FRANKIE – Strange Tales (2025, LP Soundflat Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Soundflat Records

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Black Vinyl, Gatefold, 300 copies

Release Date: 14 Feb 2025

Frankie “Fuzz” Lamberts is a Dutch artist/musician. German label Soundflat Records introduces his debut LP album “Strange Tales”. Frankie is also a member of 69 Charger, a Dutch punk-rock band formed way back in 1999 in Eindhoven, and he is also a member of the short-lived pop-rock band The Colour Collection, a band with members of Mooon and Fleur. Frankie is also responsible for the photography (pictures) of the last 3 (2024) releases of the band Fleur. Before his debut LP album, Frankie released a couple of 7-inch vinyl singles, both through Soundflat Records, the self-titled “Frankie” in February 2023, and “Panic Attack” in October 2023. Let’s have a look at the label’s press release:

“Strange Tales, is the debut album of Dutch songwriter Frankie Lamberts. This young and talented lad writes double-edged songs, like a head in the clouds and roots from your feet. Written like a dream but grounded in reality. His first two releases, the 7″s ‘Als Sneeuw Voor De Zon’ and ‘Panic Attack’ were universally praised, with Shindig! Magazine (UK) calling it “a wonderful slab of Dutch delight.” But Frankie has many more stories to tell and those stories can be heard on this album filled with bizarre and touching fairytales about animated flowers, sinister machines, queer animals, love and fear. Metaphors that bring you up to the clouds and might let you look down at these modern times in a different way. If you dig the psychedelic baroque pop of Boudewijn de Groot, Syd Barrett, Broadcast, and Jacco Gardner, the folk of Nick Drake, and the fuzzy garage of The Music Machine, you’re in for a treat! Recorded and produced by Arjan Spies at Studio Teepdek, the album comes in a gatefold cover”…

“Strange Tales” contains 13 beautiful baroque PopSike little nuggets, and it kicks off with a 90-second intro called “Lonesome Prince”, a deeply effected Psych underwatered Folkie track. “Wingsn Gills” that follows is another short track (2:03), a cool, acoustic, rhythmical, poppy & folkie kind of fairytale. “Als Sneeuw Voor De Zon” is a rather eerie, beautifully distorted popsike experiment, while “Black Rose” is a Psych ballad that flirts with Baroque, Pop, and Folk; there’s an adventurous marching drum beat that all of a sudden transforms into a Folkie elegy, that cool! The magnificent “Fossilized” blew my mind! It starts gradually, acting as a long-lost Tim Buckley song, soon to be totally transformed into a Mind-Bending PSYCHEDELIC anthem, melting British & Dutch Psychedelia of the late 60s under a purple marmalade sky where everything is shimmering in the twilight! An amazingly beautiful song! “Planet Babylon” is a track where late 60s Beatles meet with early 70s Syd Barrett under a tremendous Psych-Baroque glorious soundscape! The album closes with the dreamy “Rat King”, one minute and fifty-four seconds of hallucinogenically baroque-popsike greatness! Side “B” opens with “Strange Machine”, a groovylicious kind of Psych-marching tune that I can describe as a Country & Western song on Acid! How cool is that? “War Machine” is a rhythmic groove-a-delic track deeply influenced by the late 60s Psych Freakbeat scene, becoming psychedelically Fuzzy at times! “Time” is another fantastic piece of old-school Psychedelia, blended with Dutch R n’ B (Outsiders, Q65) and electronic Psychedelia (Silver Apples), a bizarre but so Groovylicious track! “Panic Attack Breathe” is psychedelic, heavylicious, and theatrical, with an astounding late 60s Freakbeat atmosphere, becoming Dark, with hallucinatory vocals, and an experimental trippy passage, a Trip-a-delic song! “Changes Around You” is another psychedelically strange track, after a mind-bending intro, the track directly refers to some kind of a 60s futuristic TV theme (imagine the Stranger Things theme in the 60s), soon to be transformed into a lysergically mellow mind-bending electro-effected Psychedelic Theme with balladesque vocals and a nostalgic feel, strange indeed! The last one is called “Crooked Flower”, a cool Folkie tune that flirts with late 60s sunshine psychedelic bubble Pop… In conclusion, “Strange Tales” is a fine Neo-Psychedelic album. An album, destined to be cult in a few years. One of these “new” albums that can fool AI… You see, in recent days, many “60s” albums have been created by AI, FOOLING people that are about long-lost recordings by unknown bands… So, got it? “Strange Tales” could easily have been recorded back in the day…So, AI, eat my dust… RECOMMENDED! TimeLord Michalis  

Tracklist

Links

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