Album Review
The Seventh Ring Of Saturn –
For a psychedelic, progressive rock space trip the Seventh ring of Saturn is a surprisingly sedate and pedestrian journey.
Sitar sounds abound and slightly unusual guitar scales just meander mindlessly like vagrant melodies in ‘Yedikule’, such excursions in soloing require vast amounts of concentration in order to avoid becoming redundant and inept; Saturn seem to be looking the other way throughout.
Simply placing the psychedelic elements together doesn’t make it necessarily space rock or indeed progressive.
TSROS aspire to the ‘Top 40’ freak scene. This is no bad thing-back before the British charts became a joke, when it was a credible barometer of good music, bands like Pink Floyd and Hawkwind were regular visitors-but even with something as strange as ‘See Emily play’ there was always a strong idea, an attempt at the subversive whilst maintaining it within the context of a pop song.
TSROS have no real knowledge of this heritage and ‘Alice sunshine‘ and the others songs orbiting it are photocopies of diagrams drawn by previous great artists, and not even good copies, original plans reduced to a flyer they hand out without any thought.
Their own countrymen provided all they needed to take there ideas further, The grateful dead and Zappa showing just how progressive and just how spaced things could get-but always with musicianship and vision. TSRS seemingly ignore all this groundwork and experimentation and show no respect for the pioneers gone before.
In the end songs such as ‘Pilsbury palace’ like the entire album, feel contrived, like the only drugs these guys have experienced is the paracetamol in their bathroom cabinet.