Description
The only authorized reissue of this holy grail for collectors of psychedelic masterpieces.
Search Party "Montgomery Chapel" was the brainchild of (then Reverend) Nicholas Freund. Having left Wisconsin in the late 1960s to join a burgeoning West Coast religious scene, Freund spent considerable time in Sacramento before making their way to San Francisco in 1968 to lay down this one-off with some students of his. The result is a spooky, metaphysical trip that's equal parts God and acid-dripped mind expansion.
Laced with haunting vocals and dreamlike passages, sinister farfisa, blasts of fuzz guitar and downer lyrics, Search Party's "Montgomery Chapel" is psychedelic music at its most evocative and thanks to its depth and sense of anxiety, most truly spiritual. The ominous nine-minute 'So Many Things Have Got Me Down,' for example, tackles the difficulties of an unfulfilled married life, depression and spiritual apathy, all while riding a stripped down, grooving beat.
If you can imagine a lo-fi United States of America/Jefferson Airplane hybrid, you have an idea of how cool this band sounds. Only 600 copies were pressed and issued on the custom Century label; they've become holy grails of collectors. Artists as disparate as Current 93's David Tibet and Sonic Boom have heaped praise on it.
The recordings released by the St. Pius X Seminary Choir were made in the year or two which led up to the recording of the Search Party album. Not only did the three St. Pius X Seminary Choir records showcase the first work by Nick Freund, but they also were the first recordings of Search Party guitarist and vocalist Peter Apps. As one of the press clips regarding the Choir stated, "The choral treatment was electrified by a few phrases sung solo by Peter Apps, who is also the lead guitar. If Apps has not already formed a folk-rock group around that voice, he should. It is rich, deep, and ringing." Luckily, Freund and Apps heeded their advice, and the Search Party was the result.
But nothing could have prepared listeners for the bizarre avant-garde (in the truest sense) electronic soundscapes backed by rock instruments which open "Each One Heard In His Own Language About the Marvels of God" (1968). The album settles down into a less out-there groove after the opening, but this is still adventurous stuff. During my conversations with Nick Freund, he told me that the electric sounds on the album were the work of composer Dary John Mizelle. Mizelle studied composition and participated in the New Music Ensemble at the University of California, Davis (the first free group improvisation ensemble); there he participated in a course led by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Mizelle is also a founding member of SOURCE Music of the Avant Garde magazine.
Our two-disc set includes both albums, plus bonus tracks taken from ultra-rare early albums by the St. Pius X Seminary Choir. The 28-page booklet is packed with information, thanks to Freund, who was gracious enough to delve into his memory, scrapbook, and photo albums to help us flesh out the portrait of one of the most potent--and perhaps one of the most unlikely--psychedelic groups to ever record an album.
"Replete with a wealth of bonus material, this startingly good, unnerving collection makes you wonder whose side they were really on - and, indeed, what they were on." - Jan Zarebski, Record Collector
