When you enjoy music you’ve never heard before, it’s either similar to what you’ve already heard, or completely new. Both have their merits, but hearing something different is the rarer treat.
Often, the most unusual music hides in the releases by artists that literally came and went. Those artists that appear with one or two releases in a sea of vast double figure discographies. Those that did something hugely focussed, singular, quite possibly amazing, and said it all. Then, quite possibly, where never heard of again…
The late sixties and early seventies are full of these weird anomalies as the ‘industry’ searched to find the next big thing. Unique windows into searing acid rock of Golden Dawn, the superbly detailed folk of Gary Higgins, or the pagan weirdness of Joachim Skogberg are a few favourites. Bill Fay’s two 1970 albums perfected a microcosm of an entire career. In a way, you could see these examples, and a dozen more as simple debut releases, not followed up by much, if anything. Maybe the moment past, confidence waned, but an undeniable sense that a uniqueness was captured. Over time this has a certain charm.
After all, back then, in an age ruled by physical products, radio plays, and non-digital real life, making an album was a serious technical feat, and required real financial heft that often true creatives didn’t have much of… Practicality, and great art aren’t always compatible.
As the history books have revealed, ESP Disk was one such a label that delighted in spotlighting various artists with a platform to showcase their singular talents. Formed in New York in 1963 by Bernard Stollman, the label’s motto being “The artists alone decide what you will hear.” initially meant to focus on Esperanto based music, however the label quickly became the home of another universal language – free jazz, and releases by such luminaries as Albert Ayer, Paul Bley, Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra.
Whilst slightly removed from the main trajectory of the label, they also released several essential, deeply psychedelic rock albums at the outer fringes of that genre. Releases by Holy Modal Rounders, The Godz, The Fugs, Pearls Before Swine, and in particular the stoned trance out of Seventh Sons 4am At Franks and Cromagnon’s superbly twisted Cave Rock are all hugely recommended.
Looking like a fairly low-key release, in the midst of all this wildness, is the very definition of a hidden gem. Color By The Number by Mij however, quickly sucked us in – an album we quickly grew to adore.
Apparently recorded in just 3 hours on January 12,1969, its 44 minute runtime has played countless times since we finally tracked it down a reissued CD at the start of this year, almost exactly 55 years later. The album’s place in history further obscured and muddled by the fact it was reissued in 2008 under the revised title Yodelling Astrologer and featured somewhat inferior artwork.
Color By The Number, regarded in its original form is however a stunner. Composed, written and performed Jim Holmberg, under the name Mij, we are treated to 9 tracks of vocals and vocalisations, guitar, much of which is bathed in echo. As far as we know, it’s the only music he ever recorded.
Holmberg had been noticed whilst busking by a fountain in Washington Square Park and invited to record for ESP the following day. Presumably he simply rocked up with a glint in his eye, and ran through the material he had to hand. An opportunity to capture all his ideas.
It takes less than 30 seconds to realise the presence of pure magic in this fleeting session, after studio engineer Onno Scholtze says “Two Stars – take one…”
Two Stars is a beautiful spiralling introduction to this world, a whole universe of detail, edges, spirals and expansion from folky strumming and wide-eyed lyricism. But any notion this was a false start evaporates in the 7 minutes outer space of Grok (Martian Love Call). A floating mixture of whistling, yodelling, strumming, peaks and troughs its way into a form of outerplantery folk.
Romeo and Juliet, Little Boy and Lookin’ Out Today delves further into the tension between storytelling and texture. The echo effect continually transforming spaces and silence into waves of throbbing energy. Door Keys is more insistent, the lyrics expanding from the mundane into the metaphysical.
At the point the album could quite happily fizzle and still be incredible, the glorious Planet of a Flower blossoms. Undoubtedly the lead single in another dimension, its chugging grooves and sparks deserve to be an adored lysergic anthem.
Never Be Free is even more saturated, a thick stew that delights in the echoes and real-time smudging into each other, peaking in a loaded climax that approaches electronic rather than acoustic forms… The closing 8 minutes of Look Into the (K) Night bounces and reflects before again rising into waves of textural abstraction – like finally finding the surface after a deep hallucinatory dive.
Color By The Number is an album that never fails to wash over you in a bemuse amazement. Exactly what Mij is singing about never quite makes sense, but you feel, it’s a heartfelt flythrough of his world at that time. Love, regression, evolution, the human condition, the universe, space and time, all drawn in the rawest, most skeletal way, but transformed into a heaving mass of endless sound.
Even the original sleeve, whilst easy to overlook, quickly comes to life. It’s since became one of our favourites, and one of the most layered and psychedelic ever. A simple paint-by-numbers outlined drawing portrait, but each section is marked with the same ‘o’. Whilst the invitation is that this image ultimately becomes one flat colour, a closer look reveals the ‘o’s are in fact the pupils of his eyes. Each space is another to gaze at, and to be gazed back at. An infinite loop, an endless slow burning puzzle…
Everything here is cause and effect, light and shade, a beginning and an end.
Looking back to the fruits of those 3 hours, all those years ago, you can’t help but feel how bloated the world has become since. How pure and instantaneous focus and inspiration can sometimes be. Color By The Number exists in its own place, but given the chance, it’s one of the most beautifully succinct, and singular records we’ve yet discovered. All these years later – we thank you Mij!!
The brief snatch of studio chatter between the engineer and Mij after Planet of the Flower says it all:
Engineer: ‘Something went very, very wrong’
Mij: ‘I think it was great you know, why would we want to do it again?”
Color By The Number is available digitally under its revised name Yodelling Astrologer here
Explore ESP Disk here
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