Album Review: The Black Angels - Phosphene Dream

Phosphenes are flashes of light, seen without light actually entering the eye, usually induced by movement or sound. Phosphene Dream is the name of the third album by Austin, Texas psychedelic rockers the Black Angels. The band set the controls for somewhere between the feedback-drenched drones of the early Velvet Underground and the cosmic r&b of fellow Texans the 13th Floor Elevators (the Black Angels recently toured as the backing band of Elevators' frontman Roky Erickson). However, these are not especially unique influences, and the band often veer off into hammy pastiches of sixties psych sounds, like the the electric jug on "Sunday Afternoon", or the beamed-in-from-1967 midsection of "Yellow Elevator #2".

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