Customer Reviews

Random Thoughts

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Shulman's Random Thoughts is a collection of 9 of the most gracefully trippy tracks I've ever heard. I feel all fans of deep psychedelic music will enjoy listening to them tremendously - to Pink Floyd, Carbon Based Lifeforms and Shpongle fans, to many listeners of Trance, Techno, FullOn, Dark-Psy who like downtempo stuff, and for the chillout or acid jazz crowd who are looking for something a little harder than your average lounge or psy-ambient disc. This album to me both epitomizes and transcends Goa psychedelia, using and casually destroying the form of ambient chillout to simply mindblast the listener.

This is a deep album and hence not suited to all occasions and seasons. It occupies a psychedelic world where the sky is pulsing purple and orange like a rich Goa sunset, some tracks occasionally occupying a rich blue sonic nighttime, and some tracks in a different universe altogether. The album serves handily as an introduction to or comedown from any trip or mental journey. It suits small groups and solo listening, it's definitely an intimate experience. The closer you listen the better it gets. "Random Thoughts" relies heavily on psy sounds - churning chugging melodies, lilting flutes, floating but rich voices (male, female, tribal, indian, middle eastern, electronic) mostly singing, arrays of chirps flutters and beeps tuning in and out, zig-zagging and yawning synths, string instruments and samples, not to mention a stirring electronic sitar and electronic organ. The trick in this album is Shulman's welding a large number of sounds, many very distinctive, into a tightly threaded strand of sound that can be picked apart most pleasingly by an attentive listener. His juxtapositions are as striking as they are complementary. Additionally all the transitions and recurring themes within each track are simply masterful. The "Random Thoughts" are not very ambient at all - most are a very dark and throbbing downtempo, paced patiently like classical pieces of music often are. The heavy use of Indian classical and Western classical motifs (albeit sometimes heavily distorted and warped) is particularly pleasing. Although the tracks are arranged in a way that makes the album a great continuous listen, they do not flow continuously and are not mixed together. Shulman's next album after this one, Endless Rhythms of the Beatless Heart is a knockout in continous play and pan-album themes, but track for track this album stands alone. And not just compared to his work ... I personally put Shulman on a pedestal by himself when it comes to electronic music composition. He's masterful in the same way that Tom Waits is.

I like each track so much that I describe them individually. No 30 second sample can do any one of these mini-symphonies justice.

1) OMG (11:10) - starts with a blaring conch calling the listener to attention. A dark synth line meets with a swooping one. A man sampled and stretched repeatedly issues a wake up call. He must have sounded the conch and summoned Nature, somehow approximated by a variety of swooping synth sounds. Minutes 3-5 are spent transitioning over to a pretty cool and spacey downtempo place, and finally all sounds merge gracefully into an orchestral wave that feels like a forest rousing to dawn or settling in at dusk. It's dark but full of lively activity here under the purple and orange sky.

2) Midnight Bloom (6:35) - Bluetech and Shulman team up on this one. It's a war of low sounds and downtempo tribal beats that tells the story of a blue flower blooming at midnight.

3) Zero Degrees (7:35) - Starts out as full on glitch, gets glitchier and glitchier, when a beautiful lilting flute dances with a digital snakecharmer's flute, and electronic sitars take you into the main riff, and gracefully a cool blue and pale orange wave breaks. It feels a bit too warm to be "Zero Degrees", but at the end breaks down to a minimal beat. Delicious. Classical in pace.

4) Ra He'ya (9:32) - Sub6 feat Michele Adamson - this is the Shulman remix. There is a video of this on Youtube - please watch it. Watch a psy band perform with the ultimate beatmaker. A dark psy hymn. It takes 4 minutes to start and another 4 to peak, and frankly the journey is indescribable. A glitch pagan hymn is the only way I can describe it.

5) Spaced (7:58) - Entheogenic track remixed. Entheogenic make some great trippy psy-bient sounds, and although they fall far closer to typical Goa chillout - a genre they pioneered - they are undoubtedly masters of a great and very psychedelic chillout and mushroom sound. Shulman comes and takes their fun track "Spaced" and glitches it out into space. At the end he drops one of my favorite synth organ keyboard lines ever. It serves to erase the rest of the track, sounds like he is cleaning dirt out from a window looking out onto a massive psychedelic sky. I imagine a scene like Doc Manhattan's on Mars. Sick.

6) Ya Bouy (7:06) - Omar Faruk Tekibilek and Steve Shahan (Shulman Remix). I describe this one as Shulman recreating the Spaced effect on his own terms. A Middle Eastern flute track, a lot more pace variation and more distinctive beat changes. I lean towards Spaced as the better track, but this one has rhythm that is much more articulate and shows greater sonic artistry.

7) Look Honey It's the Vitties!!! (7:40) - my all time Shulman #1 track - This one is transcendent. It's a Goa acid jazz masterpiece. This is the spirit of bebop and acid jazz mixed in electronic form with a chillout cherry on top! Spyro Gyra dreamed of ever being this tuneful! Jimmy Smith was a better organist but something about Shulman's playing gets me as good - maybe it's the gentle warbling and distortion? And the sax line is sweet too. The ripping effects are also applied to an already very psychedelic drum machine, making this a head spinner. I think this track closes perfectly - fading into a warbling electronic whistle.

8) I Dive (8:42). Shulman feat Lee Triffon. The only song with some English lyrics. A song about diving into love. A nice rich and tuneful vocal that has just a minute touch of cheesiness (like a sprinkling of salt) over the now expected insanely sophisticated synth lines, drum beats and electronic instrumentation. The first track on the album that distinctly feels like it's "coming down" rather than "going up".

9) Staring at the Abyss (6:21) - Goa synth frogs and bells chime in the intro to this last, weakest and shortest track of the album. Still a beautiful and hectic way to come down from all those random thoughts. The chimes fade our into gentle comedown breaks, which come in waves. At around the 4 minute mark, the frogs make a brief reappearance scale up and then transform into a rain of bleeps and blurps a crashing digital cascade that battles and then loses out to gentle flute as both come down - one crashing digitally and the other organically. I think of purple light on a lotus pond where it's raining shiny golden confetti.