I must confess that I often forget about Perth. I forget there are people out there, making music, living lives and enjoying the sun setting over the ocean. From the east coast, the west seems like some strange foreign land, so far away and divided by an inhospitable stretch of desert. If Magnetic Dimensions is anything to go by, perhaps that isn’t too inaccurate an assessment. This album makes me wonder if in fact Perth is an otherplace of mystics, exotic bazaars and intergalactic travelers. Maybe something has happened out there. Something weird added to the water, or chemicals lingering in the air. At the very least this wild and blissful slice of psychedelia is a reminder that interesting things are happening on the other side of the divide. Titles like Mysterium Sacred Oils, Trepidation of the Spheres and Apeman/Spaceman should fill you in nicely on what to expect.
I imagine this would actually be the perfect soundtrack to crossing the great Australian deserts between the east and west coasts. A perfect soundtrack to a drugged out, hallucinatory journey across an endless dead sea of sand and salt. It’s otherworldly caravan music. Futuristic gypsy music. It’s the sound of slowly and merrily going mad in the outback.
The artwork I was supplied with came strangely enough as a diptych. Two images featuring kaftans, yoga poses, yellow op-art and lo-fi photography. Like the music, it all feels like it was produced in a bedroom in a house on some astral plane. Messy. Folksy. Spacey. Magnetic Dimensions is at times unsettling and at others quite beautiful. Exactly what psychedelia is all about. It’s not an album that stays with you for long once it’s over, but it’s one that sends you off on that journey of oddness and ecstasy once it’s begun.
