“Music Is A Vanishing World”
by Sky Sunlight Saxon Universal Stars Peace Band
1984 song
The band slows down on "Music Is A Vanishing World", the third song on Side 1 of Sky Saxon’s two-faced 1984 album Masters Of Psychedelia. The performance centers around airy, thudding drums and an awesome complex ‘n’ edgy guitar riff.
The comparative quiet makes Sky’s voice a little easier to hear but it’s still mixed too low. He does his slurred talk-singing thing, inventing melodies and rhythms that don’t overtly match the music but actually fit perfectly with it. Like magic. “Everything’s an ill-UUUUsion,” he chants, and makes you believe it.
Not only does "Music Is A Vanishing World" unfold at a lower tempo but it takes its time before saying goodbye. At over five minutes it’s the longest of the newer recordings on Side 1 of the LP and that’s a good thing: you can get lost in the pungent distortion of the guitar, the ever-changing drum patterns, and those swirling, howling vocals.
And cowbell fans: you’re in luck. There are a couple of times where the band speeds up and injects more ferocity into the song, and as that noisy cowbell dings and the guitar spins out of control, Sky rambles excitedly about “getting on the diamond ship”. You feel as if you’re already there inside with him.
“Music Is A Fantasy World”
An alternate version of this song was released on the 2008 vinyl LP Dragonslayer, apparently the same instrumental take but with a different vocal track. This version has a clearer mix and an altered title: “Music Is A Fantasy World”, a line Sky sings towards the beginning (of both versions). On the muffled mix of the 1984 version his singing was less clear, which likely means that it’s the 1984 version that was mistitled, and that the song should be thought of as "Music Is A Fantasy World".
