Children of One - "Children of One" {USA} [1969] (psych)

Hello! , Altought its quite common, its my latest discovery. i amazed myself during the week with that album, its something like an authentic theraphy at scizoprenic level. hope you like it too. some copy/paste;

Lineup pasted above from Fuzz, Acid & Flowers, whose entry says nothing more than that they're from New York. Apparently a 1968 release, never reissued, very obscure and rare. [lysergia.com] gives the release date as 1969. Most definitely NOT a rock album even though it's likely to float in the same circles of rare late 60s psych. This is truly one of the most bizarre albums I've ever heard, somewhere in between mystical folk music, new age music, and modern classical with a strong element of Indian music because of the use of sitar, dilruba and tanpura. It has a very non-academic feeling; it would be easier to imagine this music coming out of a hippie commune than a university, though I imagine it was probably some mix of these cultural contexts that resulted in this. With cello, bass clarinet, and flute mingling with multiple female voices, there's a rich and warm feeling. Very dreamy and mellow, not much in the way of driving rhythms. Strangely there's little percussion on the album, yet in the middle there is a quite lengthy unaccompanied drumkit solo, which is quite nice and not a detriment to the album or the sort of thing that begs to be skipped over. The strongest feature of the album is the abundance of female vocals in a wordless, somewhat operatic style that comes off as mysterious and ritualistic instead of gratuitous or annoying. I wasn't familiar with the dilbura before this, though I noticed a very sarangi-like sound in the mix and I just read that it's an Indian classical instrument somewhere in between a sarangi and sitar, bowed like the former with tuning and fret arrangement close the latter. It's a fantastic sound. A real masterpiece of subtle mysteriousness! Non-idiomatic psychedelia outside of time and place. Meditative yet freaky. I've really never heard anything similar to this at all. Seriously demanding investigation by anyone who might be remotely interested in this aesthetic! This general vein of music isn't a strong interest for me, but I'm pretty knocked out by this and the composing is very sophisticated. I would expect a lot of folks to give this one 5 stars.

Michael Anton Parker

LES GRINAGE cello, dilruba
KONRAD KAUFMAN drms, perc
BALA KRISHNA sitar
LAKSHMI tanpura
LEONARD LONERGAN soprano sax
MARCELLA MALMOLI vcls
LUCAS MASON flute, piano
PAULA MASON vcls
IRIN POELLIOT vcls
PETER SOKOLOW bs clarinet
VERA SOKOLOW vcls

time tuRns toward tomorrow..

Enjoy!