NEKTAR Journey to the Centre Eye GERMAN PSYCH PROG Orig

$

30

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NEKTAR Journey to the Centre Eye GERMAN PSYCH PROG Orig

Artist: Nektar

Title: Journey To The Centre Of The Eye

Item: 12" LP

Record Label: Bellaphone/Bacillus 19064

Condition: Cover: VG++/NM, nice laminate cover, tight spine and seams, light edge wear. Record: NM/NM, nice clean and glossy, looks unplayed. See our grading scale below.

Comments: Original gatefold cover German pressing. More in our other auctions!

The four Englishmen who formed the initial incarnation of Nektar met in Germany and formed the band there in 1969. They were signed to the Bellaphon label in 1971 and released their debut album, Journey to the Center of the Eye, a year later. Their second album, A Tab in the Ocean, followed later the same year, and achieved a cult following as a direct import. Their extended songs, usually involving extensive variations on the same theme, found a growing audience in an era dominated by the sounds of Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes. Nektar's sound, built around guitar, electronic keyboards, and bass, was far more gothic, with dense textures that didn't always reproduce well on-stage — but the fans didn't seem to notice. On radio, however, their music filled in large patches of time and attracted listeners ready to graduate from Iron Butterfly and Vanilla Fudge, and seeking a re-creation of the drug experience in progressive rock.

 Nektar's debut album was one of their finest releases, saturated with abstract psychedelia and a wonderful science-fiction motif that is magnified through the rigorous but dazzling Mellotron of Allan Freeman and Roye Albrighton's nomadic guitar playing. Throughout Journey's 13 cuts, Nektar introduced their own sort of instrumental surrealism that radiated from both the vocals and from the intermingling of the haphazard drum and string work. With the synthesizer churning and boiling in front of Howden's percussive attack and Mick Brockett's "liquid lights," tracks like "Astronaut's Nightmare," "It's All in the Mind," and both "Dream Nebula" cuts teeter back and forth from mind-numbing, laid-back melodies to excitable, open-ended excursions of fantastical progressive rock. Just as Hawkwind was exploring the depths of outer space with their progressive tendencies on most of their albums, Journey to the Centre of the Eye musically probed the inner universe of the mind and body with its very own conceptual field trip. "Burn Out My Eyes" and "Warp Oversight" are let loose with buzz-saw vocals and hazy, undefined guitar chords which converge and fade into background rhythms, while the 54 seconds of "Look Inside Yourself" is a short, illusory voyage that ends too soon. Nektar's freewheeling sound is best felt on Journey and on their next three releases, as by the end of the decade, their progressive moods and ambient-like suites started to get harder and take on more of a mainstream feel.

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