Ozric Tentacles: Live at the Pongmasters Ball (2002)

I have already reviewed a bunch of Ozric Tentacles albums already, but what I hadn’t done is reviewed one of their live albums, so here goes. Live at the Pongmasters Ball is the band’s most recent live album, recorded March 29th (Friday), 2002 at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London. This was also their first album to feature new drummer Schoo (Stuart Fisher) who replaced Rad due to emotional problems, and his replacement sure didn’t hurt the band any.

There are too many live albums by other bands which I find to be unbearably tedious to listen to, many times band members just go on huge ego trips doing pointless and boring solos in between songs that every fan of [insert band name here] are familiar with. Not with the Ozrics case. All the material on this 2-CD is of top quality, if you like their studio material, you’re sure to like this album too. Most of the material will sound familiar already if you are a fan of the band, but the great thing is many of them are extended, or arranged a bit differently so as not to be copycats of the originals. It’s always cool to see the lineup of Ed, John, Seaweed, Zia, and Schoo performing earlier material, like “Kick Muck”, “Dissolution”, “It’s a Hup Ho World”, “Erpland” and “Saucers”, these songs date back when the Ozric lineup consisted of Ed, Roly, John, Joie, and Merv.

Other songs on here include “Pixel Dream”, “Oddentity”, “Pyramidion”, “The Domes of G’Bal”, and many more. One song worth noting is the truly amazing “Oakum”, which apparently originally appeared on a CD with that same name that was only available to Ozric fan club members. While it’s difficult for me to describe each individual cut, it’s much easier to describe how these guys sound like. Well, they take the sound of the ’70s space rock scene (like Gong and Hawkwind), add some modern influences (like techno) and include some Asian and Middle Eastern influenced in their music. They use wonderfully both digital and analog synthesizers and the guitar work from Ed is simply unbelievable.

I want to let you know you can also get Live at the Pongmasters Ball on DVD, but since I don’t have a DVD player, I have this 2-CD set instead. Two CDs with about two hours of music, without anything that puts me asleep. If you wanna get in to live Ozric, be sure to get this CD.
– Ed Wynne: guitar, synthesizers
– John Egan: flutes, voices
– Zia Geelani: bass
– Seaweed (Christopher Lenox-Smith): synthesizers
– Schoo (Stuart Fisher): drums