Phineas Gage started out in 1997 as the basement project of young Colorado musicians Patrick Porter and Josh Wambeke. Since then they have built a small but dedicated local following, despite being their wide-ranging folk, psych and space rock influences putting them way off in the other direction from the prevailing alt.rock/punk/metal vibe of Denver's underground music scene. They play live from time-to-time, adding members as required, but their true muse is the studio, and the endless fields-of-opportunity that open up within recording spaces.

Phineas Gage's influences range from Pink Floyd and Marvin Gaye through to Galaxie 500, Spiritualized and Spacemen 3 and much more besides, but the sound they make is uniquely theirs. This CD presents tracks recorded on 16-track in 1998 and 1999, and as they say, "this is a consolidation of what we feel was the best material from those hot, cramped, pissed-off and uncomfortable sessions". When we heard the tapes we realised that a special atmosphere and feel had been created, unlike much we had heard before. There didn't seem any other option but to release it, despite the occasional engineering glitch, which didn't seem to matter given the strength of the predominantly song-based material.

The opening track "Insect Stars" captures their sound very well, a iridescent helium balloon of sound, floating in a clear blue mountain sky; perfectly harmonised vocals soaring over the flowing tides of multi-layered semi-acoustic guitar and keyboard bliss. And all of this wrapped around a structure and melody sensibility that many would kill to tap into. The cloud-surfing continues into the next track, "Kite" where the lads pull out their most gravity-defying folk-psych moves. The stone-hypnotic cadences of "Ditch Bottles" will pour out of your speakers like purple snow, before things come down to earth via the sulphuric fuzz attack and desperate lyrical content of "Some Cheap Christ", a head-cleaning effect repeated later on the record on the climactic track "Blue Overpass". Elsewhere, we think you'll enjoy spinning the giant planet-scape of sound that is "Was", and the classic loner-folk songsmithery of "The Ballad of g and a". You are cleared for take-off...