Psych Kings Mushroom Return in April

West coast fungi farmers make with the Cinema Verite travelogue: I'd call that a bargain, yo!

By Blurt Staff

San Francisco's Mushroom return with their first album in three years, NAKED, STONED, & STABBED, to be released April 27 through 4 Zero Records/Royal Potato Family. A new phase for Mushroom, the project was conceived as a cross-continental Cinema Verite travelogue of time and space. Acoustic, ambient and blending eastern and western hemispheres, its music floats on an ethereal blanket of sitar, violin, pump organ, celesta, vibraharp, dulcimer and flutophone, while African, Latin and Indian percussion replace a conventional drum set. Enigmatic song titles include "Celebration At Big Sur (The Sound Of The Gulls Outside Of Room 124)," "Though You're Where You Want To Be, You're Not Where You Belong," "Tariq Ali" and the only outside composition, a remake of the Syd Barrett/Kevin Ayers' collaboration, "Singing A Song In The Morning."

Recorded over a weekend at The Wally Sound in Oakland, CA, the sessions were both planned and spontaneous with producer and percussionist Pat Thomas often adding and subtracting instrumentalists on the fly. Configurations range from a duo to a trio to an octet, and thus give each song a varied approach. At the time of the recording, the band had just come off a multi-night run of performances interpreting Pete Townshend's 1971 rock opera Lifehouse. The vulnerable and dynamic music of that experience provided a catalyst that resulted in the album's final 13 tracks. Mushroom also cite influences like Sandy Bull, Alice Coltrane, Davy Graham, Brian Eno and Fela Kuti as having played a roll in the sounds found on Naked, Stoned, & Stabbed.

 
Mushroom first formed in the mid-'90s and have since amassed a 12-album discography. A loose and rotating cast of Bay area musicians, its members include guitarist/knob twiddler Josh Pollock (a member of Citay, and collaborator with Gong, Acid Mothers Temple, Ruins, John Cale, and Damo Suzuki), vintage keyboard guru Matt Cunitz (Brightblack Morning Light, Hiss Golden Messenger), multi-instrumentalist Erik Pearson (Daevid Allen, Irene Sazer, Crooked Jades, Billy Talbot/Crazy Horse), bassist Ned Doherty, drummer/bandleader Pat Thomas (renowned reissue producer of recordings by Judee Sill, Ruthann Friedman, Pearls Before Swine, Terry Reid, Cluster & Eno), and Mushroom's newest member, percussionist David Brandt (his adventures include a European tour with the Kologbo Afrobeat Academy [Oghene Kologbo was the guitarist in Fela Kuti's Africa 70 band], and performances with Conduction maestro Butch Morris' New York Skyscraper).