Aorta – Aorta

absolutely fantastic album! i know this is full-blown psychedelia but also a great example of proto-prog to my ears - reminds me a lot of Second Hand’s first album “Reality”. cannot recommend enough to those who are fans of US psych

Jim Morrison and Type O negative fans....eat your heart out! An incredible album - tons of psych organ work, weird and trippy harmonies, fuzz guitar, orchestrated amazingness! Pick it up for sure. I forgot to mention that there are some rudimentary electronics in this too. Takes a page from The United States of America album in some ways, and also October Rust from Type O - I hear Green Man in this for sure. Can't say enough about this album.

Superb Chicago Psych on the best 60's psych label, Columbia/Epic! If you see this LP, get it. Do not hesitate, but...avoid Aorta 2. N

It also has to be pointed out that Robert Christgau gave an E- to this album, his very lowest rating, a rating he reserved for only one other album: Kim Fowley's I'm Bad. Basically, a rating this low, according to him is: "An organic masterpiece that repays repeated listens with a sense of horror in the face of the void. It is unlikely to be marred by one listenable cut." Although I always felt that Robert Christgau had been questionable in credibility, rating this album that poorly really blew it for me. I know the music wouldn't appeal to him, he could have at least gave it a C+, which he did for many other similar albums. For me, this is a great album, and quite varied. The only reason it was buried was the Chicago Transit Authority album came out around the same time (I probably also believe Robert Christgau's review didn't help matters any), the Aorta album sounded stuck in 1967/'68 (although some proto-prog elements show up), and CTA sounded contemporary for its time, if not more in tuned with the early '70s. Regardless, I didn't let the dated sound of Aorta put me off, this is a great album regardless what Robert Christgau would have you believe.

Hailing from Chicago and infused with band from the Rotary Connection, HP Lovecraft, and New Colony Six, Aorta created a minor blip on the musical map in 1969, laying down an outing laced with ringing telephones, crying babies, heartbeats, along with a library full of effects, on an album where each song ran into the next, creating a sonically uninterrupted drift to carry the listener into a dimension where Aorta was free to play with their heads.

Without a doubt, most people are going to look to the trippy side of this release, perhaps not making the connection that Aorta where a psychedelic extension of Blood Sweat & Tear, with their jazzy art rock adventure, filled with arrangements that foreshadowed the coming of deeply heavy organ riffs, making way for bands such as Argent. Certainly the album jacket overshadowed anything held within, and perhaps indicated the band’s penchant for grandioseness, if not being downright self indulgence at times. But don’t write them off, though in retrospect, the music will sound very dated, very in the moment with its spooky dark psychedelic disembodied presentation, that to my way of thinking, would not have made for a very pleasant trip of any sorts. While considering all of that, it’s important to understand the step Aorta took at a time when music was still pop oriented, when record companies still demanded a single, and this band managed to incorporate elements of string and horn arrangements, mixed with fuzzed guitar, some studio wizardry and jazz rock that would lead to the opus know as progressive rock.

Without a dose of the lysergic that brightened every corner during those heady days, the album is nearly unlistenable, because it’s the interplay of an altered reality that makes this record work, and without it, you’re left with but a bit of studio fun that seems to lead nowhere.

Seriously, this album raised its head just as the psychedelic strobe lights where being dimmed across the world, meaning that had they brought this adventure out much sooner, they may have hitched themselves to a flaming comet, and burned more brightly … instead, as this album and their following were reaching for the stars, it would be a mere two years before Bruce Springsteen would end this musical chapter, and release his down to earth, light of day, fundamentally real and unfeathered “Greetings From Asbury Park.”

Every once in awhile I hear parts of this album, as if carried on the wind, where I turn, as if I’m going to come face to face with a half ed etherial life I once lived, and I smile with a knowing recollection … but those days are hazy, filled with undefined memories, and nearly impossible for me to put a finger on.

Review by Jenell Kesler

As to the recording: Basic and vocal tracks recorded at Great Lakes Recording, Sparta, MI. Engineers: Dave Kalmbach and Bryce Roberson. Orchestra recorded at Universal Recording, Chicago. Engineer: Jerry DeClercq. Produced by Bill Traut and Jimmy Donlinger with aid from Skeet Bushor and Bryce Roberson