Vokokesh- Dr. Hofmann’s Bicycle Ride (Phonospera Records ph02)

Great to see Richard Franecki and the guys back with a new Vokokesh album and what a cool one this is. The CD features 7 new tracks and one improvisation. Born Losers is a 3½min track and features a potent fuzzed out guitar that leads the track and the rest follow. The Texas Asphalt Blues is really a slow spacey track with some totally killer space guitar by John Helwig and some synth sounds entering into the soundscape every now and then. Richard plays a sort of country blues guitar line underneath. Cool stuff. The Cruising Song is more laid back and spacey with a floating pad synth part and some great guitar. Kesh #10 is a long 11 min long improvised track that is very searching and spaced out and Rusty is never really given a chance to start up the drums until late in the track and he plays mostly some fills here and there and some percussive parts. Pretty acoustic piece, is more or less what it says but it has some spacey electronics filtering in and out of the soundscape as well in this most melodic track. The Highway Song is back to a more heavy and fuzzed out guitar riff and has a dissonance used to great effect. The guitar soloing is quite freaked out at times. 1000 Pictures in one Word starts slowly with a prominent bass line and some nice spacey electronics and guitar. Dr. Hofmann’s Bicycle Ride is a 15 min space out that reminds me of Pink Floyd at the start but then it just floats away with really spacey stoney guitar. A great instrumental space rock CD….

http://www.myspace.com/vocokesh http://www.myspace.com/phonosphera