Kaleidoscope – (Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion
“… My god, the spiders are everywhere…” Words to send a shiver down the spine of anyone with the slightest aversion to those eight-legged, scuttling terrors.
Image from: Chelsea Records UK
And that is evidently Kaleidoscope’s intention in the eerily folkish, pop-psych of ‘(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion’, employing imagery that wouldn’t feel out of place in a 1970’s BBC adaptation of an M.R. James ghost story.
Just what is the room of percussion, where shadowy friends climb the walls?
Before we investigate any further it’s worth noting that this is the British Kaleidoscope, not the American psychedelic band of the same name that existed at the same time. Our Kaleidoscope had a far more folky edge to their brand of psychedelia, in places sounding dangerously like The Incredible String Band, but infinitely better.
‘(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion’ is an incredibly dark song. It’s imagery brings to mind the nightmarish stop-motion animations of the Quay Brothers and could either allude to an actual nightmare or a bad acid trip.
“The crooked faces of clocks appear and die in nightmare dreams, While juggling music surrounds us both and turns our thoughts to screams…”
This is a place where silhouettes tap the windows, laughing one-armed bandits disappear into the shadows and, of course, the spiders are everywhere.
Released on the 1967 album, Tangerine Dream, ‘(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion’ takes the carefree jollity of some British psych-pop to its more sinister reaches, as far from Kaleidoscope’s own fairytale magnum opus of ‘Sky Children’ or the overwhelming jauntiness of ‘Jenny Artichoke’ – also on Tangerine Dream – as it’s possible to get.
But this is crafted darkness, more in tune with the writings of the Brothers Grimm than the darkness of one of psychedelia’s most famous acid-casualty’s, Syd Barrett, whose descent into complete mental collapse is suggested on his final Pink Floyd recording, ‘Jugband Blues’, and sometimes horribly evident on his two subsequent solo albums.
With a pleasantly catchy tune, interspersed with an array of haunting sound effects, and an eerily matter-of-fact delivery from vocalist/songwriter Peter Daltrey, ‘(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion’ is a top-drawer example of psychedelic-folk-pop; something at which Kaleidoscope excelled, yet never gained the recognition they truly deserved.
(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion is available on Kaleidoscope’s Tangerine Dream
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