Sussex – BENT WIND***

Touch Of Red/Riverside/The Lions/Going To The City/Hate/Look At Love/Mystify/Sacred Cows

Sussex was the solitary album released by the obscure Canadian psychedelic group Bent Wind in their youthful prime. It comprises an unusual combination of hippiedom and garage rock.

“This band can play straight-forward garage rock with a psychedlelic feel that is clean with just the right amount of weird guitar sounds and bizarre lyrics. I really like the guitar breaks. The songs have a bluesy feel to them.”

“The LP is filled with wonderful guitar work and the songwriting is strong throughout. The band deserved a much better fate, but like many bands of the day, with little backing from their label, they were unable to survive financially.”

“How I miss this kind of music. In the late 60s early 70s musicians got together and played whatever they felt like. Occasionally you got a winner like Sussex. This is all over the place but the guitar work, in general, is pretty good.”

“A band of hippie students without a clue, laying down enough tracks to wax to call it an album. One that is awash in fuzzed out gibberish that decades later makes sense not musically, but as a statement.”

“Though most of the material is in a hard rock vein, it's not particularly heavy. Psych influences are mild, if not minimal. They feature two guitarists, and occasionally they mixed it up a bit. But for the most part, what you get is a lot of improvisation style guitar breaks, with some wah-wah.”

“Amateurish but vital garage rock with a Texan sound. It isn't that good, but not that bad either. The album consists of almost exclusive hard rock songs, sounding at times like a lesser Hendrix and at other times like some of the psychedelic hard rockers of the time.”

“Most of this is pretty unoriginal, having been done before and much better by more famous bands. The couple of bits that are unique, like the bird-whistle sounds in Riverside, are just annoying. There's also something lacking in the overall vibe which comes off as just repetition for repetition's sake, instead of a heavy-psych-groove that I assume they were aiming for.”