Ron Geesin - A Raise of Eyebrows

Ron Geesin is a British composer and musician, covering genres like avant-garde, experimental rock, musique concrete and symphonic rock.

A Raise of Eyebrows - Geesin's first solo studio album of many, produced in 1967.

A review on the album, taken from HeadHeritage;

The liner notes to this album gave a pretty good idea of where Geesin is coming from. “Ron Geesin makes music that is not like any other music. He uses words, sounds, music, electronics and other people, in fact everything that is to hand. Ron Geesin is a new and startling experience. Ron Geesin fits into no existing category or neat pigeon hole. He and his sound creations are of next year not this. Ron Geesin has a loud voice with a Scots accent. Many of Ron Geesin’s compositions are improvised. Most people don’t know what to make of Ron Geesin. Some are bewildered, some excited. Ron Geesin intrigues and involves you.” The cover is great too in a kitschy kind of way, with stock-psychedelic lettering and a photo showing the young Geesin looking like a maths teacher, sitting on a stool in his studio. Nothing mind-blowing, but enough to get you thinking that this album may well contain some interesting sonic tinkering – or if that doesn’t come off, maybe just some bad folk instead, at the other extreme. There’s no bad folk to be found here though, and plenty of off-kilter tinkering, so don’t fear. The reverse features a white-lined drawing on red showing Geesin with microphone in hand, rising genie-like out of his ‘red machine’, a red petrol can he used for jug-blowing (or, as Geesin has put it, “the ancient Black art of jug-blowing”!).

My opinion on the album;

A difficult album to label, I would catagorise this one as experimental. The bizarre sounds, strange speeches resembling a British Captain Beefheart, frequent change in speed and macabre, yet sometimes happier and upbeat, piano pieces, along with chirpy outbursts from other instruments just add to the uniqueness of this album, making it very pleasurable to listen to and hard to forget.

Click album art for link to download.

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