VENTURE
LIFT—Futuretoreal
(Mind Expansion Records) review | By Peter Aaron
Syd
Barrett never died. He just hooked up with the Spacemen 3 and moved
to the Catskills. Okay, that’s a lie. But after hearing
Futuretoreal, the debut by Woodstock outfit Venture Lift, you’d
be forgiven for believing it.
The
brainchild of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Stanton Warren,
Venture Lift uncannily conjures the sound of Barrett-era Pink Floyd,
filters it through the Eighties acid-wash of Loop or the Spacemen
3 circa The Perfect Prescription, adds a tab or two of Warren’s
own lysergic vision, and flies it straight into the heart of the
sun. But even though the leader wears his admirable influences proudly
on his paisley sleeve (check the cover of Barrett’s post-Floyd
Golden Hair), Venture Lift’s modern experimental sensibility
keeps the freak flag flying free and clear of any water-treading,
revival-act pitfalls.
Proof
in action: The metronomic, Stereolab-ish “Beneath the Floor,”
which sees guest vocalist Liana Turner’s breathy, singsong
voice floating above guest keyboardist (and founder of Woodstock’s
illustrious Creative Music Studio) Karl Berger’s trippy stabs
and swells. And a track like “Music 1,” a chugging one-chord
fuzzbuster that fuses Alan Vega’s slap back-reverb yelp with
the post-punk bleakness of Joy Division, might just be too much
for anyone who thinks psychedelic rock peaked in 1968. (Their loss,
if that’s the case.)
Although
Warren, who grew up near Niagara Falls, launched the Venture Lift
concept in 2003, his space-rock roots go back to his membership
in late Nineties/early Naughties Canadian groups,
Innersound Accelerator and Off the International Radar.
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