Cromagnon-Cave Rock The Most Bizarre Album Ever

A while ago I actually did a review of Cave Rock and found the review while going through the archives. While Tad was begging me for some oddball music I decided to send this little gem his way.  He calls it the most disturbing album he's ever heard too.  It came from ESP Disk, the infamous NY label that was home to the Fugs and Albert Ayler.  The original  blog is as follows.....
 
In thirty years of reviewing albums, I have my share of reviewing the popular and the obscure and the bizarre.  There are bizarre albums that do start to sound good after I "get it", Wire 154 and XTC English Settlement are two of the many albums that I hated at first but now call classic after playing them.  Other albums such as MC5 Kick Out The Jams are guaranteed to offend your parents due to all the feedback and noise and F bombs.  However I think I may have encounter that first album that is so out there, so bizarre that even I wonder what in the hell did I buy it.
 
ESP Disk is the New York label that gave us The Fugs, The Godz and Albert Alyer, avart garde jazz and rock that isn't for those who enjoy Yummy Yummy Yummy.  But Cromagnon 1969 Cave Rock album is by far the most bizarre and weirdest album that I have ever encountered.  In fact the only song of any type is the leadoff track Caledonia which starts out with a shortwave radio feedback and a old record that sounds off way base, then it starts up with a tribal drums with a shout out vocals with lead bagpipe, to which Austin Grasmere sounds like Al Jorgensen of Ministry.  Is he shouting it out or whispering the word?  And then it ends with a jewsharp and crickets chirping.  No hit potential there.

Grasmere and Brian Eliot according to the liner notes were pop song writers who approached Bernard Stollman of ESP about doing an album, and Bernard asked them about what the theme of the album was to be,  Grasmere replied "everything at once" and Stollman gave the go ahead.

The next segment is something called Ritual Feast Of The Libido, which somebody screams in agony and torture with a single drumbeat and a shaker.  Unlistenable as hell.

Organic Sundown:  More chants and screams and shouts for about seven minites as we hear hammers and nails and more tribal drums.  Seven more minites of your life to which you'll never get back.  And the torture never stops (unless you listen to top forty radio today to which then I would perfer this over rap anyday)
Fantasy: Starts out with a Beach Boys like vocals, then more bizarre sound effects and laughter.  Have You Been there, somebody asks, I repiled nope and don't intend to return back there ever again.  At the 2:15 mark we hear a cuckoo clock and an police siren and other bizarre effects with a drum solo tacked back in the mix while somebody tunes their guitar and more voice overs and somebody turning the radio dial.  You think anybody from Captiol or Atlantic would ever release such bizarre shit on their label?  Not in the day and age. Around the six minite mark the guys start screaming Freedom to which the average listener by now would have taken the cd out of the player and shredded it.  Freedom From The Man! and then the track ends by doing a coda of the leadoff track.  Short Wave radio and a record player on its last legs.  End Of Side One

Crow Of The Back Tree-Starts out with an acoustic guitar with a heart beat in the background. Then a rabid bunch of grade school kids start out screaming Freedom.  Kids sound like they had way too much sugar.  And by now our faithful readers wonder why do I buy such weird shit like this?  It was only a buck in the clarence bins.  Next.

Genitalia-Sounds like the Pink Floyd Small Group Of Furry Animals Grooving With A Pict, with somebody singing like a crazed Alvin Chipmunk.  Did they mastered this cd from a scratchy record?  Lotta pops and cracks.  And Pink Floyd's version was better although this song dated a year before Ummagumma.
Toth, Scribe 1:  Caledonia slowed down and the recording reversed.

First World Of Bronze:  Sounds like The Chant Monks speeded up to 78 with a crazed guitar in the right side of the speaker which ends the album.  Cromagnon Cave Rock is that album to play if you want to get rid of unwanted guests or want to end a party, or end a blind date.  This album is so bizarre that they make the ESP Disk Godz sound like The Beatles.  If it was the intent of recording an bad acid trip without taking the acid, I'd say they done a fine job of hashing up the images and darkness of the segments (I don't dare say songs since only two of the 8 eight songs here can be faintly considered songs).  In some ways it does pave the way for noisemakers such as Trent Reznor or Al Jorgensen's Ministry of noise and avant garde.

Only this could ever come out on a Avant Garde label such as ESP Disk.  I had to play this CD twice just to believe how out there this is.

May you never have to hear this yourself.

Another View: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=33449#.UUp0SKzNiaQ

This CD was issued in 1992 on the german ZYX label when ZYX reissued the ESP Disk catalog but have now fallen out of print, with copies going as high as 50 bucks on EBAY.   http://www.decibelmagazine.com/featured/black-metal-1969/

ESP Disk has once again risen from the grave and have their own working website that continues to bring out the bizarre in free form jazz and noise excursions.  Not for the faint of heart. http://espdisk.com/official/