Mushroom - Naked, Stoned & Stabbed

Let’s not keep this mushroom in the dark

Given the title of this album, you’d be forgiven for anticipating something rather different than the ambient background drift of this San Francisco collective’s laidback trans-global orchestration. Instrumental, aside from their cover of Kevin Ayers’ Singing A Song In The Morning, which plays out the proceedings and seems to sum up what’s gone before, this is the sound of an intriguing group of musicians stretching their Bay Area psychedelia across continental boundaries.

Led by drummer and producer Pat Thomas, and including Daevid Allen collaborators Josh Pollock and Erik Pearson among its ranks, Mushroom have been creating a tasty line in psychedelic jazzfunk since the late 90s. They’ve collaborated with giants (Ayers, Allen and, tapping into their Krautrock leanings, Faust) and released an eclectic catalogue themselves, not least their previous 4Zero foray with Alison Faith Levy, Yesterday I Saw You Kissing Tiny Flowers.

Evocative and Eno-esque, this latest recording, captured in a single weekend, is thoughtful and introverted. They pull from all the varied tangents of world music to be Oriental, Latin, Indian, First World and Third World in their influences, and the end result is something that’s soothing, gossamer and just that bit different to what they’ve done before.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

4Zero | FZ 007

Reviewed by Ian Abrahams
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