The
Dragons
BFI
****
Let
me spin you a tale.
It’s the late sixties and a group of brothers in Malibu
have been surfing and gigging. Then having their mind’s
blown by the musical experimentation of the time they step into
the studio to lay-down their own musical masterpiece – it’s
called ‘BFI’. The execs don’t dig the sounds
they hear and the brothers focus on their session work (including
a stint backing the Beach Boys).
37 years later DJ Food finds a surf soundtrack and one song blows
his mind, that song was ‘Food For My Soul’ by The
Dragons – he contacts the band to see if he can include
the track on his latest mix CD. He is told there is a whole album,
he listens, his mind is blown further.
And here is it – BFI a lost psyche-pop gem dragged from
the depths of time and made available for the first time. Exciting
isn’t it?
This is as good as anything released at the time, a solid pop
album in it’s accessibility but polished with grand mind-expanding
experimentation reminiscent of the also-emerging krautrock bands
- multi-layering of vocals and instruments, unfamiliar time-changes
and otherworldly funk.
On the surface it has hall-mark cheery surf and psyche-pop traits
but BFI has a dark edge not uncommon in psyche-sounds of the early
seventies - the hippy, late sixties dreams of love and unity had
given way to a desolate reality check and this album echoes this
feeling of dark uncertainty. It is this that gives it its edge
along with the inventiveness of the song-structures, at times
akin as much too sonic visionaries such as Can and David Axelrod
as to pop artist peers.
BFI is a grand aural-echo from the mists of time that deserves
to be rediscovered and given its rightful place as a classic.
by
Chris Marks
|
|
|
