The whole point of psychedelia is to split open your mind like a ripe melon and present a new way of seeing things; the word itself springs from the Greek combo of “mind” and “manifest.” What’s emerged from the consciousness of Woodstock’s Stanton Warren in the past several years—namely, his Venture Lift project—is a melding of late-’60s Pink Floyd to the droning shoegaze of Spacemen 3, with all the cerebral meanderings to boot: “Hipporates said first to do no harm / to the philosophers I say as well as the poets and the bards / rise up from your victim manicure / from
your cathode rays to lease again the natural state” (from “Green Earth”). Warren is responsible for a trove of instruments here, and his tranquil voice hovers and slowpokes in the background like pensive specter. He generously brings in a bevy of local luminaries to widen his trippy scope; hopefully, he’ll drag along a few of them for Venture Lift’s Cafe Chronogram performance on October 13 at Muddy Cup in Beacon. Perhaps we’ll be treated to his acid-trip cover, the Syd Barrett/James Joyce gem “Golden Hair” (fingers crossed). Meanwhile, check out the aural fractals at myspace.com/venturelift and set your mind free.
This article appears in October 2007.
