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.

During his brief time on the scene, however, Warren has managed to cultivate some ties with a few friends in rather, er, high places in the neo-psych stratosphere: Venture Lift’s first recording was for a compilation for U.K. label Fire Records, once home to the Spacemen 3, while Futuretoreal is out on the appropriately named Mind Expansion, a concern run by Randall Nieman of Detroit acid eaters Asha Vida and Füxa. A reclusive but committed inner voyager, Warren spends much of his non-writing/recording time meditating in the Buddhist Dzogchen tradition—not a difficult scenario to picture once you’ve put yourself in the center of his universe for these 60 minutes. Minutes that add up to in an hour in a pretty great place, if you ask us. Let’s go trippin.’