Ozric Tentacles: Arborescence (1994)

Arborescence was one of the very first Ozric Tentacles CDs I have ever bought and I was not one bit disappointed. To me, this is one of their best albums ever. I thought this was a more consistent offering than their previous effort, Jurassic Shift (1993), which it too is excellent.

Arborescence opens up with “Astro Cortex” which is a very hard rocking number with totally insane guitar work from Ed himself, it’s totally unbelievable. “Yog-Bar-Og” is a very interesting one that goes through several different changes, with some excellent spacy synthesizers from Joie, and exotic sounding flute from John. The next cut is the title track, and is a totally minblowing ambient piece with otherworldly synthesizers, electronic effects, and more exotic flutes from John. “Al-Salooq”, as the name might suggest, is quite Middle Eastern sounding.

“Dance of the Loomi” is a more dance oriented track, but with more excellent, otherworldy sounding synthesizers, this is one cut I wished never ended. “Myriapod” is another hard rocker, much like “Astro Cortex”. “There’s a Planet Here” is such an incredibly dreamy soundng piece, with the bass and ambient synthesizers, I often wonder if this song is real.

And the last song, “Shima Koto”, as you might guess, is a rather Japanese influenced number with something that sounds like a koto (which was probably a synthesizer) with more of the great space jams you come to expect from these guys.

Arborescence marks the last album with Joie and Merv, they left the band after this album to concentrate fully on Eat Static, a techno outfit they formed in 1989, and released a bunch of albums. Arborescence totally amazed me. This album was released in 1994, in an era when grunge and alternative rock still ruled the airwaves. It makes me glad to know there were some bands that didn’t pander to the Lowest Common Denominator, and Ozric Tentacles is one of them. Arborescence is an excellent place for the Ozric newcomers to start.