Majak Door – Smoke In The Air
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Lo-fi Rock
Of course, by the time a band finally gets enough success for big publications to consider it warranted to write about them they are viewed only within one light. They are a dirty rock band. They are a dance unit. They are a shallow stadium pop act.
That makes figuring out the group very easy to an enlarged audience that may suddenly care about them. But, it’s very rarely the truth. Take just about any of the bands of the last 40 years that have managed to play to stadium crowds. Difficult as it may be to admit for some, almost all these bands were good at what they did. And, usually, their success hinged on their ability to perform in a variety of styles.
Majak Door makes music that sounds as breezily psychedelic as light summer rain in a hippie commune. Smoke In The Air‘s guitar work swirls like the heavens messing around with the colour scheme. It is music meant to put the mind at ease, help you drift away. And, above everything, even though the quality of the music is enough to allow them to play large arenas, it shows that there’s more than one card up this Melbourne group’s sleeve.
Eddie Berman – Taurus
Genre: Folk, Americana
Somewhere around the mid-60s, some musicians, tired of being forced by their record labels to produce hits with each one of their releases decided to do something different. They were going to make art. But, they were going to use guitars, bass, and drums to do it. Bob Dylan had tried it, and according to his beatnik friends had had amazing success.
This bread new generation of songwriters that were poets first. Sometimes their efforts were silly. Other times they created beautiful, powerful poetry that millions across the world could recite. Lou Reed, Patty Smith, Jim Morrisson would be both surprised and shocked about the importance of poetry in popular music nowadays.
The formats for music promotion change, and even the way in which music can be heard. However, all of those are irrelevant almost, as compared to the importance of filling the world with great songs. Only a few have an inclination for that. Eddie Berman shows he is among those precious few on his single Taurus. Quicksilver poetic lines drawing from myth and real-life coalesce to create a mighty tall tale and a very good son.
