Al Lover - Sacred Drugs (Psych Army/Crash Symbols 2014)

Al Lover
Sacred Drugs
Psych Army (vinyl)/Crash Symbols (cassette/digital) 2014

San Francisco DJ Al Lover has been an unrelenting force on the international psych scene for a while now.  If there is a beautiful meeting of psychedelic minds somewhere in the world, chances are he is right there at the epicenter of it all, spinning a tripped out dj set for everyone's enjoyment.  There are hours and hours of his remixes and cut-ups and mix tapes floating around, all of them worth checking out, but for Sacred Drugs, his first official LP of original material, Al Lover stretches his tether out  further than he ever has before.  The work here is deeper, more personal.  The beats are more subdued and heavily sedated. The atmosphere is thicker.  Everything is more ambient.  Sacred Drugs seems less designed to drag your ass out on the dancefloor and more for laying you out like a fucking rug in the comfort of your own home, gently holding you down and opening cosmic portals for altered states.  Most of the tracks seem like brief snippits of infinite loops, and explore a wide variety of sounds and textures... there are meditational soundscapes, slow-crawling trip hop grooves, and weird alien noise.  But make no mistake, this is not a relaxing experience by any stretch of the imagination.  The listener is kept discombobulated throughout as the album meanders through these strange sounds, and there is a bit of a paranoid feeling dripping off of the walls.  Sacred Drugs is the soundtrack for a dark, personal voyage, allowing your mind to wander deep inside of itself.  So get comfortable, relent to it, and ride it.  Safe travels.

Buy the vinyl HERE, and the cassette and digital download HERE.  follow Al Lover on Facebook and Twitter.  Check out HEAD MEDICINE's Al Lover interview from 2013 HERE

 

Stand out tracks: "The Shaman's Hand is Infinite," "The Shadow Self Shake," "7 Senses of Cosmic Understanding," ""Up Is Down and All Around Is Within"

guest appearance by Morgan Delt on "Super Strength (Power Plants)"!!