Morgen

MORGEN were an US band with their sole album released in 1969/self-titled.it's a blinder ! a fantastic psych - album full of ravishing fuzz with guitarist Murray Shiffrin doing a swell job.tracks like '' WELCOME TO THE VOID '' are fairly self-expalantory & as meaningful as they were back then:as a matter of fact, certain things never change over time, do I have to enlarge on that ??if you're pining for this sort of psych sounds, you'll find salvation in them !oh dear !!!please guard against those bootlegs such as RADIOACTIVE , FLAWED GEMS, PHOENIX RECORDS, BAMBOO... !try for the official LP/CD is by the label SUNBEAM RECORDS ONLY + bonus tracks, a re-issue of the US original, unless you own the original LP from that day, of course.this MORGEN album is on offer via radioactive among other things.you tell me, have you heard about that label name: RADIOACTIVE ???seriously, how can anybody be that daft naming themselves like that, you're asking me right now ??what does radioactive imply ?clearly, radiation contamination !so stand that label radioactive off as best you can unless you want to stand for a cheap vinyl rip without bonus tracks...also take note of that great US psych band: TWENTIETH CENTURY ZOO (tracks : it's all in my head, do you remember,quiet before th storm...) even slightly harder than MORGEN is, but both of them radiate their enchantment in their own rightso to say one album is harder that the other does not involve either of them superseding the other one...or H.P. LOVECRAFT the filmore live recordings, womb-overdub, axe-axe music, the ultimate bonehead vinyl series ,the mind-crucifixion lane, false prophet-moonchild ...

Right there on top since I discovered it back in the mid-seventies as a Tandy/Radio Shack bargain! Knew about it from a venered hard rock survey in the french mag Rock & Folk but wasn't prepared for the sheer magnificence of this hard psych summit! Most surprizing fact is there's nothing else to discover from Steve Morgen! That guy really came from the void, struck & vanished back into it for the rest of eternity but this album will shine forever!

Morgen is frequently held up to be a classic of it's kind. It ticks a lot of boxes - it's obscure, it was never successful when released and the music is on the psych side of heavy. However, the album is let down by a couple of factors ( ignoring the limited number of tracks ). Steve Morgen is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good singer. His voice is weak and veers towards warbling sometimes - a great shame as the musicianship is good. The other downside is that the production is lacklustre ( at least on this release ) so a lot of the tracks lose their punch. This is really a case of if only.....it could have been a classic.