THE BIG TAKEOVER: Psychedelia is not dead. Never mind the San Francisco "shoegaze" scene this quintet emanates from--they even sport ex-Swervedriver drummer Graham Bonnar--Lunchtime isn't adrift in dreamy tones and delay-ridden textures. No, I mean the original late-60s trippy stuff. Vocals so buried in effects it's like a damaged subway platform speaker. Guitars that spatter fuzzed drones and damaged, fractured sounds, and a repetitive bass that turns this into a hazy, humid sputter. Like the static of a five-dollar transistor radio, this is raspy aural adventure without the original psychedelic pop structures or attitude, like the more freaked-out side of the Electric Prunes. It's just truly trippy mind-blowing.

THE CHART: Just in time for the 25th anniversary of Apollo 11, the Imajinary Friends sound like they've been on the moon since 1969 trying to get our attention with their twisted transmissions. It's part space rock, part trance, part ambient, but all weird! When vocals show up they sound like Buzz Aldrin with the worst space hangover ever, filtered through a Captain Video walkie-talkie. The rest is soundscape straight from the surface of the moon! Definitely not for MTV, but could go over big at NASA! BLAST OFF!!

ANTHROPOMORPHIC .8: Whoa! Who slipped the acid into my CD player? Lots of guitar feedback and sonic treatments thrown into the pot, with a shrieker above it all. Play this with your headphones on, and you'll enter another realm--wild shit awaits!

FLIPSIDE: Pretty way out stuff that floats around enough while being sort of hypnotic drawing the listener in. This is probably great drug taking music (though I wouldn't call myself an expert on the subject) with its heavy '60s psychedelic bent akin to recent contemporaries like Spacemen 3 and Helios Creed. I would highly recommend this release and that says a lot considering I'd like to see your average stoner as soilent green

FLIPSIDE .92: Hmmmm. From S.F., huh? These guys have gotta be weirdo loner stoners who must fucking hate everything about "new music" as we know it. From the heart of the city that has brought you the worst in political correctness comes a bizarre psychedelic surprise from the Imajinary Friends. But don't panic, this ain't no hokey Grateful Dead hug a tree shit. On the rather blah looking sleeve and band name alone, I'd normally have passed this by, but Bomp has earned my respect enough times over to at least grant a listen to whatever they put out.. It was worth the effort. Trippy and experimental (like Spacemen 3) meets gloomy (early Floyd/Bauhaus). Sounds like dosed aliens at the controls sending futuristic love vibes to feeble Earthlings. Not so much songs as telephatic brain waves with heartbeats cranked to 10. I got scared more than once during this. For real. I mean, you wanna drive your neighbors absolutely fucking bonkers, this'll do the job. I want ten of what these guys are on. There's something to be said for carving a niche this strange even if the kids can't dance to it.

"Imajinary Friends are a psychedelic juggernaut -- which is not surprising, considering this is a band featuring former members of deluded psych-folksters the Brian Jonestown Massacre, trip-hop lounge lizards Tipsy, and even the drummer from Swervedriver, that late great shoegaze originator who brought the rawk to the genre. But this is no paisley Summer of Love psychedelia; this is pure "Alice down the rabbit hole" brown-acid bad trip. This is Lunchtime in Infinity, an apt title for the psilocybic delights found within. After a brief false lull of an intro, "New Fast Car" drops a bassline straight out of Primal Scream's recent strobe-light frenzies, sending the listener on a full-throttle hell ride accompanied by abrasively high-end distorted vocals and bee swarm wah-wah guitar. "Faked Out" further develops the formula into near formlessness, with distant chain-saw guitars and vocals mangled beyond all recognition that would do the Butthole Surfers' Gibby Haynes proud, the only constant being a hypnotic rhythm section appropriately evoking both Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" and the Doors' "The End.""