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Reviewed by Bing Turkby

The Hopkinsville Goblins: Posts From Planet Earth

Reviewed by Bing Turkby

The Hopkinsville Goblins: Posts From Planet Earth

An interplanetary collaboration, using “clapped out instruments”, recorded on old tape decks and outdated software, this extremely quirky album aims to give you value for money by cramming 17 tracks on the disc. Will you make it through to the end? That will depend on whether you can put up with a slightly ramshackle approach, in order to glean the payoff of unfettered creativity. Or perhaps it will depend on whether you think the Hopkinsville Goblins were actually just Great Horned Owls or not. Let’s suspend our disbelief for a minute and wander through the musical ramblings channeled by Alvis Impulsive, the aliens’ ‘agent on Earth’ shall we? Some of the songs are relatively straightforward pop/rock jams, others have all sorts of sound effects, samples and extraneous instruments interjected at certain moments which are presumably intended to take your subconscious on a trip to outer space. Definitely it is hard to tell what is going on a lot of the time, but nevertheless, the sound of a hard-driven tape deck is sonically pleasant to musos of a certain age. If you just relax and let the songs wash over you, you will discover a proto-Hendrixean jam universe taking up residence in your ears, particularly in the wah-inflected Dot On The Horizon. The many interludes and ambient passages make it feel like a Pink Floyd album done on a $20 budget. Fun!