Putting pre conceived notions gained from listening to loads of poor bands on this label aside I grabbed this album by the strange sounding Vali Ohm thinking that it might deliver the goods for once. After all the project is designed for fans of Hawkwind, Ozric Tentacles and space rock cosmonauts in general so I was more than happy to buckle up once more in search of space. This is the work of one Danny Jackson who we are told was born in Essex in 1970 and has spent most of his life writing and playing music. He was in a band called Joint Venture (I wonder if that name is a smoking hot pun) and gigged extensively but has been away from things for a decade before deciding to start things off again with Vali Ohm. He has also enlisted the one and only Nik Turner for a bit of collaborative help with things, sounds promising.
Oh I wish I could heap praise upon this but as it played (and it has had several spins as I always endeavour) it has become apparent that this is more ‘waste of space rock’ than ‘space rock.’
My biggest problem with this is found with the words on the insert biography that state “he [Danny] needed a singer though and for him there was one choice – Danny.” The best thing he could have done was get over the ego and find a competent vocalist as when his squeaky vocals come in on opening track ‘Jazz Up The Spacerock’ I thought someone was taking the piss and had just sucked up the contents of a helium balloon. They are awfully annoying and do not get much better as the album progresses so it was a massive task finding good things to say about this. Apart from this it sounds like it was recorded in a bedroom with crap keyboards and absolutely nothing in the way of bass oomph about it. Lyrics are terrible, guitar meander in a directionless flow and the accoutrements of the genre ie bloops, beeps and swooshes are formulaically hit at random moments. “I’m in my space machine, I’m flying into the sky” along with some awful skronk laden 70 pimp disco swaggers from the keyboards have me wanting to take off well and truly, but I could put this all down to the bad drugs the perpetrator of all this surely must be on. We go for a groove at the ‘Club Outer Stratosphere’ and everyone moves and everyone loves, oh god shoot me now please! I rescind my space cadet badge and want to leave the fleet.
The interlude that is ‘The Encounter’ is spatially atmospheric and due to the fact there is no actual singing is not half bad at all. With ‘Dance Of Karlie’ things are not too bad to cope with, we have sitar sounds and ethnic female backing chorals and there is a sense of things gelling together here. I am still cringing every time Danny hits the high notes though. These couple of songs help the albums point score as it goes really crap after. ‘The Vali Ohm’ sounds weak, weedy and a mess of uncoordinated instrumentation and bad singing. I am sticking around though for ‘3000 Light Years’ as this is the track with Mr Turner and yes the spoken word parts are great. The melody is also the strongest on the album and Danny has attempted to sing better here and proves he can do a half decent job of it. That’s another point then.
So a couple of redeemable things here that would have made a bearable EP but on the whole this was pretty damn torturous. Vali Ohm need a good singer, a good lyricist, a good recording studio and some good drugs otherwise hang it all up and do us all a favour please.
(2/10 Pete Woods)
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