The Carpet Knights - "Lost And So Strange Is My Mind"

Transubstans Records Trans 009 Rare mix of prog, folk and psyckedelic music from an upcoming band from Malmoe, Sweden. The flute in the opening track All be the same together with the vocal approach reminds me of early Jethro Tull resulting in a pleasant light composition. With influences mainly ranging from the psychedelic sixties and spacey seventies. No space to spare exactly sums up all these references into a song of their own, floating through nice melodies into a hyperspace of their own. With Zonked they enter the world of stonerrock without going over the top too much and keeping the guitars nicely in pace with some Captain Beyond references. When I first heard The mist I had to check which disk was in my player for I could swear this was Anekdoten. Both from a musical perspective as well as vocalwise this track has the unique approach of Anekdoten written all over it! So expect From within era magic here. Although the band has two guitarplayers in their line-up they do not fill their songs with endless guitarsolo's. Instead these guitars form a firm backbone on top of which the rest of the arrangement is build. The instrumental Dab Nekan almost starts like Peter Gunn evolving in an ongoing pattern which builds and builds also incorporating some bottleneck passages. Pity the vocal harmonies are not flawless I'm afraid. The absolute highlight has to be the lengthy Last of many right at the very end. The Fender Rhodes introduces kind of an experimental nature before the vocals again remind us of those of Jan Erik Lilleström. The band also alternates between electric outbursts King Crimson style and softer acoustic passages which by means of the Fender Rhodes introduce a slight haze of jazz. This ain't Orange Goblin nor is it Hawkwind yet Lost and so strange is my mind captures The Carpet Knights in their quest for their true identity. After several homemade demo's the material on this album is still not very clear as to what direction the band is really taking although if you think of a slight stoner version of the early Anekdoten material without cello nor mellotron you will pretty much have a good idea. John 'Bo Bo' Bollenberg www.boborocks.be