A.R. & Machines - Die Grune Reise

This album, in fact, offers a good example of the sense in which Mint, in his listening, seems to have sought the subversion of expectations. The music here is in many aspects, quite straightforward rock 'n roll. Some of the guitar riffs will remind the listener immediately of other, better known songs. The first track, "Globus", made me think of that "Spirit in the Sky" song, often heard on classic rock radio.

It doesn't take long, though, for subversion to enter the picture. Traditional rock structures are upended and in some instances dissolve into incredibly strange sound manipulations: squeals of feedback, multiple layers of screaming and laughter, electronic bleeps and bloops, and so on.

There is, too, a distinct Eastern tinge to much of this album. Web research shows that A.R. stands for Achim Reichel, apparently a key figure in what has been labeled (after the fact, of course) as Kraut Rock, a movement among German rock musicians of the late '60s and early '70s. That era's interest in non-Western spiritual traditions seems to have manifested itself here in droning textures reminiscent of the raga. Personally, I have never been much interested in the kind of reverse colonization evident in, say, George Harrison's sitar fixation. There is too much hand-wringing and apology in it for sincerity to persist untainted. But seen from what I increasingly think of as the Lewis Mint perspective, the integration of foreign sounds into a traditionally rock 'n roll context would make for surprising listening indeed.