Nick Riff - Freak Element
Cat No: DELEC CD/LP 001
Release Date: 1st June 1992
[Track Listing]
[Lyrics]
[Credits] [Reviews]
[Nick Riff Home Page]
- Strange Disposition - 4:56 (N. Riff) - lyric
- Forbidden Love - 3:57 (N. Riff) - lyric
- The Other Ones - 4:44 (N. Riff) - lyric
- Big Fairy Tale - 4:28 (N. Riff) - lyric
- Lose My Mind - 3:05 (N. Riff) - lyric
- Fly Away - 2:27 (N. Riff) - lyric
- Electric Eye God - 4:21 (N. Riff)
- Vagabond Unknown - 6:09 (N. Riff) - lyric
- Freak Element - 3:36 (N. Riff) - lyric
Strange Disposition
I've got a strange disposition
They have yet to define
When the stories over
The only thing that's mine
Is this strange disposition
With its show and tell
My psycho-active compass
Keeps me feeling well.
You stay in your world
That's just fine
But don't blame me
I'm falling out of mine.
Sometimes I feel like a puppet
And a clown holds the strings
In the world where it happens
I've known too many things
I've got this strange disposition
That's taken over me
My thoughts shatter into pieces
Now I've found the key.
Forbidden Love
I woke up again and I don't know where I am
I don't know how it started or where it's gonna end
You're taking me to the brink of extinction
I'm in overdrive and in need of your recognition.
You're givin' me forbidden love
Headin' for that sugar rush
The kind of love I can visualise
The kind that's fatal to the touch.
You got a special look like the secrets of the moon
Your telepathic pillow sends images to my room
Love is transcendental at your fingertips
Talk to me baby every time you move your hips.
Yeah-yeah.
The Other Ones
Calling all the other ones
The ones who dwell inside the mind
With knowledge like an embryo
Floating on the sea of time.
Persuaded by a life of dreams
A sign that what we seek is real
One eye open two eyes closed
No turning back it's been revealed
Calling all the other ones
Who left their monuments of stone
So modern man could understand
So they could find their way back home.
Big Fairy Tale
Once upon a time they say
There were always happy endings
With no sorrow and no pain
That's the message they were sending.
You must do the things we say
You must follow our preceptions
I wonder what form they expect
The newest style the next direction.
It's just a big fairy tale
Some would censor everything
In the name of their religion
Destroy the free mind of the youth
Unleashing government suppression.
It's just a big fairy tale.
Lose My Mind
I want to tell you bout a funky girl I know
She makes the street boys melt no matter where she go
To hear her talkin just like music from her mouth
She so cool makes the birds fly south.
I'm about to lose my mind
She lights candles and draws circles out of chalk
She got a black cat and I swear I heard it talk
The perfume that she wearin got me floating in the air
I'm a victim of her voodoo I don't have the will to care.
Somewhere it's quiet and it's warm
But in my brains a raging storm
Somewhere my thoughts are taking form
But in my brains a raging storm
When I go to sleep at night the image of her face
Float across my vision, disappears without a trace
When I'm eating dinner she's the food that's on my plate
Just a victim of her voodoo I'll be gone without a trace.
And I'm about to lose my mind.
Fly Away
Meet me in the dream world
We can be together at last
Floating on a moonlit cloud
Going by so fast
Up into a castle that we used
To see as a child
Everything surrounds us
We can stay here for awhile.
Fly away, we can fly away.
On a magic carpet
The wind is blowing through our hair
Picking up a flower
Looking at the clothes it wears
Standing in a mushroom
It's hard to tell what you may find
In this castle, in the sky,
In this dream and special time.
Vagabond Unknown
I'm dissolving everyday evolving I've become
The space between the molecules that form me
No substance of my thinking could begin to comprehend
The odyssey that stretches out before me
Because here, it's always here
Now, it's always now
Out in this zone
All alone, vagabond unknown.
Just behind the rainbow veil vibrations everywhere
A voice of silence shattering illusion
Encoded messages I thought I could not share
Calm my fears and banish my confusion.
From the universal mind across the cosmic sea
To the deepest levels that could call me
Swirling through the inner light beyond eternity
A voice without a sound was chanting be free.
Freak Element
Dare to see a different point of view
Open up the door to see what's true
Are your thoughts so different no one hears
It hasn't changed in 50 million years.
