Kreamy ‘Lectric  Santa – Operation Spacetime Cynderblock: “Four Riddles of the Spheres”   Starcleaner Records (2009)
 
 Listening to Operation Spacetime Cynderblock, I get the same  feeling as when I listen to God Bless the Red Krayola… or Soldier-Talk.  The same feeling as The Fugs Second Album or Virgin Fugs.  More recently Failed Musician by Nutsak or anything by the  Unknown Instructors. No matter how many times I listen to any of these  albums, the next song, the next riff, sometimes the next second is a  surprise. Like those others, Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa is impossible to  categorize or genre, but that’s what makes ‘em good. The only category I  can come up with is madness, and you can’t label something madness  because that’s a goddamm paradox. Looking at the album cover and reading  up on these Florida now-California psych pioneers, I don’t think they  spend too much time pondering paradoxes. Paradoxes are for the sane.
 Madness is a hard thing to capture no matter how many tracks and how  many hammers, accordions, keyboards, mandolins, saws, fiddles, gongs,  1970s elementary school teachers, 1980s televisions, 1990s radios  (boomboxes?), tambourines and window screens you have to make noise  with. All of these things might actually be on this album, with at least  half residing in the song “Workaholics Paradise Lost and Found.” When  the album is sweet, it’s a cavity (the perfectly titled “Sickly Sweet”  and “Spaceship”), when it’s heavy, it’s Bad Brains (Everything…? and  “New World Order Society”), when it’s nostalgic, it’s not for the San  Fran psych scene or some greater time in rockroll history, it’s for The  Facts of Life. “Mindy Cohn” is a half cover of the Facts theme song and  part ode to the annoying one with the big cheeks, Natalie. It’s a weird  ride. I recommend it for Friday afternoons, home from work, strung out,  cracking that first beer.
 Here are some more instructions. Don’t pay any attention to the  tracklisting or song titles until later. It will ruin the fun. Now I  shouldn’t tell you this because it will be doing just that, ruining the  fun, but I feel I have to. I’ve been scared shitless twice on this  album. The interludes “Danse Bastard Danse” and “Spacejam 92 Revisited”  have struck fear into my usually tame heart. For the first, I thought my  computer had been infected with a vicious adware campaign for strippers  or shampoo. For the second, I thought I was being abducted by aliens  again. Man was I glad when I realized it was just music and a happy song  about Mindy Cohn was next.
 To end the review, I think I’m going to take back everything I said.  I’ve done this before, but THIS time, it’s for real. At the end of the  instrumental weirdo bass space surf song with violins, “A.R.P,” you hear  two voices who I assume are Kreamy’s brainchildren Robert Price and  Priya Ray. These two lines just about sum it all up:
 “That was a really funny song.”
“Yea it was weird. It didn’t make any sense.”
 I’d post an MP3, but you can go here and listen to a bunch of these  songs: http://www.kreamy.org/kls_html/mp3.html
 -ADAM
                  
  Posted 26 Apr, 2010 
http://www.shortwaverockin.com/?p=765