The Van Allen Belt – Superpowerfragilis (Nonstop Everything Records)
I was going to start this review with ‘Pialidocious baby!!’ and now look what’s happened… I bloody well have! Boy, this take on all things that rattled the sixties, has been given a modern finish that is pure burnished gold. Brought up to date so that it is totally now - it’s pure genius.

This music ventures from the edge of 60’s psyche band territory (although they sound nothing like them, think Jefferson Airplane at their most playful), through soundtracks that defined ‘hip’ (think Bacharach meets Schifrin meets Barry), and on to the pure pop of luminaries like The Beach Boys, The Association, and the Mamas and Papas. Put all of those together (yes, I know, it is unfeasible, but…), add some of today’s technology, a great (I mean GREAT) pop sensibility, and you get an album like this: impossible to categorise, luscious to listen to.

The production on the album, a perfect vinyl length of 45 minutes, is a colossal strength. One minute there is orchestration, the next handclaps by the hundred, followed by far-out but delicate band explosions - where drums meet keyboards meet guitars meet harmony vocals. This is personified beautifully on “Lovely In Akron”, but, on consideration, I could have picked any of these 11 madly wonderful tracks. And all of this band work / special effects wraps around the gifted voice of Tamar Kamin, whose virtuosity has no limits in this field; she is totally spectacular, with a rise and fall in her voice that is an airfield in width, rather than a field furrow, and yet can snake down narrow lanes of sound between mountainous hedges of instrumentation, and reach her destination intact.

The Van Allen radiation belt is a torus of energetic charged particles – and that is the Van Allen Belt right here, right now, too!
www.myspace.com/thevabelt.com
Kev A.

THE VAN ALLEN BELT – LOVELY IN AKRON

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