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Sunday, 10 January 2010
Nick Riff - Photon Shift
"Nick’s a positive veteran of the space rock scene. ‘Veteran’ in that he’s been playing music since the mid ‘70s, releasing his first single with hard rock band Serpent (“influenced by Hendrix, Sex Pistols, UFO and Cheap Trick”) back in 1978 and going on to play with various bands before deciding to pursue a solo career that yielded albums in the UK on the fabled Delerium and for Cleveland’s garage rock imprint Sonic Swirl. ‘Positive’ in that despite dropping out of sight for a large chunk of the noughties, he’s recently returned to the music scene, revved-up and committed to an on-going series of releases on his Riffdisc imprint, of which Photon Shift is the third. And ‘positive’ again, in that he’s also playing live and recording with Freak Element, his ever-changing, peripatetic band who have a free bonus disc, Music From Another Dimension, included with the first three hundred orders for Photon Shift.
Nick has very kindly sent me both discs, though I’ll concentrate here on talking about the highly-charged and exciting Photon Shift, which kicks off loud and proud with the fuzz-laden ‘Edge of Time’, all meshed sounds and studded with Nick’s righteous railings against the corporate state and the generation that ‘worships junk technology’. Like all the other tracks here, it’s extended, trippy, dynamic stuff and totally deserves a place amongst any self-respecting space rock enthusiast’s collection.
It’s easy just to hear Nick’s music as one sprawling head trip, loaded with cosmic gusto, spaced-out and psychedelic and completely thrilling in its verve and atmospherics. But then, there’s also a highly intelligent counterpoint to the freakzone sounds and that’s his opinionated, challenging in a thoughtful way, lyric writings. So he does make use of the standards of the psychedelic movement, “If you leave your body use your thoughts instead, no ending to forever, that’s what the mushroom said,” he writes on the eastern-flavoured ‘Symbiont”, but he’s also talking about stuff that’s highly relevant, often in a quite touching manner. The most laid-back moments of the album, on ‘Already Gone’, are an effective and affecting rumination on extinction that has both the despair of what’s been lost and a contrastingly hopeful expression that the next generation might be better custodians of what’s been left; a quite lovely song.
‘Already Gone’ is one of the quiet pauses in the album, along with the play-out number, ‘Halls of Amenti’, a broodingly low-key piece, and the title track, a brilliant and beguiling jewel of song-writing, all swaying, heartfelt, charm. The surrounding tracks are generally punchy and energetic, with a brilliant sense of groove, often danceable and put together to be played all the way up. ‘Glowing Bowl’ is a real pounding wall of sound, lyrically and musically pulling the listener “Higher and Higher.” ‘Symbiont’ is classic psychedelia that has the spirit of the genre, both musically and literary, rippled through it; ‘Mindflow’ an expansive nine-minute trance piece.
Absolutely great stuff, get this CD and quick! Update! Don't be quick... be really quick... the bonus CD is almost sold-out!"
Posted by Ian Abrahams
From Aural Innovations April 2010 update
Nick Riff has been a fixture on the northern Kentucky and Ohio psychedelic and space rock scene since the late 70's and is currently going strong as ever as a solo artist. Photon Shift is his third release on the Riffdisc label (in a planned series that will extend into 2012). There are some superb cosmic jams here, with Riff laying down rocking rhythms, lysergic guitar work and spaced out synths, but his focus always remains on song writing, and each song on the album is its own unique piece. Whether he's singing about the ever encroaching embrace of technology, alien abductions, the writings of the scribes of ancient Egypt, or telling us what the mushroom said, the music remains wildly imaginative, exciting and, oh yes, quite freaked out. Kicking things off are two straight ahead rock tunes, Edge of Time and Glowing Bowl, that spill over into their 7+ minute lengths with brilliant acidic guitar work and bubbling cosmic synths. Symbiont starts out in a similar way, but halfway through diverts into a deeply psychedelic, mystical freak out that takes your head away to the far east. The dreamy trip of the 10+ minute title track continues the floating journey, taking the listener through beautiful melodic realms on a slow wave of blissed out sunshine bright psychedelic wonder. The somewhat shorter Already Gone is a heartfelt acoustic ballad about eco-conservation framed by a true and personal story, and is certainly the most touching song on the album, but a very nice break from the almost overwhelming trippiness that had come before, and shows Riff at his song writing best. The nearly 10-minute Mindflow takes us back into space, time and the cosmic mind for some pulsing, hypnotic dance rock. The album closes on a spiritual note, however, with strumming acoustic guitars, deep space chanting and a stroll into the ancient Halls of Amenti.
Music fans who like their space rock on the particularly psychedelic and trippy side will no doubt love Photon Shift. Take the journey!
