Psychfan's Trip O' Th' Week™ Dept. - Two More From Tom

Tom Wilson [Psychfan writes - Ed.] apparently had a lot of clout in his role as a staff producer at MGM records in 1968. When he wasn't producing The Velvet Underground or Eric Burdon he was creating odd projects like this one, the double-album debut by Harumi.

The first disc sounds like an odd sort of orch-psych interspersed with slightly more conventional psych. The second disc is two sidelong pieces of total freak out, which oddly enough echoes the structure of the unconventional format of The Mothers of Invention debut Freak Out.

Wilson must have had some interesting conversations with MGM's label management about his penchant for debut doubles by weird and uncommercial acts and that may have had something to do with his side career at the time. He had started his own production company, called Rasputin, and was producing more unknown psychedelic bands for other labels.

Today's second album is by one of the best of those bands, a Boston based group called The Ill Wind. They had a female lead singer and two good male singers as well, leading to the inevitable Jefferson Airplane comparisons. Their music also had elements of folk rock and psych, making some of those Airplane references seem justified.

Label mismanagment and lack of support led to the usual dead end and the band never recorded another LP. This version has an additional disc of demos that are largely additional material for proposed future recordings.