Everyone reviewing this record seems to get hung up on the fact that
Bobby BeauSoleil is an inmate, serving a life sentence for murder, who had ties with the
Charles Manson cult, and who recorded and produced this psychedelic prog rock soundtrack, in prison, for a film extolling the virtues of Lucifer. If these are the only things that lend credence to this album, someone forgot to actually listen to it. Lucifer Rising is a beautifully realized work, no matter what the circumstances were surrounding its coming to be.
BeauSoleil is a talented arranger and a fine guitarist, with a knack for guerilla recording that most D.I.Y. engineers, on the outside, would be envious of. Layers of guitar, processed through handmade effects units, and hot-rodded junks hop synthesizers issuing indescribable tones arc and dive throughout
BeauSoleil's spacious soundscapes. The sound stage is wide and horizon-less, with dark-toned movements rising up from stygian depths and then ascending heavenward with gorgeous chordal fusillades. For a compact introduction to
BeauSoleil's epode-like songsmithing, "Part III" offers a strata-revealing overview. Moving from
Piper at the Gates of Dawn-era
Floyd motifs, the song evolves into an intricate and vacillating progression reminiscent of
Air's "Don't Be Light" with all of the dazzling chordal movement, but none of the pomp.
Floyd and
Air comparisons aside, the most accurate description of
BeauSoleil's trajectory would be psych-prog by way of
Claude Debussy, and hard rock as it may have been envisioned by
Ennio Morricone. Lucifer Rising is far too beautiful to be labeled as hard rock, far too focused to be written off as meandering prog, and too full of merit to be judged solely on the heteroclite life of its composer.