steve took

...after living with a wizard in paris (or least in his own mind and myth) the young mod chancer marc got together with ladbroke hooligan steve took and started playing some folky vibed acoustic sound...though this was settled on the folky tip this weren't no wooly jumper trad yodel but much more in the crushed velvet dusty garret poetry and wine folk including bongos and bells with the guitar strum...acid munching pixies strolling through sunlit forests of middle earth was how they were percieved by some underground zoned heads and for a while it seemed as this might well be true but this was to be the last LP these two put out before the nature of the combo started to alter radically and then change forever, the sound becoming harder as tolkienland vanished from the maps and radar of subterrania boho minded wasters...

...recorded over the '69/70 time period, steve hanging with paul rudolf and twink in a couple of london studios, 3 tracks for twinks 'think pink' and some demos of four tunes from steve...the twink vehicles are on the psychy shambolic side, nice and wobbly as expected, with steves numbers being spazzed-out acoustic numbers that takes a cat back to those tripped out nights at the middle earth club, a stoned buzz coming right off the wax, a hep bongs worth of grooves with that streak of meloncholic madness that takes tookys work into the higher stratosphere of london town looners, hooligan bohemia comes sliding along and creeps up when least expected...

...apart from the blantantly obvious fact that a lot more care and attention could been garnered on the presentation this cd is a real nice groove over a few evenings down ladbroke grove way circa 1972...taped at wild drugged get-togethers with larry wallis and twink in attendance at steves basement flat there's nice acoustic grooves with guitar/bongos/melletron, explosive amphetamine blare and generally a cloudy haze of whiskey and reefer flowing through...psychedelia pops up here and there and they are reminding the listener that the age of hippy aquarius, though having taken a beating from the pig was still a viable concern, at least with these cats who had the aquariun groove rolled together with motorcycle boots and leather jackets...there's the ocassional marc bolan riff floating, some heavy pink fairy damage blasting its way to the surface, it's possibly the best expression of london hippy-hooligan blast since the deviants ptoof (this obvious overstatement must somehow include AMM/sam gopal/third world war), it's real people on the cusp of showbiz going for their dream, their approximation of communication, street level cantankerous beatnik shenanigans of the first order...comatose in dark, dank and dirty corners or reaching for the end zone with space rock (hawkwind had some influence on steves outlook with floaty electronics, the type of wasted noise del detmar/dikmik were churning out for the early 'wind)...although not planned as any sort of commercial release back in the day these tunes hang together nicely, making it all a hazy dreamscape, after a few spins this takes on a weird life of its own, seemingly going where it pleases, the listener has no control, the remarkable power of 'groveness', the communal vibe reaching out down the years...cats who dig the basement style of freeform, plug in and sees what happens way of doing things are going to dig this the most, a stoned blast of mind melt, a one way ticket to the ever elusive 'otherside'...

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