Reviewed by Jeff Fitzgerald
Nick Riff: Photon Shift
Riffdisc (003)
"Nick Riff, our favorite psych wizard from Ohio has returned with a new album! This time Nick played all the instruments by himself as well as did the vocals, of course. The music still is his usual great combination of psychedelic rock, space rock, garage, The Beatles and punk but there are also elements of prog and folk. The wild guitar solos that are like Nick’s trademark are of course also included as well as spacey synthesizers and also electric sitar. The excellent lyrics deal with the destruction of our world, cosmic love and mind-expansion in general.
The album is started with the mid-paced “Edge of Time” that tells about how the modern man worships trivial electronics while the truly important things in life are forgotten. This superb track has an interesting, in-your-face guitar sound and also some keyboards, a bit of drone layers and psychedelic effects. “Glowing Bowl” begins with a Roland synthesizer arpeggio that we hear later on in the track as well. This is one of the album’s best cuts and the lyrics are pure psychedelic mind-expansion and cosmic search through different dimensions. This one has quite heavy guitars, although there is a lighter jam part with percussion in the middle. The straight-forward “Symbiont” brings to mind The Bevis Frond and rocks pretty hard. This one has plenty of that wild guitar soloing! Over half of this long song is more peaceful, spacey floating in Oriental atmospheres. Amazing! The album’s longest track (10:13) is “Photon Shift” that has really cosmic lyrics and vibe. It’s a more laid-back, magnificent number that also has beautiful melodies. The acoustic-driven “Already Gone” grieves over the animal species that have and will become extinct while “Mindflow” rocks tighter again and in a very psychedelic style. There is also some piano sounds and Roland synthesizer. This over nine-minute-long track has a hypnotic, heady atmosphere. As the album’s last cut we hear a bit shorter (4:59), mellow track “Halls of Amenti” that has acoustic guitar and also some mystical synthesizer patters and excellent vocals. This track leaves the listener in nice, surrealistic state… A totally amazing album by Mr. Riff once again, I must say!
If you’re lucky, you might still be one of the first 300 who will also get a free EP when ordering Photon Shift. Freak Element: Songs from Another Dimension includes five softer, beautiful tracks (”As We Dream”, ”Penny For Your Thoughts”, “Over The Moon”, “Shine” and the long live track ”Open Mind”) where Nick (vocals, acoustic guitar) plays together with Peter Platten (vocals, synthesizers). The sound quality is excellent so this is a very nice little disc as well and a good addition to your Nick Riff collection. So what are you waiting for?!"
www.psychotropiczone.com
15.02.10 by Dj Astro
Psychedelic Central
"PHOTON SHIFT is the 3rd release in the Riffdisc series that will continue until 2012. The album is a very explosive collection of songs influenced by the late 1960's psychedelic and the progressive space rock movement of the early 1970's. The CD has 7 songs consisting of slow lengthy instrumental passages dominated by multiple sound generators to create complex waveforms by combining countless sonic variations through synth techniques to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experience. Although, structurally and lyrically the songs are strongly characteristic of the trippy psychedelic and futuristic space odyssey type sounds; the vocals on some of the songs reflect the earlier pop-rock influences creating a (less harmonious) melodic sound over a more lengthier ambient form of pop music delivered in a slow drawn, but harder driven form of the progressive style space rock music. Whilst, a couple of the songs also involve a cross pollination of early southern blues rock and post punk. This album is a very well balanced arrangement of songs that intertwines all of the early roots of the 1960's and 1970's psychedelic-rock, pop, blues and progressive-space rock, that is highly enjoyable and easy to listen to at loud volumes without being blasted away by noise!!!!
PHOTON SHIFT opens with "Edge of Time", which is the background song playing on this page that speaks for itself. Followed by "Glowing Bowl", starting out with trippy repetitious lyrics intensified by continuous sound manipulations creating the engima of an unearthly feel of ascending on a celestial journey bursting into a boundless space fiction theme of lyrics that carry forward in crisp classic rock style vocals giving the song a refreshing sound with a strong progressive edge.
"Symbiont" is a fascinating and extraordinary song, which distinctly incorporates a unique blend of pop influenced post punk over an exhilarating progressive based astral sound with a twist of early southern rock and blues twang, along with acidic-psychedelic lyrics such as "It's What The Mushroom Said" that is a hybrid of all of the late 1960's and early 70's roots in a unigue ambience that is very hypnotic and purely invigorating!
"PHOTON SHIFT" is not only a great choice for the title track on this album, but it is also my favorite! "Photon Shift" is 10:13 in length and is a purely and divinely exquisite song with all of the correct refinements in both instumentation and vocals to make it a delicately gorgeous ethereal experience with a beautiful unworldly spiritual essence that is absolutely breath taking! Love it!
