Tia Carrera- Cosmic Priestess (Small Stone Records)

 I only first got this now, even though it has been out on CD for half a year or more. This is the vinyl release and they had to shorten the long Saturn Missile Battery track down from nearly 34mins to 26 to get it on the B side of the record as well as leave off the A wolf’s in wolfs clothing track complete. The gatefold artwork on this limited edition 180gm color vinyl record is really nice. This finds the band in great form, just free form jamming in the studio direct to one inch analog tape in Austin Texas! If you don’t know this Texas band, they are a trio and play instrumental stoner blues rock with lots of guitar solos. The opening number Slave Cylinder is a high energy track with some excellent wah guitar soloing going down. Sand, Stone and Pearl is a more cool floating track and features a guest Ezra Reynolds on Fender Rhodes (which the did not spell correctly in the album sleeve!). This is my favourite track on the record. Flip it over now. Saturn fades in and about 5mins in they almost go into a section of Third stone from the Sun but not quite. The band just keeps jamming along with a quite high energy and he goes into a section where the guitar riff is quite repetitive and then out into another solo section.

http://www.myspace.com/tiacarrera http://www.smallstone.com