RODION GA Rozalia
INVERsIONs 6/10 hard-rocking psych jams from the far side of the Iron Curtain Turning on the squares to psych music was hard enough in cultural centres like London and San Francisco, so imagine the scale of the challenge facing Rodion Rosça, a musical pioneer exploring progressive music in 1970s communist Romania, while the country was under the authoritarian reign of Ceauçescu. Operational from 1975, Rodion worked from a self-built studio in his hometown of Cluj, making records that won huge audiences on national radio but seldom saw official release, and often fell foul of the authorities (Rodion has recalled how a simple “yeah yeah yeah” was enough to inspire the ire of the censors). The first collection of Rodion GA’s music, The Lost Tapes, was released on Strut in 2013, and mostly focused on his experimental, soundtrack side. Rozalia – named in honour of his late mother – focuses more on the hard-rocking end of his oeuvre, collecting chunky riffers like “Nu Tu Vei Fi” and “Uneori” that were mostly composed alone, multitracking parts on a Tesla reel-to-reel machine. Musically speaking, this is an interesting curio rather than an earth-shaking discovery, although the melodic, hooky “Tic Tac” – recorded at a radio session in Bucharest – suggests that in a more receptive environment, Rodion might have become a genuine radio hitmaker. Extras: None.