Skullflower – “IIIrd Gatekeeper”

my relationship with this album over the years has been somewhat on-again/off-again… back in the early-90s when I discovered Zeni Geva, I went through a phase of getting my hands on anything I could that purported to sound even remotely like them… which included this album. loved it at the time. interests evolved and/or changed over the years and then, a few years back I found myself wanting to revisit it, so I tracked down a used… or was it “new-old stock”? – copy. for some reason it didn’t grab me the way it used to… might have something to do with the fact that I used to listen to it a lot while I was high, but I digress… anyway, Jake recently made a passing comparison to it in his recent post of Ramleh’s “Blowhole” LP (which also included Chrome’s excellent “3rd from the Sun” LP, btw) and I was prompted to revisit it yet again. sat down with it a good handful of times this past weekend and realized how great it actually is. in fact, I’d now go so far as to say that Bower & co. – despite the man’s prolific output in numerous projects over the years since – maybe aren’t properly recognized as ancestors of today’s also-prolific mass of doom/drone bands/artists. T’would appear that Crucial Blast Records are aiming to rectify this however, as they’ve recently released a re-mastered re-issue of this masterpiece, with expanded contents and a new package design. hell, they’ve even made t-shirts to go with it (scroll down a bit). what I present here is a rip of the original CD (i.e. not remastered) and with no artwork, so check it out to see if you like it and then head over there for the newer “deluxe” version. while you’re at it, check out some of the other great artists on the label like Trees, Wildildlife, The Goslings, Totimoshi, Monarch! and others.