Sound Factory - Sound Factory (1970)(2003)

The sole album by this Brazilian psychedelic rock group (with an American guitarist in Kevin Brennan) is the kind of item collectors seek only for its rarity (300 copies of the original LP released in 1970). The CD reissue by Shadoks in 2003 exposed that there is hardly a "musical" reason to own it. Sound Factory's take on psychedelic rock is generic, the musicianship very average (with downright shaky bits, in "Restless Time" in particular), and the sound quality -- what you can expect from a 1970 Brazilian low-budget recording studio. All that being said, psychedelic rock historians and curious minds can still enjoy this eponymous album as a timepiece. The group's repertoire consists mostly of covers selected from the British and American blues rock corpus. Traffic, Blind Faith, Johnny Winter, Cream, and It's a Beautiful Day are among the honored bands, Sound Factory's renditions sticking as close as possible to the originals. Jefferson Airplane's "Lather" is the most psychedelic song of the set -- and hearing it sung by a man strips some of its charm away. The album also presents three original songs. Guitarist Kevin Brennan's "Restless Time" is a rather poor attempt at a psychedelic singalong, while "Let's Go" buries a great bass riff under some horrible falsetto vocals -- on a side note, bassist Antonio Ricardo Sampaio is the most inventive musician of the group, his basslines consistently bringing more to the music than what you expect. Nevertheless, this one is for completists and collectors only.