And in the world today - you're a freak element
Thoughts you're having no one understands
Like the wind that blows across the sands
It's a mirror image you maintain
Inside that picture puzzle brain.
If you think for yourself today - you're a freak element
If you live by the words you say - you're a freak element
So freak out!
Our normal waking consciousness... is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus and at a touch they are all there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in it's totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.
William James
"The Varities Of Religious Experience",
Collier Books, New York.
(James 1961:305 first published in 1902).
All songs by Nick Riff and published by Cosmic Eye BMI and administered outside North America worldwide by Delerium Music.
Lyrics reproduced by kind permission.
Produced and recorded by John Lyon at Oblivion Studio, Zanesville, Ohio, USA.
DAT transfer by Chris Keffer at Magnetic North Studio, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
Nick Riff - All sounds Human and otherwise.
Equipment Technician - J.D. Kimple
Energy appreciation to:- Richard Allen, Mr. Unrealistic, Paul Ricketts, Johnny Choukhadrian, Steve Lines, Pat Cochran, Geoff Reding, Michael Seday, Jim Clevo, Albert Hofmann, R. Gordon Wasson, Amber, Gabriel & Debbie Lyon, and you - the Freak Element.
Cover design by Richard Allen.
Cover illustration from "Science Fiction Art" published by Trewin Copplestone Publishing Ltd. (Copyright holder sought, but not located).
Nick Riff glories in a raw demo-like sound that fits the medium he works in which is equal parts 60's punk, garage and psychedelia. Thundering and swirling soundscapes abound in the realm of Riff or pulsating power on the less berserk "lose my Mind". Theirs is an excellent tension running through this release that lets loose in the sporadic blasts of screaming lead and pop riff power play on the title track that closes the album.
The Neo-psych scene appears to be a minor rage in England, but it can't seem to pick up steam here in the States. as a result, Riff's debut release has been picked up by Delerium Records (affiliated with Freakbeat Magazine). Riff's music is characterised by loads of fuzz guitar, metaphysical and otherwise transcendental lyrics (check out titles such as "Strange Disposition", "Electric Eye God", and "Freak Element") droning harmonies, reverb-saturated vocals, bits of raga-rock and plenty of other psychedelic effects and gestures.
His voice is a rather thin tenor, but Riff's intonation is dead on and it fits the character of the music quite well. the one caveat is the presence of drum machines and other occasional synthesised sounds which make this one-man band possible. While it is clear that Riff is heavily into the psychedelic sound, it has been processed and filtered through his experiences with new-wave, punk and alternative rock (in the 80's he was in a group known as the Attitude).
As in such music, Riff often employs an austere, stripped-down texture and sonority, though the rip-snortin' fuzz guitars keep the music from becoming anaemic. This results in a music that is at once nostalgic and contemporary.
Ohio's Nick Riff hid out in his Oblivion studio, toked on some boo and recorded this follow-up to 89's From The Heart of Oblivion. He admits, in Freak Element's first song, to possessing a "strange disposition" but, luckily, his "psycho-active compass keeps me feeling well". This compass charts Riff through the occasional field of vintage power pop and somewhat pastoral folk rock; the man has an uncanny ear for pristine melodies that tickle the mind's ivories. But the operative element here is the ambient glow which surrounds his tunes like a candied bubble. Simple yet charming keyboard lines coupled with the limitations of a drum machine, underscore the aforementioned melodies and draw the listener into the bubble. Once ensconced, Riff turns on the wiggly electric guitar effects (loads of fuzz phase and flange for even the grunge kiddies to dig!) much in the manner a barber thrusts the mirror of his handiwork before you: "Surprise, you got more than your money's worth!" And as Riff himself informs us, "If you think for yourself today, if you live by the words you say - you're a freak element". Take that, deejay scum!
From the aptly named Zanesville in Ohio and late of the Attitude, multi-instrumentalist Nick Riff's "From The Heart of Oblivion" (Oblivion being the name of his home studio, although the line also turns up in one of his songs) has been avialable on cassette for a while now from the guys at Freakbeat magazine (who, of course run the Delerium label), indeed a remixed version of the excellent "Lost & Wild" from those early demo's was one of the highlights of Delerium's first release "A Psychedelic Psauna" which many of you will be familiar with already. I am therefore probably preaching to the converted; but if you haven't heard Nick's heady fusion of soulful psychedelic psignatures, right-on lyrical attitude and trippy guitar pyrotechnics yetthen you really should re-educate yourself, and if you're tuned in already this album of new material will really open up your globules. Nick seems to have grown in confidence tenfold, the enigmatic "Vagabond Unknown" for example adds a welcome wall of keyboard/synth sounds to his driving fuzzed guitar wellhead., "Electric Guitar God" with its simple yet effective bonsai guitar coda and monochromatic rythmic intensity redefines Riff's whole angle of approach and "Big Fairy Tale" scars your inner space with an electric bubblebath velocity that echoes and fades through to its closing notes. If you've got off on the work of the Flyte Reaction and Dimentia 13 in the past, Nick Riff is a must.
