Pandemonica

A trilogy of LPs packed in non-gloss black cardboard covers depicting various satanic or occult drawings probably lifted from writings by Alistair Crowley or Anton La Vey, and with song titles like "Thanatos", "Therion" and "Dying to Live" anyone could easily be tricked into believing that this is the work of yet another daft church-burning bunch of Norwegian black metal madmen. Well, maybe not, but there certainly is a certain Celtic Frost like feel to the whole thing. "I was very much into stuff like Crowley and shit like that back then. I've always read a lot about mythology, primitive religions and even UFO's. All kinds of crap like that. The drugs didn't make it better I'm afraid. Looking back, I guess I was trying to find myself musically and lyrically. But it IS a great dark universe in there. Just please don't take it too seriously". Lorenzo Woodrose had this amazing solo project going while being the drummer for On Trial - years before the unprepared Danish garage rock scene caught the wiff of the mighty Baby Woodrose - this is presumably the first recordings show casing his incredible voice, here more Ozzy and Roky tuned than nowadays, and the very catchy 4-chord riffs that almost everybody grooves to these days. Pandemonica however has nothing to do with Baby Woodrose's post-13th Floor Elevators pseudo-psychedelic rock music. This is dark and eerie with echoed voices, clinging guitars, under scored by drones and feedback and backed by simple percussion and occasional keyboards. "I bought a Fostex X-30 4track tape recorder in 1993 and started playing around with it. I still write most of my songs on this machine. It's amazing that it still works actually. The material on the Pandemonica records was all recorded between '93 and '96 in my bedroom. I had 2 guitars, a microphone, some pedals and the tape machine. I filled more than thirty 90minute tapes in that period. Mostly during the night hours". Not unlike the solo outings of fellow American psyche rocker Wayne Rogers or British hippie icon Bevis Frond this is personal stuff, but unlike most of their work Pandemonica never loses its pop sensibility and lack of distance. This is probably why this is such a unique body of work "Usually I would write the songs as I went along. I'd start out with an acoustic 12-string guitar playing some chords for 5 minutes, and then building on top of that. Often I bounced down the tracks several times. This is why some of it sounds very muddy. I usually didn't write the lyric before I had to record vocals in the end when there were no more tracks to bounce. But actually sometimes I even bounced the vocals. Instruments were very cheap, crude crap gear. A Levin 12string, a Gibson SG copy, an old piano, cheap microphone, cheap headset, guitar pedals were used for effects. Often I recorded stuff like the TV, a bit from a sound effect record or the rain thundering on the roof and mix it in. When I made the mix tapes I just went straight from the Fostex, through a delay machine into the tape recorder". After years of tape circulation the recordings finally saw their way to be pressed on vinyl as three full-length vinyl records! One of the best decisions made in modern Danish rock history. "Back then I made mix tapes of some of my stuff and gave them to some of my friends. Soon there was a whole little tape circulation club going on. All mix tapes was unique, no two tapes were the same. They had different handmade artwork, different songs and always different band names and titles. One would be called "Beast: The Awakening" - another one was "Dream Weaver: Master of One". I don't know exactly how many tapes were made - maybe 10 or 15 different tapes. Copied God knows how many times? I guess maybe 7 or 8 persons had copies of them back then. Anyway, some of my old friends started Orpheus Records and started asking me if I wanted to release some of it on their label, so I thought about it and thought why not? Another old friend of mine has Helicopter Records, so me and Anders went in a studio and mixed 20 songs I think - very quickly. It was fun to pick the best stuff - we had to listen through all of these old tapes, and we thought why not make it a trilogy?" Why not indeed? 500 copies were made of each record and most of the stuff included was edited versions from the tapes. "Well, you have to understand that sometimes on the original master tapes a song would go on for maybe 25 minutes. So when we mixed the tracks sometimes we had to edit a little bit to fit it in - for example "Family Tree" on Volume One was actually an 18minute epic with an intro and a very long spaced out guitar solo in the end that wasn't really very interesting, so we decided to "chop" it off so to speak. The album version lasting around 7minutes I think. This was the kind of stuff I did back then - long spacey tracks. "Heaven's Gate" was one of those very ambitious experiments - Probably the most successful one". Pandemonica will not appeal to any ole punk rock hipster and I'm sure most self-respecting Zeke fans (a contradiction in terms if you ask me) will no doubt be