Magic Fig—Valerian Tea

Everyone has those go to albums. Where you want to suspend reality for a while, kick back and be taken on a journey into sound. For me those albums include Dark side of the Moon, Tubular Bells and Tangerine Dream's Ricochet and now there's a now member of the family.

The album opens with "Flammarion" and there's quite a lot of styles and influence happening from Yes and Gong, to Renaissance and that's all within the first 40 seconds or so. I mention Renaissance as the vocalist here has that similar beautiful, clear tone of Renaissance's Annie Haslam. Bit by bit the more alternative, spacey elements are introduced. I mention Gong earlier, not a band I'm hugely into, but loved their tracks Tried So Hard and the title track from the album Flying Tea Pot and can appreciate the out there vibe.

On a much gentler note, "Walking Shoes" settles into a laid back 60s vibe, led by a warm synth organ before gradually morphing into something softer and more introspective. Subtle touches of psychedelic guitar drift in and out, and by the latter half the track gently ramps up, giving the sense of being carried along on a relaxed but purposeful journey.

More vocally driven is "At the Garden'ts Gate", soft and dreamy, like flying through clouds and I kid you not, it's like heading somewhere you're not quite sure of, but have the trust to just let go. There are worse ways to travel.

"Percolation" serves as a brief interlude, quietly resetting the mood and hinting at what’s to come. It feels like a pause for breath, a subtle shift in atmosphere that clears the space and prepares the listener for the next phase of the record without overstaying its welcome.

And oh what glorious company we find ourselves in. "Valerian Tea" is a playful nod to madcap 60s and 70s storytelling, where imagination runs free and logic happily takes a back seat. You can feel echoes of Gong’s Flying Teapot era and the Small Faces’ "Ogdens Nut Gone Flake", not as imitation but as shared spirit. It is delightfully whimsical and unhinged, funny one moment and faintly unsettling the next, yet it has an irresistible momentum. However strange the path becomes, you cannot help but be swept along for the ride.

And the scene shifts once more with "Riders at Dawn", arriving almost like a wake up call, a sharp intake of breath that demands attention before seamlessly rolling into "Sensation Seeker". The latter becomes another showcase for that beautiful voice, but this time set against a broader, more epic backdrop. The track unfolds like a series of musical vignettes, loosely stitched together yet flowing as a single, coherent piece. There is a distinctly Mike Oldfield inspired guitar solo, bursts of Gong like eccentricity, and a gorgeous organ synth break around the halfway point, before everything spirals down into joyous electric guitar madness. It is chaotic, exuberant, and above all, great fun.

Again we switch direction with the brief interlude "Splinter". It feels like a gentle descent, musically dropping as if in an elevator toward the surface of "Goblin". What follows is not quite what you might expect. There was a sense of a penultimate madcap adventure on the horizon, yet instead the track settles into a calmly paced, almost serene holding pattern. Around the halfway mark, this tranquillity is shattered by a sudden burst of frenetic energy, before the piece regains its composure and drifts back into calm.

And so we head into the final track, "Sleep of Reason", at 6 minutes 42, the longest track on the album. It opens with a very simple piano and vocal accompaniment, calm and restrained even, given the tracks that have come before it. There are dashes of guitar, and then at around the two minute mark, things start to open, almost flower. The guitar carries a chilling sense of expectation, like the “Red Weed” from War of the Worlds. It never quite goes in the direction I was expecting, but that is in no way a criticism, just how my mind was perceiving the journey.

I’d listened to this album a couple of times, and my first thought was that I couldn’t break it down track by track. While it is very much an album I would want to listen to completely from beginning to end, I found I was having too much fun thinking about the individual tracks, so against my better judgement, I created the review you see here.

It never quite took me where I was expecting, but that’s a good thing, as it wasn’t dulled by expectation. For me, this was such a great find. This kind of music can easily be tainted by overindulgence, which is something I never felt. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, it is an album that has joined illustrious company and a band I will be keeping an eye on in the future.