• Band / Artist : General Fuzz – mySpace
• Genre : Down-tempo / Electronica / Psychedelic
• Sample Track Download : Smiling Perspective
• Buy CD : N/A
• Free Digital Download : Band Site
• Rating : 9 out of 10

I spend many an hour ferreting out new music and artists to review. Consequently I have an extensive in pile of CD’s to listen to. I also end up with music that I’ve just downloaded on a whim or recommendation and in the in-box it sits until I feel like dipping in for something different. Today was quite different. I found this album nestled innocently on my hard drive, yet have no idea of how it got there. I’m not for a moment going to blame aliens, but find it strange nonetheless.

At first glance this looks like any common or garden album. 9 tracks, with fairly different names from the norm, but nothing too unusual. However once I got a track by track listing, I found that the majority of tracks were over 6 minutes. The longest is a touch over 9 minutes. I immediately thought this was going to be an album to struggle through. I was wrong, oh so very wrong.

The album opens with the suitable weight, nigh on 7 and a half minute track “Smiling Perspective”. It starts with some fairly ordinary drums and bass, but then slowly, the soft soothing synths come in and the whole track just comes alive. I could listen to this track over and over again for hours. Throughout the album there’s a sci-fi, soundtrack sort of theme, but with a kind of dance underpinning. Again with music of this genre, it’s an absolute joy to listen to through headphones. My favorite track on the album would have to be “Sliding Forward”, with that delicious, almost hypnotic repetitiveness. Which when used intelligently like this, is simply fantastic. “Liquid Jazz” is, as the name indicates a mellow, electronic jazz fusion, which while sounding great, does feel kind of disjointed from the rest of the album. The last track on the album “Bars of Parmar”, again has a distinctly different sound to the rest of the album, this time an almost ethnic feel, but it just flows beautifully.

Conclusion : An absolutely wonderful album and an amazing find. All the more amazing is that this album is freely available at no cost. Yes I said “NO COST”.