running away screaming about two and a half minute into the first volume. It kicks off with a sharp echoed piano that could've been a Terry Reilly composition had it gone on for 30 minutes and ended with layers pianos playing the same 3-chords over and over again. Followed by a couple of more approachable guitar, drone and vocals tracks. "Family Tree" sounds like a Michael Morley/Gate/Dead C instrumental with Lorenzo's vocals on top. Washes of guitars that slowly finds a structure only to sink back into full-blown impro guitar drone. The opening track on the flipside features some fine psyche pop tendencies that almost reminiscent of a fuzzed out lo-fi version of early T. Rex. Following a short intermezzo of spooky crackling sounds and various other guitar tricks the third track "Lost in the Garden" is kick started by primitive drum box (I think) rhythm, then drifts into a catchy piece of vocal melody coupled with layers of backward guitar noodling and a strange echoed sampling at the end that sounds suspiciously like Winston Churchill! Last track "Morning Dew" is perfect pop bliss and this is one of several songs here that reveals so much of the style now perfected and populized with Baby Woodrose. Distorted guitar on top, acoustic guitar to drive the melody and an excellent Alrune Rod inspired vocal track (in English though) ending out in a layers of hysterical laughter taken right out of the Sabs "Am I Going Insane?" Fantastic! The two other volumes follow this pattern nicely with sparks of dark and listenable hippie ballads, separated by weird soundscapes of guitar drone and effects. The eight and a half minute long very rock inspired "Neonheaded Demon" made up by primitive drums, repeated rock riffs and layers of zonked out guitar solos recalling the days of Spacemen 3. Just pick up the "Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs to" LP that includes some pre-album recordings with the spacemen. I don't know if Lorenzo ever considered that particular band a source of inspiration but I'm sure he likes the album title. All the way through the three albums it builds up perfectly to the final track "Heaven's Gate". Lasting just over 20 minutes it takes up the entire side 2 of the third volume (even numbered with 777 - the number of Jesus/Man) and it's a stunning piece of drug fuelled half ambient, half industrial guitar layers and spooky vocals. The availability of the records might be quite limited. Check with Orpheus Records or the man himself because it seems this is one-shot project. "I don't wanna reprint it. No, never. In fact, there is a pirated CD version out there already! A guy gave me a copy he had made for a friend and he was afraid I was gonna get angry about it, but I was just really proud of it - that's all within the original concept (…) There still are some unreleased tracks that might be interesting for some people, but I think I'll let Pandemonica be just the three volumes. If I release anymore of that old stuff, I think I'll call it something else - that would be in the spirit of the original concept too".To cover all aspects of this spooky and dark side of mister L. Woodrose he was also involved in a small studio project that turned into the Mekombina 12" released by Pan Records simultaneously with the Pandemonica Trilogy and very much the same in style and concept with the title track taking up all of side 1 and the two songs Demons Drive and Bonehead on the flip. It's solid stuff for any pot smoking psyche fan. "The Mekombina 12" was recorded during the same period, but in a professional studio after hours. Me and my trusty sidekick Anders, who plays bass in Baby Woodrose and who has been involved in all of the records I've released - somehow got hold of a key, an alarm code and a permission to use this studio, so we spent a handful of nights zonked out of our minds on drugs recording some really weird sounds. We constructed a "chain" - a signal source running through a number of effects, through a cabinet, picked up by a microphone going through another bunch of effects and down on 2" tape. The special thing about this one was that there was a plugged guitar standing in front of the speaker, causing the strings to vibrate, making a drone like sound. Those two songs were based on that sound. At one point I remember lying on the couch with headphones on while Anders was mixing a track, and I was actually so wired I thought that it was myself mixing it by telepathy!" And who said that drugs were bad for you? Wow! There is no band name on the record and there were only 200 copies printed so this will probably go down as one of the most obscure Danish releases. A damn shame because it's easily as good as anything the Brits or the Americanas have produced of this sort. Probably not for the core reader of Low Cut but those of you who find the world of music bigger than just rock'n'roll should check this out.By Simon N, Lowcut Magazine.Pandemonica I LP (Helicopter Records, HR11, 2001) Pandemonica II (Orpheus Records, ORPH002, 2001) Pandemonica III (Pan Records, 777, 2002) Mekombina 12" EP (Pan Records, 669, 2002)