The Zodiac — Comic Sounds
From El’ one of the sub-labels of Cherry Red, here’s a much-deserved CD reissue of this album. In recent years we’ve had a few vinyl reissues of the album, but this is the first CD pressing of the album for coming on twelve years. The CD comes in a standard see-through jewel case, and you get eight-page booklet- taking in a three-page write-up about the release, a page of bios, and a few studio pics. Sadly there are no sonic extras here, but I’m not sure if there were ever any out-takes from these recordings. And ultimately if there had been they would have somewhat spoiled the flow/ concept of the album.. so the release has a fairly merger runtime ( by today's standards) of thirty-eight minutes.
The concept for the album came about in early 1967 and was the brainchild of Jac Holzman, head of Elektra Records- who had just had a major commercial boost after the popularity of the first Doors album. Holzman hired Alex Hassilev, who was one of the founding members of popular American folk group The Limeliters. And in turn, he contacted Mort Garson, electronica pioneer, and one of the first people to use the Moog- to write, arrange & compose the album. At one point The Zodiac project had been planed to take in several releases- but in the end, this was the one & only release from the project. Though Garson did release a series of stand-alone releases for each of the Star Signs
Joining the pair in the project was American folk singer/ songwriter Cyrus Faryar, who did all the spoken word elements, and Paul Beaver on Moogs & various other electric instruments. With the rest of the line-up is filled out by a selection of respected session musicians taking in: Emil Richards, who had worked with the likes of Frank Zappa, Marvin Gaye, and Henry Mancini, on various forms of percussion. Carol Kaye on bass, Hal Blaine on drums, Bud Shank on flute, and Mike Melvoin on keyboards.
Each of the twelve tracks comes in between the two & nearing four-minute mark- with Cyrus Faryar Jim Morrison like spoken word elements taking centre stage. The pace moves quite nicely through-out going from woozy & winding, to more upbeat & fairly bounding( for psychedelic rock). Onto bright & jingling, through to twanging & eastern, onto mysterious & playful.
There’s nothing too daring, avant grade, or out-there about Cosmic Sounds, and Garson’s contributions are not as important or creative as some of his other release, such as 1971’s Lucifer - Black Mass Or 1968’s The Wozard Of Iz An Electronic Odyssey. But the album does manger to capture nicely that quintessential psychedelic vibe, and the whole thing passes by in most approachable manner. If your interested in psychedelia, or have penchant for novelty records- this really is something you should have in your collection- just don’t expect anything too edgy or difficult