Ozric Tentacles - Pungent Effulgent (2020 Ed Wynne Remaster) (1989/2020)

Pungent Effulgent, the Ozric’s first ‘official’ album in 1989, after self-releasing material on cassettes, is the first produced to label standards and retains their explorative style based on improvisations whilst performing live.

One of the most influential bands to emerge from the UK’s festival scene, the Ozrics layer ambient and ethereal landscapes with freeform dub trips, incred- ible rave grooves and psychedelic progressive rock. It’s an open exploration of music and the soul. For over 30 years, the Ozrics have experienced the vicissitudes of the rock and roll life. The band has flourished through several line-up changes, spawned sev- eral side projects, created their own record label, scored a hit record and sold over a million albums world-wide. And yet, the basic motivation behind the band’s existence has never wavered.

Their signature blend of hippy aesthetics and raver electronics with spiraling guitars, textured waves of keyboard and midi samplers, and super-groovy bass and drum rhythms connects fans of progressive rock, psychedelia and DJ cu ture. Pungent Effulgent is released on heavyweight audiophile vinyl. The band’s early influences from peers such as Hawkwind, Gong and Pink Floyd are evident in this transformative release.

AllMusic Review by Steven McDonald
Listening to the Ozrics can result in the feeling of one's consciousness going into a cosmically vast spin-dizzy state with no chemical or visual stimulation required to generate the effect. That shift of consciousness is certainly an immediate side-effect of this release, caused by the painless move between pyrotechnic instrumental workouts, drifting musical structures (such as "Phalarn Dawn") where languid dancing with lighted incense sticks seems called for, and the off-kilter space-reggae-rock-dub that forms the flow of "The Domes of G'Bal." As always, the band comfortably evades pigeonholes by dint of the fact that what begins at the first note is delightfully unlike that which ends with the last note. Remarkably, it all makes sense and there is never a sense of getting lost in the darkness.