the ego ritual

Mentioned a while back in dispatches – here in fact https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2018/10/06/the-ego-ritual/ – the Ego Ritual’s ‘Chakra Maraca’ is shortly to head up an EP through Kool Kat next week, a four track affair though curiously whether an added bonus or hitch at the pressing stage, our copy boasts five new age psych nuggets. Something that ought to tweak the lobes of those subscribing to the sounds of the Fruits de Mer community, the mind expanding ‘Chakra Maraca’ has a whiff of the Luck of Eden Hall about it wares albeit here irrefutably spun of a vintage cut 60’s kaleidoscopia which as commented upon before is dappled in the kind of warping and hazy colouring that much recalls both the Strawberry Alarm Clock and Traffic all sumptuously topped off with oodles of tripping sitar. Over on the flip you’ll find ’10 points for the red star’ which in sharp contrast comes shaped and cut from an erstwhile more proggy sounding cloth that indelibly trips a finite line walking between the Pretty Things and Manfred Man with just a touching of Sabbath, and something which comes blessed with a woozy interlude of dreamy dissipates and third eye tweaking trip toning before going all heads down for a storming race to the end groove with some nifty lysergic boogie that veers ever so close to the worlds of a youthful Alice Cooper. More sitar saturated loveliness with the arrival of the glam psych radiance of ‘serenade the ley line’ which in all seriously had us filled with an urge to dig out old Move masterworks while ‘days of set’ sounds as though it’s woken from a 60’s induced coma, its prowling and prodding giddy up tailored in a dizzying dayglo daubing to sound like Rush loving rapscallions in a head to head with (again – the Luck of Eden Hall). As to that unnamed bonus, a hazy spiritual mantra that we’d be inclined to say was the best thing here though will resist as I’m certain the band won’t be to impressed or forgiving if we do. https://theegoritual.bandcamp.com/releases?fbclid=IwAR1bPNI2riU7-3xBB6Vzt0HMnxFiMqmbRlB4TJPpZNeHkXC0ufP7fEiqSwY