There are very few bands who’ve created their own universe… Hawkwind, Gong and Tangerine Dream come to mind… and the Ozric Tentacles have been doing this now for over four decades. They grew out of the ‘Free Festival’ scene of the early-mid eighties, and since then the Ozrics have been charting their own course, refusing to follow trends or fashions, with their sound still rooted in electronica, space rock, prog, etc, as they generate their own sonic landscape through spiralling guitar weaves, ambient synths and bass/drums sounds.
Harmonic Mind… the title is derived from the ‘geometric and harmonic nature of existence’ (who knew?)… is their 17th studio album, though there are also a considerable number of ‘live’ albums as this is where their forte is. There’s no noticeable change of direction. Once again, this is the Ozrics doing what they do best, evolving and laying down patterns of sound and seeing where the muse takes them, meaning, while there’s a familiar feel to the album, it still retains the Ozrics’ sense of curiosity about what comes next. A case can probably be made for claiming every Ozrics album sounds alike, with one indistinguishable from another. All six tracks have the same features, dominated by keyboard and synth textures with guitars and drums in the mix.
Where the Ozrics differ from artists like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze is in their use of a more rock dynamic, using bass and drums so what they play is not just all synth swirls, and with Ed Wynne, band leader and guitarist, laying down some involved guitar touches as the synths play behind him, as on the track ‘Space Platform’, an energetic piece with soaring guitar playing over an insistent synth run and a feel of late seventies Steve Hillage. There’s also the addition of acoustic on title track ‘Harmonic Mind’, plus flute is added to pieces like ‘Guardstones’ and ‘Sumipad’, which gives a touch of Gong to the mix. With all the sound patterns they weave, some of their sonic landscape is quite intricate, as on ‘Tillamook’, and only on ‘Malachite’ do they appear to be following a song structure of verse, chorus, etc.
What the Ozrics play probably is repetitive and shimmering, but it allows for the listener to wander in flights of imaginative fancy inside the musical maelstrom, and they continue to explore instrumental, experimental sounds with undimmed enthusiasm. The sounds on the album tend not to stay in the mind very long, but this doesn’t matter because, onstage, the Ozrics rarely stay on script.