Nick Riff is a one man band from Ohio - a real hallucinogenic (or should I say hallucinated?) mushroom, come to Delerium's British court through unknown ways; but believe me, a relationship does exist. "Freak Element" being a debut album, my thoughts instinctively (yet unreasonably) go to Porcupine Tree: the contents are different though, and so is the eventual outcome.
Nick Riff's music takes inspiration from rock's last major trend; the punk/post-punk/new-wave especially celebrated in the UK. The spirit of "Fire in Cairo" hovers all about the record - is it that mysterious "Freak Element" mentioned in the credits? If you don't believe me, just listen to "Forbidden Love" or "Big Fairy Tale". Surprised? You bet - this is the first new-wave revival I've ever witnessed, the first posthumous celebration of a music that, after all, still constantly graces our turntables.
Continuous feedback, old time basic rhythms, tense melodies - everything really recalls the last revolution in musical climates. This kind of patent, controversial originality, together with its one-man band approach doesn't make variety one of the album's (and Nick Riff's) major qualities - he's certainly not the type of musician that grabs your attention on first listen.
Still, when he forgets about theoretical references, out comes a sharp, violent musician giving his best when songs get longer and he turns the wah-wah overdrive up as in the sweet ballad "Fly Away" or in the fantastic hypnosis of "Electric Eye God", loaded with real Californian psychedelic humour.
Imagine yourself as a small child. You're climbing the high stairs to the attic where grandfather keeps a room filled with strange and mysterious objects. You enter the dark and gloomy attic of eerie shadows and strange forms. Monsters and ghosts lurk in every corner but you carry on until you find what you were looking for: a big black ornamented box, covered with dust. It's an artefact grandfather brought home from a long voyage to a faraway country, long ago. With trembling fingers you put the rusty key into the you stole from under grandfather's cushion in the lock of the box. The box unlocks without a sound. You take a deep breath and open the lid in one movement. The disappointment is immense: there's nothing in it! Suddenly you realise he luminous colours invade all dimensions. You smell exotic flowers and herbs and you can hear music, louder and louder. Your mind goes into a spin, you're lifted into the air and...
OK, so far for this bed-time story. Listening to "Freak Element" is like opening a Pandora's box. Nick Riff is a musically very gifted young man from Zanesville, Ohio, is responsible for all this. He creates in his own home studio "Oblivion" beautiful pop songs in the best Sgt. Pepper/Sixties tradition. he sings all lyrics, plays all instruments and produces everything himself. Nick already surprised us last year with the C40 cassette "From The Heart of Oblivion" (also on Delerium). This effort has now surpassed; "Freak Element" is a school example of psychy pop fairy tales. Twisted fuzz guitar, trippy keyboards and Nick's very personal vocal discipline turn every track into a small journey through one's lost innocence. Albums like this are important because they make one realise a child has an unlimited fantasy, one of the most valuable qualities to possess in life.
Freak Element - Pulls together an assortment of influences in a hallucinogenically inspired dark new wave mix. Powered by a throbbing energy, with all the attendance accouterments to give it plenty of mystic-orientated mood.
Quite a step forward from his demo tapes we've featured in the past, America's Nick Riff has added a broken glass '77 New Wave edge to his Byrds like psychedelia and formed an identity of his own, it's on the American pop side of hard psychedelic punk sound, don't get the idea that it doesn't rock out though: bits of rocking REM, B-52's collaborating with Robert Calvert dominated Hawkwind and the thing that makes it all work is the quality of the songs... Nick Riff writes the kind of songs that could bring MTV back to life. '90s psychedelia for those who like the sounds but don't want to wallow in nostalgia. Songs this good shouldn't stay under-ground.
[Nick Riff Home Page]
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Delerium Records. info@delerium.co.uk