"Already Gone" is perhaps one of the most traditonal sounding songs on the album that has a bit of an acoustic pop-folk essence combined with a mild space rock semblance that flows together nicely keeping up with the empyrean feel. "Mind Flow" picks up the pace in another transcendental space odyssey style song that inspirits the psychedelic mind altering fantasy. The album concludes with "Halls of Armenti" which is a hypnotizing mirage that produces a sedated feel leaving the listener in a quit relaxed state of mind as the album comes to a close.
PHOTON SHIFT is an excellent album! Strongly applaud!!"
www.psychedeliccentral.com
Jan (editor)
Fun House
"There are records that pass over the current fashions and trends of the musical supermarket's commercial foolish ambitions, and respond with the power of the heart. Nick Riff's Photon Shift ascribes itself right in nowadays more and more to this desolate catagory to the gallop of its 56 minutes of pure, timeless, highly imaginative psychedelic rock. Besides, Nick for sure is not the first little boy to be kept out of the "talent show" of the moment, but he is a real "fuzz" six string master, present since the 80's in the Cleveland music scene. His latest album oozes with all of his learning in pieces of unusual beauty like the opener Edge of Time, a very powerful kick in the face of psychedelic garage as the Seeds would have written it if they were twenty years old today. Not to mention the magnificent title track, where indeed the refined song writing ability emerges, or the final Halls of Amenti, suggestive and dark like a pagan rite on a moonless night. For once don't be fooled by deciever sirens: follow your heart into the Photon Shift."
Rosario Ciccarelli
www.terrascopeonline.com
NICK RIFF – PHOTON SHIFT
"Having been playing in bands since the mid 70’s, and an avid Terrascope reader and follower since it's inception, Nick Riff is no stranger to the Terrascopic musical landscape. His brand of Space-Rock Psychedelia is always pleasing to the ear, with his “Freak Element” album remaining one of my favourites released on the Delerium label.
Opening with style, “Edge of Time” is a slow-burning rocker, the riff punching out of the speaker and landing in your cranium. With the kind of feel that Bevis or Outskirts of Oblivion used to kick up, this is bound to be a classic, especially live. With echoed synths a-plenty, “Glowing Bowl” sounds like it could be a mellow ambient affair, that is until another heavy guitar riff bursts, without knocking, into the room heralding another great slice of heavy space, nice and noisy, as my mother used to say, although to be fair, there is also a mellower middle section, followed by a fine guitar workout that grabs your attention.
While in no danger of becoming Metal, “Symbiont” has one of those chugging riffs beloved of Hawkwind in the late 70’s/early80’s, the distortion assuring it remains more garage than not, the flowing guitar solo twisting minds in just the right style, a song that needs some serious volume, especially when it breaks down into a cosmic drone, a huge roar from the centre of the universe that detonates your soul, as it should.
Playing every instrument himself has given Nick total control, something he uses to great effect, the whole album flowing beautifully, each song the perfect one, sequenced to be played as a whole, the slow psychedelic drift of the title track, placed at the centre of the album to dazzle and beguile the listener. Here, Nick pulls out all the stops, creating a mini masterpiece, a timeless piece of psychedelia that deserves to be heard free from distraction.
With a sweet acoustic guitar, “Already Gone” has a psych-pop heart, the sweetness of the song tempered by the ecological tale contained within, the tune getting heavier towards the end over a backing of looped animal noises. Filled with shimmering guitar, “Mindflow” does just what it says on the tin, nine and a half minutes of cosmic bliss with a rock beat and a swirling heart, just lie on the floor and melt along and then stay there as the soft-landing float down of the drifting “Halls of Amenti” fills the room with incense, sounding not unlike the more psychedelic moments on “Electric Music for Mind and Body”, and that is high praise indeed.
Beautifully played and without a duff track, this album gets better each time, go find one especially if it comes with the limited addition bonus EP, which contains five wonderfully relaxed and ambient tracks, played on guitar and synths and containing a peace filled soul."
