Sam Rosenthal & Projekt Artists: Tim, where are you now? (CD)

Reviews

1. 

   reviews editor – February 1, 2021

   From Ambient Music Guide

   Best Albums of 2020

   This year marked the centenary of the birth of LSD and DMT guru Timothy Leary (1920-1996). This tribute album celebrates his chemically-fueled flights into expanded consciousness and it’s a multi-coloured wonder, focused on spacey electronic music-of-the-spheres with Eastern drone influences and retro sounds like the Moog and Mellotron. Sam Rosenthal’s long-running alt music label Projekt Records certainly has all the connections to make a tribute like this work; old-school ambient artists like Steve Roach, Erik Wollo, Mark Seelig and Forrest Fang all make contributions alongside Sam himself. There are also guests like film director Alex Cox and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo who can be heard reading short Leary-penned accounts of memorable trips. This is my kind of Leary tribute; not raucous noise bands or crashing Krautrock but a proper ambient trip, contemplative and deep.

2. 

   padmin – January 7, 2021

   From Ambient Blog

   Sam Rosenthal is the founder of the Projekt Records label. He started the label in 1983 as a way to release his own music (such as the Black Tapes For A Blue Girl) but it became a home for many experimental/electronic artists: Discogs mentions no less than 664 releases since the start of the label. So the Projekt Artists here refers to Rosenthal‘s large network of artists he built over many years.

   Tim, Where Are You Now is a massive project indeed, a ‘trip’ including many familiar artists guiding Sam Rosenthal through this “electronic space music/art-rock celebration” celebrating the 100th birthday of Timothy Leary, the American psychologist, and writer known for his strong advocacy of the use of psychedelic drugs – especially LSD.

   The influence of Timothy Leary on the 60s generation (and the generation that came after) cannot be overstated. Who does not remember quotes like “turn on, tune in, drop out”, or “think for yourself, and question authority” (which, by the way, is nót the same as believing every conspiracy theory you read on Facebook). As expected, his ideas and theories were not unanimously shared; they were quite “far out”. He was arrested so often that he saw the inside of 36 prisons worldwide, and Richard Nixon once called him “the most dangerous man in America”. Often disputable, perhaps, but also an endless source of inspiration for anyone who managed to “think for themselves” and outside boxes.

   A musical tribute to an icon like this can be nothing less than a mind-altering psychedelic trip. And, with his friends (and the consent of the official Leary estate) Rosenthal managed to create a fitting tribute. In its 98 minutes, the 21 tracks (13 on CD; plus 8 bonus tracks in the download) seem to explore every corner of the universe – or at least those of Timothy Leary’s universe. They can range from floating ambient soundscapes (of course called Trips), some of them with spoken word fragments with texts from Tim’s first LSD and DMT experiments, to psychedelic rock sequences (as in Reality Tunnel). But it also touches contemporary classical string music (Frail Filaments Of Light). All of this does not mean the result sounds incoherent – on the contrary. It simply fits the tribute to commemorate Tim Leary’s legacy. It only takes an open listener’s mind to go with the flow.

   There are many familiar names contributing to this project, such as Jarguna, Henrik Meierkord, Erik Wøllo, Mark Seelig, Steve Roach, Forrest Fang, Byron Metcalf, Lee Ranaldo, Alex Cox. As many contributors like this could have easily resulted in incomprehensible chaos – but not in the experienced hands of Sam Rosenthal.

   As said, there’s a CD-version available, which comes with a download including the bonus tracks. But, in the spirit of the 60s, the digital release is available as a name-your-price download (!). Available for (almost) free, but remember: due to payment fees involved, everything above $3 provides a small royalty to the artist).

   There’s hardly any reason not to take this trip and enjoy it. Simply “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream“.

3. 

   padmin – December 1, 2020

   From Exposé

   The album at hand is a tribute to Timothy Leary on what would have been his 100th birthday. A little background: In 1950, Leary earned his doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. After relocating to Italy with his two children for a period, in 1959 he started as a lecturer in clinical psychology at Harvard University and oversaw Harvard’s psilocybin project, the goal of the project being to analyze the effects of psychedelic drugs on human subjects (at a time when psilocybin and LSD were still legal). Leary and one of his associates were fired in 1963 after either giving psychedelics to undergraduate students, which went against policy, or missing too many scheduled lectures. For the next five years Leary and his associates continued their experiments via private funding. During that time word of Leary’s research hit the national press and by early 1966 much of America’s youth (and throughout the world, in fact) were experimenting with LSD, which was cheap and easy to produce. By the end of 1968 LSD became a controlled substance (illegal) and Leary was arrested numerous times for various drug offenses, in and out of prison, and in various other countries dodging the law. Leary will forever be remembered as the premier advocate of LSD and other psychedelic drugs in the early 60s, and remains a hero to many who came of age during that period. Leary died in 1996.

   Tim, Where Are You Now? presents a collection of music produced by Projekt label head Sam Rosenthal collaborating with various artists from the label, including Forrest Fang, Steve Roach, Erik Wøllo, Mark Seelig, Jarguna, Mike Van Portfleet, Henrik Meierkord, Ryan Lum, Nathan Youngblood, theAdelaidean, and others. Several of the tracks (four to be exact) have superimposed on them Timothy Leary’s trip narrations, narrated by folks like Lee Renaldo, Reggie Watts, Alex Cox, Amber Case, and others. There are four bonus versions with alternate narrators included with the download version, plus four purely instrumental versions for folks like me who don’t want their music marred by narration. Simple reprogramming of the track order can get you whatever you want. Those extended floating ambient music sequences that occupy the tracks between the narrations (and comprise the bulk of what’s on the album) are what truly make the journey here wonderful, in fact as excellent as any of the other releases by the artists involved. A quick reference to the booklet notes will let the listener know who wrote which of the thirteen main pieces and who performed on them. It might also serve as a good introduction to this type of floating ambient music in general, a style that didn’t exist back in the early 60s when Leary was advocating the use of psychedelics (synthesizers had barely been invented at that time and were silly sounding, primitive monophonic beasts), but somehow the music herein fits the concept even better than anything did at the time. Take the trip for yourself at the Bandcamp link below. -Peter Thelen