San Francisco-based producer Al Lover has spent the last several years evolving an approach to psychedelic reworks of rock ‘n roll in its various inflections. Though they share some common structures, his solo LP debut Sacred Drugs is a thick distillation compared to older remixes or the heady mixtapes he’s curated for Austin Psych Fest, each its own primer on garage and psych in the corresponding year. Sacred Drugs stands out in Al’s discography, though some of its character and more transcendant qualities are hinted at in his collaborations, with GOAT, and particularly on the single “Snake Hands” recorded with White Fence. The elaborate treatments on his 2011 digital album Distorted Reverberations (of Reverberating Distortion): Psychedelic Reinterpretations of Contemporary Rock ‘n Roll offer the most obvious antecedant for Sacred Drugs, but clearly as a collection it lacks the same scope. 

Listening to Sacred Drugs is as transformative an experience as Al’s own style of composition. Songs are a deliberate associative enterprise, paralleling both the contextualization that takes place as part of any conscious “hearing” and the abstract notion of self-development. Texture and tone combine to lead the listener inward, with hypnogogic beats that evoke the sense of ritual awakening when it was still a communal undertaking. In that way Sacred Drugs offers a measured take on reality, a tool for perceiving the outlines of your own interconnectedness… like the eponymous entheogens, Sacred Drugs is intended as a companion for self-discovery.

Al Lover - The Shadow Self Shake

top psychedelic banana @ Kristalni oscilator on Radio Student & psych'o'fuck @ Radio 808

Al Lover - The Shadow Self Shake

Psych Army