V/A-PRESCRIPTION ARCHIVE SERIES 3, 6xCDR SET, 2004, UK

Best known for his work in Sun Dial, Gary Ramon and his Acme Records imprint have been flying the flag for advanced psychedelic musical thought under various guises for ages now and this epic set was evidently the third installment of his micro release subscription series on Acme, though I've neither seen nor heard a peep about a second (the first, an LP series in an edition of 99 copies will be coming soon). For those not in the know, Sun Dial were responsible for one of the three greatest psych albums of the 90's (at least of those not made by us...[ahem]...), "Other Way Out". The material collected here from Sun Dial and a series of satellite units was issued on CDR in an edition of a mere 66 copies and covers a goodly bit of material that was gathering dust on his shelves. I posted the vinyl debut of Ramon's side project Quad a while back (a true mindbomb, that!), and it's Quad that initiates the series at hand here, so...taking it one by one:

Disc 1: QUAD-LIVE ICA 1991
less ethno (no sitars this time out) and more saturated on the analogue abuse end than their stunning vinyl debut, this time, it's all black holes, solar flares and aurora borealis'. When Ramon's exquisitely poised guitar finally punctures this synthetic hymen at about the 20 minute mark, it harks right back to the most hushed moments of beauty on Sun Dial's Other Way Out. Really fabulous stuff and not entirely far off from some of what Atsushi Tsuyama of Acid Mothers Temple gets up to on some of his solos either.

Disc 2: THE MODERN ART-S.T.
This pre-Sun Dial crew (though no idea precisely where this lands in the lineage) sit at an odd juncture between down in the mouth post-Factory Records motion, and grittily urban sounding psychedelic jams that wouldn't have sounded out of place on the Ralph Records Subterranean Modern compilation. Quite nice.

Disc 3: THE MYSTERY PLANE-S.T.
Slurry, trashy dystopian acid pop lovliness here, from a power trio format that shares a member (other than Ramon of course, who appears on all these discs) with The Modern Art. There's a choice Rocket From The Tombs/Cleveland underground heft at work to these formulations and it's a rich vein their tapping, elsewhere calling to mind everything from Gallon Drunk and Dutch psych popsters S.T.

Disc 4: WER7-S.T.
Most peculiar and fascinating cosmic electronic agressiveness that operates at a distinct remove from the blissouts Ramon gets up to with his Quad compadres, here it's all rude surges and astral hailstorms, Kluster, Seesselberg, Moolah and the aggressively loud zapping and surging bits from Tangerine Dream's Alpha Centauri being the most obvious antecedents for the sounds achieved here.

Disc 5: THE ORDINARY-S.T.
The Ordinary's psych format of choice is the long form jam, with the 27+ minute opening gambit "New England" approaching Acid Mothers Temple-like zones of distended lysergic excess, though the chassis that these psychotropic runs are yoked to gives this affair a whole other center of gravity than the doings of the AMT crowd, it's cadence a post punk-derived carry-over from his work in The Modern Art.

Disc 6: SUN DIAL-LIVE/REHEARSAL LONDON 1991
The inverse of the immaculately honed perfection of their studio recordings, this is blaring mid-fi acid psych ramalamma with a corrosive patina to it. Very audience recording in it's fidelity, it's wouldn't necessarily be my pick for the ideal point of entry into the Sun Dial universe (but then this series was only aimed at those already in the fold), but it's a compelling bit of acidic guitar excess regardless of it's place in the larger Sun Dial picture.

Get Quad via Megaupload Here

Get Quad via Rapidshare Here

Get The Modern Art via Megaupload Here

Get The Modern Art via Rapidshare Here

Get The Mystery Plane via Megaupload Here

Get The Mystery Plane via Rapidshare Here

Get Wer7 via Rapidshare here

Get The Ordinary via Megaupload Here

Get The Ordinary via Rapidshare Here

Get Sun Dial via Megaupload Here

Get Sun Dial via Rapidshare Here