One Mighty Atom - Mystery Karaoke - Review

One Mighty Atom is a three piece live psychedelic band from Johannesburg, South Africa. Jeff Fletcher, Michael Westwood and David Owen have completed their debut album "Mystery Karaoke" and delivered an atomic psychedelic funk bomb on the world. One listen and you will be hooked on their vision of what is possible in merging psytrance synths, funk bass and guitars with rock percussion. It's a mesmerizing trip into cosmic galacto-funk. Strap in. Ignition start ... 

Track 1 - One Misses Hippie

The opening track sets the mood for the album with a belting psychedelic funk blaster. This track has thick strata of heavily fuzzed up guitars and synths mixed with rock percussion and funkalicious bass. Someone call Quentin Tarantino - I think we have the coolest tune to have never appeared in a schlock exploitation film. This is what aliens dance to when they party !

Who's got da funk ? This tune is like licking a psychedelic toad of funk chocolate sauce. The guitar work alone is enough to peel your brain until it's left tickling your pineal gland deep inside. Could be a bit longer though, just as your crusing along the unfolding psyway it sort of comes to a dead end. Once again the guitar work is superb here - Hendrix is dancing in heaven to this one.

Track 3 - Cluster Funk

Back the car up from that dead end little and take a side road and you'll find your right back on Route Funkadelic. Maybe they should have joined the previous track into this one ? Anyway this one offers more dance floor blitz and glitz and builds into a psychedelic swarm of buzzing killer bees. Flail your wobbly bits at the sun if you are lucky enough to hear this one live !

Track 4 -  Tumble Boogie

UK psychedelic legends Eat Static are the masters of old school UFO related vocal samples. In this song, One Mighty Atom do a fine job of it too and fuse what sounds like old NASA and B-Grade SciFi movie samples with upbeat funk bass and wha-wha guitar once again. 

The result is yet another pleasure cruise into the hyperdelic funk spectrum. Somewhat reminds me of that Dutch group MIDI-Terranian who made some super retrofuture psy funk albums back around the early 2000s. Groovy funk gravy with alien invasion overtones !

Track 5 - Happy National Pudding

I'm not sure if South Africa has a Happy National Pudding day or not. And if so, what kind of pudding is it ? When I think psyfunk I think fudge pudding covered in caramel sauce. 

A real jamin' groove here with plenty of first-rate hooks to keep your head nodding. I really dig the mid section -  all those floating layers of filtered synths tickling your ears with long freakadelic funk feathers. I'm now convinced that these guys must be a phenomenal live act. I can fully imagine an outdoor festival with a floor of freaks flying and frying their brains to these tunes.

Track 6 - Soundtrack To Your Abduction

Now there is a title I bet Eat Static would approve of ! This track is a little more atmospheric with the introduction of some eastern melodies and 50's Sci-Fi Theremin wobbles. Add in some hypnotic tribal beats with surf guitars and you have a brilliant slice of alien funkballs.

Track 7 - Androids and Angels

Here we have a nice vocal track with the now familiar OMA combination of funk bass, wild swirling synths and psych guitars. It's a welcome change and gives the album a nice break so as to avoid a release full of tracks that might sound too similar. It also ups the tempo again from the previous track to get those feet shuffling and twisting. 

Vocalist Allie Krumm sounds exotic and sultry as she sings about abstract concepts that paint a dark surreal dream of paranoia and expectation.

Track 8 -  Surfin

The final track is a playful breezy affair with a psychedelic dub backdrop and a melody I know I've heard a thousand times before but the name escapes me. Let me know if you pick it ! Fat and friendly funkdub for faraway fandangos. 

Summary 

One Mighty Atom were a complete unknown quantity to me before listening to this album. I have to say it's been a while since a new band has impressed me as much as this album has. I thought I knew quite a bit about psychedelic music but I'm hard pressed to find any comparisons for this one apart from MIDI-Terranian as mentioned earlier. It's definitely a sounds I  want to hear more of.

Give this a listen and expand your psychedelic listening horizons. I think you will all be pleasantly surprised. My only gripe would be that a few of the tracks do tend to fade out rather suddenly and the cover art is a bit plain. But when it comes down to it we are here to listen and be funkafied not gawk at cover art.

In summary this a superb album with enough new ideas and psychedelic funk to make you groove till the cows come home. So jump over to the One Mighty Atom website and and grab your copy now ! Funk on future space brothers. And to finish here is a wonderful funk quote from non other than Booty Collins which sums up this album nicely:

"Funk is the absence of any and everything you can think of, but the very essence of all that is. And saying that, I'm saying funk is anything that we create in our minds that we want to do, what we want to be, but we don't have the resources"

Funk is the absence of any and everything you can think of, but the very essence of all that is. And saying that, I'm saying funk is anything that we create in our minds that we want to do, what we want to be, but we don't have the resources.

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/funk.html#L2KjSIGjaSvpHgJ7.99"