Kaleidoscope 4.3

Tangerine Dream (1967). Tangerine Dream probably has the edge as the best of this British psychedelic group's two albums, but not by much. A long sought-after psychedelic rarity, it includes several of Kaleidoscope's best songs: "Flight from Ashiya," "Dive into Yesterday," "The Murder of Lewis Tollani," and especially the fragile ballad "Please Excuse My Face."
Faintly Blowing (1969). For their second album, Kaleidoscope delivered something an awful lot like their debut, a body of pleasant, trippy, spacy raga-rock, with the main difference that they pushed the wattage a little harder on their instruments - they'd also been performing pretty extensively by the time of their second long-player, and a lot of the music here was material that they'd worked out on-stage in very solid versions…

The long-lost album from the legendary British group, now available remastered and presented in the definitive collectors package.
The story of a young British band that went through many changes and endured lots of adventures typifies the mood of the late Sixties, when psychedelic rock gripped the world. Kaleidoscope had released singles and albums, but was then renamed Fairfield Parlour, to avoid confusion with an American Kaleidoscope. However, both UK bands featured Peter Daltrey (vocals, keyboards), Eddy Pumer (guitars), Steve Clark (bass, flute), and Dan Bridgman (drums). As Fairfield Parlour, they released an album called From Home to Home in 1970. This was followed by White Faced Lady, an ambitious rock opera recorded in 1970-71…

This 20-track compilation from Castle focuses on the colorful Scottish progressive rock outfit's lo-fi/R&B-infused late-'60s period. For a band that entered the public consciousness with a cover of the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," Marmalade did fairly well for themselves, scoring a hit with the infectious "I See the Rain," available in both the single and album versions here, as well as maintaining a career that crossed genres more than a few times. That said, Kaleidoscope: The Psych-Pop Sessions is just that, so anybody looking to delve further into the group's history, or are just looking for a copy of the aforementioned Beatles cover, would be better off with Sanctuary's two-disc Ultimate Collection.

It's a little surprising that a cult band like Kaleidoscope would get honored with an all-out three-CD set, considering the limited market. But here it is, and it certainly leaves no stone unturned, including the entire recorded output of the band while they were on Epic. That essentially covers the entire period of interest to most fans, spanning the band's formation to their breakup in the early '70s (though they subsequently reunited for some albums that aren't represented here). In addition to everything from their albums Side Trips, A Beacon from Mars, Incredible, and Bernice, it has quite a few tracks that only showed up on non-LP singles or as outtakes on posthumous compilations. And some of those extras aren't even easily found on Kaleidoscope compilations, namely the old-timey psychedelia of the early B-side "Little Orphan Nannie" and the less impressive, heavily bluesy 1968 B-side "Just a Taste"…