. The version here is less elaborate than the extended mix on New Dawn, and is altogether more freeform and visceral. Horrigmoe's hammer & anvil bass anchors the piece to terra firma while Nygard's alternately slashing and scorching guitar solos navigate the upper reaches of the stratosphere. "Algaea Meets the Pinworms" features more of Nygard's psychedelic guitar assault, though here simmering on top of an almost blues-inflected bass and drum vamp. The jump to hyperspace-driven psychedelic blues rock is complete with the album's last two tracks, featuring vocalist Svein Harald Hanssen. "The Head of the Rose" is really a cover of Hendrix's "Red House" and features some very Jimi-like gestures from Nygard, while "Dried Jockey Doogie" takes the group further into the wastelands of psychedelic blues rock and beyond. Aphrodite's Groove is a must for fans of the Kraut space cadet nexus of the early 70s and San Francisco's Exploding Acid Inevitable of the late 60s. It will effortlessly take you back to the early daze of the Cosmic Couriers, with a roadside stop in Haight-Ashbury circa 1967. Turn on the lava lamps and fire up the hookah.
