Edible Woman - Everywhere At Once (Sleeping Star)

And so, for the second time since Christmas, this reviewer finds himself gladly sinking his teeth into an album of pure Italian psychedelia the likes of which is rarely found on our small island. However, unlike Slumberwood’s floaty, ‘Umma Gumma’ style of progressive rock that was heard on Yawling Night Songs earlier this year, Edible Woman seem to pack far more of a punch than their current contemporaries and bring a lot of different and perhaps more down to earth qualities to their sound.
Released on the Sleeping Star label, Everywhere at Once actually seems to take more from an earlier sort of experimentalism. With deranged organ lines tightly fitting in on tracks like ‘The Shadows of Doubt’, this album often gives a sound with large influences from the late-sixties sounds of people like Arthur Brown, making this album ideal for lovers of the Hammond groove.
In fact, it’s the use of the electric organ that adds the urgency needed in the track ‘A Small Space Odyssey’. ‘Odyssey’ is a stand out track that leaps out of the speakers and catches you in the middle of a war between the separate instruments and finishes up with an acoustic guitar line that could well have been ripped from a medieval court dance. For the rest of the album this war never really lets up – some instruments have been allowed to rest for short periods of time but they never fail to rear their heads in time for the next battle. For example, the hectic intro to ‘To My Brother’ with the organ melody trying to gain height to escape the incessant drums but inevitably falling again and the saxophone sounding lost and alone for a short time before being devoured by the other instruments.
It’s certainly true that Everywhere at Once’ creates a heavier atmosphere than a lot of progressive bands and with electronic blips, an organ that is as unhinged as it is organised and distortion abound, Edible Woman have created an album of pure unfiltered insanity. It’s the sort of music that you can imagine a fabulously mad Joker laughing along to as he clicks his fingers out of time. It’s the sort of music that, along with Slumberwood and others, makes Italy a huge player in the psychedelic scene and proves they’re still a country to watch.