The Electronic Hole is band by Phil Pearlman. He assembled The Electronic Hole in 1969 strictly for personal use — to audition musicians for his new band. To do this, and to add to his own collection of demos, he used local studios in off-hours thanks to his friendship with album engineer Joe Sidore.
One of first thing you'll notice about this album is that it has strange fuzz and noisy power combined with psychedelic riffing complexity. Second thing may be that it only has 2 song titles - "The Golden Hour" and "Love Will Find A Way" - divided in many parts. Whole noise theory and vocals may remind you of The Velvet Underground, because Pearlman's voice does sound similiar to John Cale's. Anyhow, this album contains extremely rare songs from extremely rare band, so copy of this on LP may cost fortune. Original heavy psych sound without hesitation drones you into psych wandering and that's one of biggest qualities of this rare gem. First part of "The Golden Hour" is great trippy track with nice organ background, kinda similiar to Iron Butterfly's idea of how psych song should sound like, but with mellow and sweet vocals temptingly pulls you into this album. Part II with great sitar playing became my favorite track of this album and it mesmerized me after only one play. Chilly, relaxed and in Ravi Shankar's style - can't go wrong with that. Part III is however rougher than first two parts, offering more rock and roll, psych rock, noise rock and avant garde in one shot - and that's where The Velvet Underground similarities began. Part IV made touch with blues, where harp playing is present through whole song. First part of "Love Find Will A Way" starts mysticly and slowly, bringing unexplainable joy of just listening that song, and maybe, if lucky, holding doobie to this song. Part II starts with noisy riff and continues on through whole song, lasting 7:05 and bringing average jam in the middle of the song. Third part it's the peak of noise rock on whole album. Guitar is so fuzzy you hardly hear the voice, but atmosphere is achieved - messed and unclear. You'll love this album if you search for heavy psyched out The Velvet Underground-influenced band, rare early 70s avant-garde scene mixed with some mellow and cool vibe.
The Electronic Hole exists in a strange netherworld between Cosmic Michael-style endearing ineptitude and strangely effective, stuttering, trance-inducing folk-rock sounds. The main problem, or charm if you want to see it that way, is that the Electronic Hole's ambition tends to outstrip their playing abilities. Drums stumble, vocals waver off key, and the rhythm guitar tends to get a little distracted. On the more conventional songs, this doesn't work out very well. Fortunately, there are some longer, droning tracks which make for a far groovier listen.
My view on this album is that the songs under five minutes are pretty disposable, but the ones longer than that are worth a listen. "The Golden Hour Part IV" is like a distilled, sloppier "Venus in Furs" with a garage-band plunking bassline driving it along, while "Love Will Find A Way Part II" has a fuzzed-out minimalism that strikes me as a predecessor to the signature Spacemen 3 sound. "Love Will Find A Way Part III" is one of those raga rockers that tend to shoot straight for the sweet spot in my ear. Meanwhile, tracks like the opening "The Golden Hour Part I" test my patience a bit as we hear the band attempt a sunburst West Coast rock sound, yet the band can't play their instruments very well and their ability to stay in time with each other is even worse.
Although harbouring some serious flaws, the Electronic Hole's long player has at least half of a pretty hep album for you psychedelic junkies. Hey, that's all Love's "Da Capo" can lay claim to as well. Anyway, you can start the dirty jokes about the band's name... now. (source)
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