Space Angel has a wonderfully contradictory song, Abyssinia Sometime, which is simultaneously easy to access and elusively mysterious, like finding a secret door that leads to a place you have never been, but somehow know. The Brighton four-piece has made something that is simultaneously very English and out-of-this-world.
The vocal performance of Christopher Rye has that distinctly English sound described in the song description, though it is not the smooth BBC sound that one would anticipate. Rather, it has an aged familiarity to it, as though he were telling a confession in a dark tavern, over pints. When he sings that you have to find yourself “somewhere that is not on a map,” you think that he has been there.
It is in the instrumental arrangement that Abyssinia Sometime really flies. Not only do those Floydian guitars allude to Pink Floyd, but they also know the spiritual genes of psychedelic rock, flowing throughout the mix like smoke through the band during their legendary live performances. The Mellotron brings that old, alien quality to everything and makes it all feel a bit out of time, and the piano brings the ethereal side down to earth with a shock of warmth.
The thing that impresses me the most is that this song is hooky as hell, even though it had psychedelic aspirations. Space Angel is able to come up with something that is instantly memorable without compromising their exploratory tendencies. The recording has that live band feel that they are famous with, you can almost feel the air moving around the instruments in the room.
Abyssinia Sometime is a success story because it does not attempt too hard to be mysterious. The enigma is unintentionally created by the collision of well-known tunes and unknown sounding worlds. It is the music of being wonderfully lost and discovering that the adventure is more important than the goal.