A bunch of spiritual cats out of the UK in the late 60's got together to create albums of life affirming, all-spiritual encompassing, good karma jams. It was the late 60's, the drugs were still good, The Beatles were doing it, so it only makes sense that it would happen on a broader scale. And thus we get the trippy good vibes from Quintessence and their self-titled 1970 release. Lead singer Shiva Shankar Jones (i'm not making that up) hums, croons, chants, and wails through a self-styled spiritual odyssey touching on aspects of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and any other religion you can throw in there. Varied instrumentation (a psych groove here, a holy mantra there) holds the whole thing together, and actually makes for a pretty engaging listen. It's like someone saw "Hair" and was then inspired to create somewhat serious music as an homage. I'm probably not selling this very well. You just need to listen. Here's the psych rock jam "Sea of Immortality."
And here's the aforementioned holy mantra that is "High on Mt. Kailash."
If this album was released today, i'd probably write the whole thing off as some sort of pretentious mess, or as a big joke, but being that it's over 40 years old, it works on its own merit. Well played hippies. Here's one more, album opener "Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Gauranga."
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