A while ago, I impulsively picked up this comp at the Wicker Park area Reckless Records. When I approached the counter, the clerk, temporarily abandoning the general affected demeanor of a record store employee, exclaimed “man, I was wondering when someone was finally going to pick that up!” So I figured I gripped something pretty rad that day.
Trap Door: An International Psychedelic Mystery Mix was compiled by San Francisco-based Dis-Joint Records, a label interested in all the weird freaky-deeky obscure shit that tingles my solar plexus. It’s a mixtape, in some ways, insofar as the compilation flows together seamlessly and features DJ-helmed breakbeats augmented by dub low end. In other ways, not so much, as the source material jumps between disparate sounds and genres within the psychedelic element of the ’60s and ’70s. Trap Door strikes a great balance.
The result is a sound straddling the median between Os Mutantes/Love and DJ Shadow/J Dilla. Fans of Ghost Box will also fervently dig. File this under the same categories as the Sublime Frequencies releases, Light in the Attic’s The Free Design: The Now Sound Redesigned, and Edan’s flower-power psych-hop ripper Beauty and the Beat. Continue reading ‘Trap Door: An International Psychedelic Mystery Mix’
