Xitintoday

Now here's something you don't hear everyday -- a space rock saxophonist, stripping down to near acoustic basics, and dedicating not just an album, but an entire band and stage show to the spirits of ancient Egypt. Nine tracks recorded with a veritable space rock supergroup (sundry ex-Hawkwind and Gong members, Steve Hillage, Morris Pert, and more) should, if track records are anything to go by, have delivered an album of almost unrelenting heaviness and weirdness. Instead, released today Xitintoday would be categorized "mystic new age" and praised (or buried) accordingly -- thank goodness such meaningless terms didn't exist in 1978, and this magical, mysterious, and, most of all, moody album was greeted on its own terms. Songs as such do not exist; rather, lyrics and arrangements follow an atmosphere-licked destiny of their own making, to take the listener deep inside some forgotten pyramid, to witness the spectral rituals being enacted therein. Liberal use of a vocoder adds to the listener's dislocation, and the only caveat is -- don't buy the 1994 CD. It's an almost completely different record! ~ Dave Thompson