Mind of a Brother

This is Sunburned's first release. We released this as a cdr in an edition of 50 in jewel cases as something to have on the merch table for our tour with No Neck Blues Band and John Fahey in the late 90s. It was reissued as a Manahand cdr and then as an LP on Feeding Tube Records in 2015. from Mathieu Duval's "My Record Collection" website: "Mind Of A Brother, like many of the group's earlier efforts, really shows off their psychedelic side. Strange sounds and reverb abound on the title track. This first track progresses at a very slow pace, but new layers of sound come and go as it moves along; the addition of the harmonica is a really nice touch. Dearly Departed is much more hectic with a wild fuzz guitar with flanger at full effect, but the slow washes of drones in the background create a nice contrast. The next three tracks are longer psychedelic jams and they sound like something Sun Ra could have conjured up during his more "out there" period, very jazzy (you got to love the clarinet on Brother Of All and the bird calls on Loveletter To Complicated Dreams!). The group were to considerably lower the psychedelic touches on later albums and turn them into all out weirdness. It still sounds fresh here, making this a great first effort!" Byron Coley says: ""Amazing archival retrieval (with extra material on the download) of the first release by long-running human zoo known as Sunburned. Forged in the heat of Kristin Anderson's Charlestown loft, the group more or less descended straight from the corpse of Shit Spangled Banner, although they did not assume the band name until 1997 (two years after the first protean jams had started). The material on the album was recorded in 1997 & '98, often deep in the grip of acid flashes, and it really shows. Over the course of their nearly two-decade lifetime, Sunburned has been many things, but it's easy to forget how spacily jazzoid and proggily psyched-out their initial gushes were. The music here is wildly explorative and crazily inventive, sharing a clear affinity with fellow travelers No Neck Blues Band. Indeed, the second edition of the CDR of this album was created to be sold on a 1999 tour which was No Neck, John Fahey, and Sunburned. One can only shudder at the mere thought. Anyway, this may well be one of the best Sunburned albums. It has a bizarre sweetness I never noticed in the band back then, because they always seemed like thugs underneath everything else. But you can really sense it here. And Rob Thomas's excellent liner notes attest to the benign flow of their early visions. How nice to hear where this weird trip started." --Byron Coley, 2015