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Album Details

• Artist: Red Crayola
• Album: Coconut Hotel
• Label: Drag City
• Year of Release: 1967
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2006-07-25

Another reissue from the great no-longer lost 60's experimental band. Recent work by founding member Mayo Thompson has helped spur the interest. Regarded at the time, if at all, as a minor Psychedelic band, Red Crayola were much more, flirting with free jazz and lo-fi long before it became fashionable. In all there are 44 "songs" on this record, though about 35 of them are short, one to five second bursts of horn phrases. Other longer pieces isolate guitar, piano, and vocal improvs. This is more a collection of ideas than actual songs, but the ideas tinkered with resonate down through the last 40 years of rock and jazz. Red Crayola anticipated Trout Mask Replica and The Fringe. For some, this will be important merely as a curiosity, one of the earliest attempts at FREE. For others, it is Free in ways that still open new doors to the possibility of sound. Thompson continues to explore those doors, making him both a hero to The Wire and to bands like Mogwai, Boister, and The Bad Seeds.

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