SUN DIAL – Messages From The Mothership (2023, LP/CD Sulatron Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Sulatron Records

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, 180gr Black Vinyl (comes with Download code), 300 copies

Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition (comes with a 4-page digifile, includes an aural easter egg), 300 copies

Release Date: 22 Sep 2023

Gary Ramon’s Sun Dial is back with a new album through Sulatron Records, a label that has been Sun Dial’s home/shelter since 2016’s “Made In The Machine”. In 2018, Sulatron released the album “Science Fiction” (Read our review here), and in 2019 Sulatron reissued Sun Dial’s album “Return Journey” from 1993… Anyway, Sun Dial is back with a new album called “Messages From The Mothership”, and we have to blame a UFO sightseeing for this new album. Sulatron has all the details:

“Sulatron Records is happy and proud to release the 10th Album by UK kultband Sun Dial!
Sun Dial is the vehicle of guitarist and singer Gary Ramon, who started recording in the eighties as The Modern Art. He changed the name to Sun Dial when forming his live band in 1990.
The new album Messages From The Mothership takes its inspiration from Gary Ramon catching sight of a UFO in a desolate marshland at the age of fourteen. This gives way to a theme throughout which is especially prevalent on Side Two.

There are elements of Pink Floyd, King Crimson, and Hawkwind but the album has all the elements of Sun Dial’s Other Way Out and those in the know are calling it their best work since then.

After Sulatron released some Krautrock-influenced albums by Sun Dial (and the spaced-out Quad album, Gary’s old side-project) it’s back to guitar-psych and the tracks have Gary’s unmistakable vocal and guitar work interspersed with Hammond, Mellotron, and various rare keyboards.

Side One has well-crafted, shorter tracks which could all be singles in their own right. Side Two leans more to the Progressive and Krautrock, culminating in possibly Gary’s best-ever guitar work on the finale, Saucer Noise. His astonishingly intricate soloing sounds like a man possessed by an otherworldly force.

Messages From The Mothership is a focused but ‘Out There’ album which will please Sun Dial fans and surely win them a generation of new followers”…

The lineup of the new album consists of Gary Ramon (vocals, guitars, Hammond organ, Vox Continental), Scorpio (bass, Moog Taurus, percussion), and Cleo Ramon (Mellotron, Moog filters, Jupiter 6). The vinyl edition of “Messages From The Mothership” contains 8 original tracks while the CD version includes a 9^th track as a bonus. The opener is called “Echoes All Around” and by the very first second, place and time are changing/reforming. This is not 2023, this is not TimeMaZine headquarters, the year is 1969 and we’re in a foggy London! This amazing Psych guitar-driven track is shamelessly flirting with Freakbeat, it feels that you’re inside Open Mind’s lone album from that year! Yes! Exactly! That supernatural freaky psych atmosphere is overflooding the place! This kind of unbelievable late 60s British Psych atmos continues on “New Day” too, but this not I have the feeling that I’m inside Velett Foggs’s only album (also from 1969), a Psych rock track that can magnetize the listener in a radius of several kilometers… “Living For Today” is another groove-a-delic freak-psych track soaked into some serious late 60s Psych, and if you want to continue this “late 60s albums” game, then this time it feels like I’m inside John Du Cann’s “The Five Day Week Straw People”, from 1968… On “Burning Bright” the scenery changes rapidly, the atmosphere by now has become more Psychedelic (and less Freakbeat), and there’s a huge Space aura all over the track that gives you the feel of being inside “Ziggy Stardust”, yes the year is changed too, but sooner or later you’re going to (you have to) leave the Ground…  So, here you are then, up in the skies with “Look Up To The Skies”, after successfully passing the skies it seems that you’re into a mystic magical Floydian SPACE atmosphere – a familiar soundscape from Sun Dial’s old days – and continuing the game, and since the 60s are long gone by now, and since I’m definitely into the year 1970, then the ONLY place that I should be is inside Hawkwind’s debut album… Wow! And that was the end of the 1^st side, unbelievable how fast the time has gone by… “Edge Of Light” opens side ‘B’, forget Psych, forget Freakbeat, forget British late 60s too, and welcome to the New Space Age! This is an addictive Space Rocker that flirts with late 70s Hawkwind, becoming psychedelically trippy thanks to various multiple colorful keys, SPACE is open wide for the daring to explore… “Messages From The Mothership” has a mysteriously creep-a-delic Spacey soundscape, a wondrous adventurous track with Psych whispering all over, this is New Age Space-a-Delia at its Best! The vinyl LP album closes with “Saucer Noise”, a Heavy Space Rocker with an astonishing melting mesmerizing Spacey electric guitar sound, becoming Super Heavylicious, then becoming trip-a-delic spacious, emerging a cinematic futuristic feel with a charming unspecified punky psychic attitude! The CD Bonus track is called “Demagnetized”, it is a deeply Spacey-effected track, kind of experimental that acts as the main theme from a futuristic Sci-Fi film, with a trippy wandering guitar all over, you may describe it as Spacey Dream-a-Delica! So, in conclusion, what we have here is another Super Cool SUN DIAL album, with 2 superb different sides, the Psych Earth ‘Grounded’ first side and the Trippy Space-a-Delic second one! Of course, there’s no question here, the result on both sides is definitely GUARANTEED!!! Go grab a copy… TimeLord Michalis

PS All you youngsters out there, do yourself a favor and try to listen to all the aforementioned 60s-related albums and artists, it will change your (musical) life, for sure… 

Tracklist

Links

Listen through SUN DIAL Bandcamp

Get it directly via SULATRON RECORDS Web

Alternatively, grab it through SHINY BEAST Mailorder

Visit SUN DIAL Facebook

Visit GARY RAMON Facebook