Culled from endless hours of sifting through dusty records in forgotten corners all over the globe by the tireless crew at RidingEasy, the Brown Acid series is a Nuggets for modern times, every volume a crucial collection of impossibly obscure heavy ’n’ hairy proto-metal from the age of Aquarius.
The fifth volume of anything is bound to show some wear and tear, and The Fifth Trip does have a few ho-hummers that would probably have been rejected from the first few volumes, most notably the pedestrian prog Clockwork by Cybernaut and the plodding stoner rock Mammoth and Zebra. But it also includes some serious head-spinners, from the neo-punk of Thor’s Lick It to the jarring epic Nothing In The Sun by never-weres Finch. NoOpener Reason by Captain Foam hits a similar band-out-of-time nerve.
Perhaps the most exciting revelation on this volume is the rediscovery of the toothsome Blowing Smoke, a lost single from George Brigman, a freaked-out, turned-on teen from Baltimore who self-produced an proto-punk monster of an album, Jungle Rot, back in ‘75.
If you like it heavy and weird, take the Brown Acid.
