A Spring Honeymoon With God & Family

Sky Saxon and Djin Aquarian, plus three of their friends, recorded some improvisational music in April 2005 which they released as King Arthur’s Court on a CD-r called A Spring Honeymoon With God & Family. The physical disc is no longer available for purchase but the album can still be officially downloaded.

The pieces on A Spring Honeymoon With God & Family are generally lengthy jams. They center around Djin’s rhythmic acoustic guitar and Steve “Scones” Kozyk’s bass, with lots of psychedelic electronic treatments and goodies washing through the album. Sounds of nature – birds and bees, rivers and thunderstorms – pop up frequently. It’s mesmerizing, really.

Sky Saxon actually only sings on four of the album’s eight songs, including its longest piece "My Queen". This isn’t the place for his growling garage rock posturing, so as on his Source Family recordings from the 1970s like Yodship and Lovers Cosmic Voyage he is gentle here. And very high. He free-associates the random bursts of his own synapses and takes his sweet time doing it.

A Spring Honeymoon With God & Family is officially described as having been recorded during a retreat near Mt. Shasta, an active volcano in the Cascade Mountains of California near the aptly-named town of Weed. After wandering around the forest, hiking to the snow line, and watching purple and green stars streaking through the sky, they recorded some improvised music at Djin’s area spiritual center, the YHWH House:

All songs written spur of the moment, while this 2-track recording was being made live at The YWHW House of Mt. Shasta on April 9-10th, 2005 by King Arthur’s Court.

The complex psychedelic effects were applied with careful craftsmanship by Anthony Pego and Steve Kozyk in San Diego after recording. Amazon.com has the actual date of first availability of this CD-r as October 10, 2005.

Besides singing, Sky Saxon is credited with kazoo; Djin with vocals and guitar. Steve Kozyk, a.k.a. Scones, plays bass. Anthony Pego is on keyboards and vocoder, and Mark Kneass (a.k.a. Saint Germain) provides percussion, vocals, and didgeridoo on "The Invisible".

Don’t let the phrase “spur of the moment” make you think the music on A Spring Honeymoon With God & Family is ramshackle or simplistic or directionless. Lots of work has gone into the overall feel and effect of this music, especially with regard to the wondrous sounds on each song and the nature effects. The recording quality is high too; this is an album of dense, contemplative psych presented professionally and without distractions – as a press release put it, “a neo-tribal, electronic, psychedelic musical experience”. It accurately documents the quintet’s transformative weekend on Mt. Shasta, like an impressionistic aural diary.

Let yourself get sucked in to A Spring Honeymoon With God & Family, and don’t plan anything for afterwards; it can be hard to rejoin this world after walking through the colorful extraterrestrial jungle that extends in all directions from King Arthur’s Court.

About the songs

1. "Natural Sunlight"
   A bass-heavy but mystically gentle groove repeats over three minutes while various nature sounds – chirping birds and the occasional bee – permeate the landscape. The opening track explodes with earthy bounty, all dripping wet forest and primeval life. Instrumental, except for Djin’s voice buried in the mix chanting “Ya Ho Wha”.
2. "The Invisible"
   Based on a morphing, heavily psychedelic electronic keyboard sequence which bubbles incessantly, like the meditation music of an advanced alien race. Sky Saxon is first heard here, and he is relaxed. Half-speaking and half-singing, he occasionally murmurs short phrases about Buddha and becoming invisible but then falls silent for long stretches; the title brings to mind the track "Incense Bangles And Beads" from Golden Vaults which bore the artist credit Invisible. (Presumably this term is a Sky preoccupation and not a steady group of musicians.) An Eastern-sounding, lazily-plucked instrument offsets the synthetic feel of the keyboard with its organic and wooden tone. The music morphs slowly from one mood to another; the keyboard sequence slowly drifts away in favor of some light percussion, and a didgeridoo rumbles on the edges. (Sky Saxon was credited with didgeridoo on a Robert Morgan Fisher track around this time, but Mark Kneass gets credit for it here. Maybe one led to the other?) "The Invisible" is eleven minutes of slow transportative bliss.
3. "Chapel Of Love"
   More gentle natural psychedelia, with sounds of running water and long single-chord vibration explorations. No singing, and thus no Sky. except for Djin intoning the song’s title. Five minutes that extend the bliss of the album even further.
4. "Sacred Medicine"
   Quicker and more contained than the other tracks on the album. No Sky Saxon again, but Djin murmurs some lovely and strange phrases throughout this heavily psychedelic guitar jam. Short but oh so sweet, and another side of the band that gives this album more depth and dimension.

5. "My Queen"
   The centerpiece of this album a 23-minute adventure. With unbelievable musical peaks and valleys ranging from the blissful to the terrifying, the musicians are truly exploring some vibes as an uncanny unit during this performance. Plus we get to hear Sky Saxon describe sex with a bumble bee – convincingly, even.
6. "Enter The Spirit"
   After the exhausting "My Queen" listeners are treated to a short break. This is the briefest track on the album. While weird – it’s full of slo-mo sizzling pop sounds and Sky completely off his head rambling about animal and spirits – it does anchor the listener back to earth. Somewhat.
7. "O Lotus Jewel Amen"
   Downright sprightly, the best-named track on A Spring Honeymoon With God & Family is seven minutes of a surprisingly conventional acoustic guitar pattern – sort of soft reggae, like Cat Stevens playing a Police song – and some 1969-era Pink Floyd echoey keyboard sounds. The indefatigable Djin plugs away on vocals the entire time, chanting melodically and exploring idiosyncratic themes virtually impossible to understand, what with the accumulating layers of lysergic effects and the low vocal mix.
8. "Welcome To The Orchard"
   The final track lasts eleven and a half minutes, and is again driven by gentle acoustic guitar, Sky Saxon’s wide-eyed cosmobabble, and wild, ambitious (and thickly psychedelic) keyboard effects that pulsate from speaker to speaker. Anthony Pego and Scones Kozyk switch places, playing bass and keyboards respectively. As on "O Lotus Jewel Amen", the vocals are often buried in the music, becoming a contributing part of the overall sound rather than something from a “lead singer”. Sky’s trip this time, centered again on the rich abundance of nature, begins with the word “sparkle” and he riffs on that theme in various directions amid the addled phantasmagoria. “Welcome to the orchard, the fruit is hanging from the trees just like Christmas presents, and when you walk underneath, hold out your hands and some will drop to you,” he murmurs. “I’ll tell you the truth: dogs love to eat peaches, and they sure love pears.”
   The tightly twisted psychedelic sounds of "Welcome To The Orchard" never let up, instead moving through various styles while remaining obscure and mistily beckoning. It’s a shame that the recording equipment seems overloaded at times, distorting the sound. But despite this minor complaint, "Welcome To The Orchard" ends the King Arthur’s Court project on a suitably blissed-out and distorted pillow of embraces.

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