Album: Black Cab <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Altamont Diary, PHARMACY

In December 1969, a few months after the Woodstock Festival celebrated the cultural hegemony of the hippie dream, the killing of a punter by Hell's Angels at the Stones' free concert at Altamont Speedway in effect killed that dream stone dead, ushering in the selfish Seventies. This pivotal event is "celebrated" by the Australian duo Black Cab on this concept album, whose blend of mid-tempo guitar drones, sitar, wah-wah, electronic washes, maracas, half-heard conversations, announcements and windswept ambiences resembles Primal Scream in the throes of some dark psychedelic seizure. Apart from a cover of "New Speedway Boogie", the song that The Grateful Dead wrote about the event, the 10 tracks are cyclical grooves devised by the singer/producer Andrew Coates and guitarist James Lee, in which slogan soundbites such as "It's the Summer of Love" and "I can hear the sound of people getting down" are repeated, mantra-like, against densely layered backdrops, with snatches of speech ("...beating up musicians", "...somebody's hurt!") occasionally discernible through the sonic haze.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Summer of Love', 'It's OK', 'Angels Arrive'