The Mandrake Memorial - 3 Part Inventions. 1969 USA-Pennsylvania (archival)

3 Part Inventions was originally to be the album that followed Medium, The Mandrake Memorial's sophomore effort. This second album is where the band's interest in experimental music began to take hold. So much so, that founding member Micheal Kac bolted from the scene (amicably I might add). Traveling to London in the summer of 1969 to record, The Mandrake Memorial seemed on the verge of releasing their breakthrough album. But the producer, the well known and respected Shel Talmy, thought their brand of music to be hideous and quit. That left the band on their own, without any support of the British music unions, to finish what they started. Once complete, a couple of publications announced the imminent release of 3 Part Inventions.

Of course that never transpired. The label wanted them to rerecord the album, which they dutifully did, and that lead to their final effort Puzzle. In retrospect, it's hard to argue with the label here. The album doesn't really gel together. It's a set of disparate ideas and it's not crisp at all. As an archival album, however, this disparity works completely in its favor. We're hearing a band at the vanguard of music that only groups such as Pink Floyd were exploring back then. The blueprint for Krautrock honestly.

The first 3 tracks all would end up on Puzzle. I didn't compare them to the album proper, but here they seem like 3 random songs that fly by without notice. The album begins to come together on the excellent previously unreleased 'Part of My Dreams'. Here's where the Pink Floyd references start to come out. The primitive synthesizers and trippy tones are what makes this era of music so special. 'Wouldn't You Like It?' was also unreleased, and as the band notes later, should have been the hit single of the album. 'Bucket of Air' of course is the landmark track from Puzzle, from an experimental point of view that is. This version, which I'm sure is different than Puzzle's, is quite excellent as well. You could just picture these guys in front of some strobe-light film extravaganza in Berlin circa 1970. 'Witness the End' comes from Medium, but is a new tripped out version. These latter duo of tracks were to make up Side 2 of 3 Part Inventions. Way ahead of their time. The Mandrake Memorial are far more cohesive than a band like fellow Americans' Friendsound, but the music has this similar go-for-broke attitude.

That concludes the album itself. There are two more tracks thrown on, an unreleased version of 'Cassandra' and 'The 12th Brigade' a track that was left off of Medium. Too bad on the latter, as it's quite excellent psychedelic rock.

For fans of Puzzle era Mandrake Memorial, 3 Part Inventions is a must pick up. Otherwise it's probably going to be too "out there" for fans of just their earlier material.

CD: 2016 Flashback (UK)

The CD booklet has an encyclopedic amount of info regarding the full history of the band. Though oddly only a small fraction is dedicated to the 3 Part Inventions portion of their career. Also has photos, concert posters, that sort of thing. The album is taken from the original masters reel. Essential for fans of the band.