Band : GR & Full-Blown Expansion
Album title : GR & Full-Blown Expansion
Label : World In Sound
Distributor : Bertus
Release date : 30/11/2009
Release : CD

French musician Gregory Raimo (and now you immediately know what “GR” stands for) may be an unknown entity to many of our readers (heck, even I, ànd our Psychedelica specialist…another corner of the veil lifted…had never heard of him) there’s already several albums he can claim to have worked on. Even before releasing the 2008 album No More Invention with his band Gunslingers (type-casted as “Fuzz-Punk”, or a deviation of The Stooges), 2007 had alreadey seen the releases of GR’s debut solo album album Xperiments From Within The Pentacular, and a collaboration album with living NoiseRock legend Michael Yonkers, titled The High Speed Recording Complex! Sure, originaly released on a limited vinyl rotation through small French imprints, but then (or at least some of the above mentioned) re-issued (on CD) through German Psychedelica specialist World in Sound.

The same goes for thís album, originally released on vinyl in late 2008. Meaning quite a few reviews have already been made, and things are therefore somewhat surprising that a reviewer for Belgian top Rock/ Metal magazine Rock Tribune failed to see where this guy was coming from musically, even went as far as to call the material “…funky free-style Jazz, or something like that…”! I mean, whaààt!?! In the first place, that mention convinced me of the fact that this particular reviewer had no idea at all what kind of music Jazz, or Psychedelica, is. Additionally it makes mé wonder about two things. Firstly, how much…or rather how little research did that guy do (I mean, someone working for a renowned printed magazine is supposed to be somewhat of a “serious” music journalist, right? At  least, that would be how many people look at someone like that…or am I just raving now?), and secondly it makes me doubt about the sanity of an editor-in-chief whom has a guy like that in his team.
Of course, oùr Chief has the big luck of having someone in his crew (modesty forbids) whom has a fairly eclectic and all-round taste for music, so that when one of his specialists declines for the honor of reviewing a certain album (reasons for that may be plentyfold, and somewhat varied: from having too much work on the sslate at that moment, to temporary personall problems, to not being sure whether a certain release would actually fall into their field of specialism) there’s always someone who will give the album the best it deserves, and always reviewed towards the kind of people whom might like the music displayed on saiid album! If it seems like I’m taking a long time before getting on with the review at hand, that’s quite alright see, because if you’ve continued to read on thus far, it’s because you’ve read the word “Psychedelica” somewhere earlier…and the flood of words I’ve just served you with has probably given you a free psychedelic experience (well, we can always hope…)!

Getting back to GR’s new album, you’ll find that it has 7 tracks, for which most of the music (guitar, bass, drums, and the occasional organ, electric piano or keyboard) was recorded in one take (which means there’s hardly any corrections, or over-dubs) on a simple 4-track recorder. The way I see it, the first 4 songs were recorded when GR was on a bad marihuana trip which not only put his mind in a musical loop but also attacked his mind’s speech centre, leading to drawn-out tracks with a lot of repetition and the occasional fuzzy/ noisy undertones…which are lyric-less, and kinda mantric vocal-wize. Either the trip then turned into a more healthy after-effect, or the drugs he took for the rest of the album were of another quality, but not only is there definitely more variety in the music, you even get lyrics! And during the partially softer “All Stoned Day Long They Take You”, the combination of spoken word with the meandering background organ (that’s the “softer” part of the track, the guitar playing rather with its usual distorted freaky “intensity”) gives the whole a very appealing The Doors-like sound.

Now I’ve dóne my homework, and therefore I càn tell you that if you’re looking for as much as possible audio material on this artist, you’re best off surfing to last.fm/music/GR+(Gregory+Raimo), because even if you’re rather well-served at myspace.com/bossyaya, you’ll not only find móre material at last.fm, but also stuff form an unlisted recording (I’m guessing it’s a early demo recording, but then it might already be a preview into a future release). Although I won’t go as far as nominating this album into my year-lists, just to counterbalance the stupidity of other music journalists, I personally enjoyed this mind-altering album very much…wouldn’t mind being able to listen to it again, some time in the future!

89/100

Tony.