Various Artists

Brown Acid: The Twelfth Trip RIDING EASY

More hard rocking and freaked-out obscurities are unearthed and exhumed.

With any number of platforms available for the sonic gratification of a past we think we know so well, the release of this twelfth edition of the Brown Acid series of compilation albums is to be welcomed with open arms. A labour of truffledigging love by Permanent Records’ proprietor Lance Barresi and Daniel Hall’s Riding Easy Records, this series picks up where the influential Nuggets and Pebbles collections left off and concentrates on the emergence of hard rock, heavy psych and proto metal.

With tracks largely falling within the parameters of the 1968-75 ballpark by bands so obscure that they rarely released anything beyond a hard-hitting single, we’re presented with a re-evaluation of the past that fills in the gaps of accepted orthodoxy. Witness Canada’s The Village S.T.O.P., whose sole seven-inch

Vibrations reveals an almost unhealthy fondness for wahwah pedals and funk rhythms, while The Waters’ groove-laden

Mother Samwell is fuelled by fuzz guitars, phasing and a freakbeat sensibility. Elsewhere the twin leads and cowbell of Artist’s Every Lady Does It evokes late-period

MC5, and the primitive grind of Dickens’s Don’t Talk About My Music sounds as if it was recorded in a toilet, and all the better for it. ■■■■■■■■■■