Simon Lewis
Kick Out The Jams
"Nick Riff's career is long, since he started playing songs from T Rex with a borrowed guitar from his uncle in the early 70's. After graduation he became part of different bands influenced by Hendrix the Sex Pistols and Cheap Trick, a mixture clearly unthinkable, leaving a recorded legacy rather sparse, but with the honor of sharing the stage with famous bands: REM, The Replacements, Brian Adams, Ramones, Saints or Faith No More, over the decade of the '80s. In the 90's Richard Allen from Delerium Records label reveals more Nick Riff and twenty years after the new album by this veteran of Cleveland is in the digital jukebox. Once again self-released the latest albums making songs around guitar riffs and liquid eternal. Psychedelia in its purest form is what you can find in this "Photon Shift". With no hesitation ethereal landscapes become volatile, then return to fall into a spiral of sounds that revolve around the six strings, with songs like "Symbiont "where potent guitars sound like the Stooges with bloodshot eyes were those who take a walk without putting your feet on the ground or cutting acoustic pop under the title" Already Gone "hides a letter that may take a look at otherwise different aspects of life, then... "to re-launch into the space creating surreal guitar based sounds that elevates the imagination. If you arrive in time to buy one of the first three hundred copies you get a bonus CD as a gift under the title "Song from Another Dimension" features Nick on guitars and Peter Platten - synthesizers, masterfully giving reading acoustic songs such as "As We Dream "," Penny For Your Thoughts "," Over The Moon "or" Shine "new issues and intimate, unadorned sound of easy listening, moving from pop to folk. To close, finally, with a live take of "Open Mind" which again recreates images and delights in memories undisturbed in your brain."
Oscarkotj-2010
www.rockandrollreport.com
March 9, 2010 by Matheson Kamin
Cleveland, OH-based musician Nick Riff has already spent a great deal of time of his life making music in bands around the Ohio and Kentucky regions. Early on, Riff got his start performing in both original and cover-based bands. But for the last two decades, Nick Riff has been creating his own brand of original rock in a solo career that has included releasing several EPs as well as albums.
While most musicians follow the current trends in music, Nick Riff has been creating a very retro sounding style to his music. Riff has been creating music that incorporates a very psychedelic feel to it. With that feeling and the space and time elements and subjects that Riff writes about, his music fills a very unique niche in music.
The last decade, in particular, has seen Nick Riff creating and releasing albums on his own and with his musical outfit of Freak Element that largely incorporates the space and time elements that have become a trademark of Riff’s music. Just recently, Nick Riff celebrated the release of his newest album entitled Photon Shift.
During the time in which Nick Riff has been creating his own material, he has alternated between creating music with a band and doing everything on his own. With the 2009 release of Photon Shift, Riff created all of the sounds on the album (human and otherwise).
Photon Shift marks the third album in what Nick Riff is calling the “Riffdisc Series”. As 2012 marks the year when the Ancient Mayans believed the world would come to an end, a majority of the songs have to do with just that subject.
Photon Shift by Nick Riff encompasses many different points of view about the ominous year of 2012: There is the track of “Edge of Time,” which has to do with the end of time as we know it; the title track of “Photon Shift” has to do with the belief that a change of energy will bring a definite “shift” in the existence of life in the universe.
Nick Riff uses the Riffdisc Series to inform as much as to entertain. “Photon Shift” blends the psychedelic music with his space-rock lyrics to create a unique listening experience.
For those who check out “Photon Shift” by Nick Riff, he is giving each listener a special offer: If you buy the album, Riff will also include another album as a special bonus. With Photon Shift, you will also receive a copy of "Songs From Another Dimension", an album created by Nick Riff and keyboard player Peter Platten under Riff’s band moniker of Freak Element. Together, Photon Shift and Songs From Another Dimension add up to almost an hour and a half of music for the price of one CD. But the deal is good only until the limited edition CD of Songs From Another Dimension lasts.
Background Magazine
2010 by André de Waal
Nick Riff - his real name? - is a veteran of the Cleveland music scene of the eighties and the nineties. He disappeared for a long time from the podia. Now, he returns with the full-length Photon Shift -album and the mini-disc Songs From Another Dimension with Freak Element, a duo consisting of Nick Riff and Peter Platten. On Photon Shift, a concept album dealing with the technological obsessions of our time, Riff plays all the instruments, although I think I heard a drum machine somewhere.
Without doubt Hawkwind is the role model for our space friend, because Photon Shift sounds alternatively like this famous of all space rock bands - listen to the third track Symbiont - or as a solo album of a Hawkwind-member. Somehow the music especially reminds me of a mixture of Hawkwind’s bass player Alan Davey and keyboard player Harvey Bainbridge. Nice long songs with a lot of guitar work which is surprisingly not so much riffing, gliding and soaring. Sometimes the music tends to get a bit boring as there aren’t enough ideas to warrant the length of the songs, but at the same time Photon Shift tends to get stronger when played more often. Nick Riff doesn’t belong to the premier league of musicians, but nevertheless his music is entertaining. This is unfortunately not the case with Freak Element. They make a mainly acoustic version of ethereal space folk and this is not particularly exciting, especially after hearing Photon Shift.
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