Sun Dial's debut album Other Way Out sounded like the work of a band that had somehow traveled from some U.K. hippie commune in 1968 into the early '90s through the magic of time travel, with all their sensibilities intact. But
Gary Ramon and his colleagues went though a lot in the two years that separated Other Way Out and its follow-up,
Reflecter: there had been enough lineup changes that
Ramon was the only musician to play on both albums, and a second LP's worth of material had been written, recorded, and scrapped before
Reflecter finally emerged. So it should come as no great surprise that
Reflecter sounds significantly different from the first album, though what doubtless startled fans most in 1992 was that
Sun Dial sounded a lot more contemporary on these sessions. The title cut is built around thundering electronic drum loops, the guitars sound bigger and heavier (unlike the debut album,
Ramon had help here from a second guitarist, Chris Dailey), and the combination of more straightforward melodies and a harder attack gives
Reflecter a sound that sometimes recalls the likes of
Ride,
Primal Scream, or
Dinosaur Jr., especially on tracks like "I Don't Mind" and "Easy for You." But the psychedelic foundation of this music is still solid (it's not as if none of those band reached into rock's past to inform their approach), and just as the psychedelic appropriation of the blues eventually evolved into heavy metal,
Reflecter sounds like a sincere progression from
Sun Dial's earlier work: more direct and less contemplative, but still reaching for the music of the spheres and proudly letting its freak flag fly. ~ Mark Deming