Anthology Recordings Dusts Off the Early Stuff

After rewatching Revisiting Father & the Source Family, a bizarre documentary about Father Yod (formerly known as Jim Baker), a Sixties counterculture free spirit, health-food entrepreneur, and Jesus-look-alike who preached vegetarianism and orgasm-free sex to his myriad followers, I felt a little dizzy, and not just because it's two-and-a-half hours long. Actually, the most interesting part was that Father Yod had a band with several of his disciples. More interesting, their psychedelic jams were actually good. Sadly, Yod died hang-gliding in 1975 while trying to fly near the sun like Icarus. So there's that.

Thank Yod for Anthology Recordings. The all-digital reissue label, founded by Keith Abrahamsson (who also does A&R for Kemado Records, home to local boys the Sword), debuted online last fall and is another avenue for discerning, crate-digging music geeks in search acid-fried mindfucks, at a reasonable price. There's ol' Father Yod's band, Ya Ho Wha 13, and their improvisational four-song hippie jam, Penetration: An Aquarian Symphony, a truly religious experience of ungodly bellows, drumming, and droning guitar riffage. Whatever they were dropping, it's worth picking up.

Anthology has a lot more up its sleeve: It's home to Sir Lord Baltimore's 1970 Hawkwind-esque metal dish Kingdom Come, psych-dub pioneers African Head Charge, Swedish cosmonauts Pärson Sound, San Francisco's seminal Fifty Foot Hose, Gorilla Biscuits offshoot Moondog, and krautrockers My Solid Ground, among other excellent finds. Dig it.