If you’ve fallen prey to the Sun City Girls cult, it was more than likely the eccentric band’s simultaneously rare and most popular album Torch of the Mystics, released on vinyl in 1990, that gave you a sip of something from which you didn’t want to wake up. I’m not sure how I was able to listen to it initially, given that I was a wee child probably still suckling at my mother’s teat when the first edition came out (and given the fact that I found it almost impossibly difficult to find online once the advent of downloading music became truly that), but somehow I became exposed to the engaging weirdness of the originally AZ trio last decade. The drunken riffs of “Radar 1941” permeate my mind, and from Torch, I descended further, but we all remember the common origin.
And now, thankfully, you won’t have to look for it like I did, as Sun City Girls’ own label Abduction has finally decided to reissue Torch of the Mystics on CD and LP October 30! The album did receive a separate CD release back in 1993, but other than that, this is the first true reissue of an album that has otherwise been desperately in need of one. Whoever asks the question “why now?” is missing the point, of course; let us only express gratitude.
Thanks to Sir Richard Bishop and Alvarius B for doing this. Charles Gocher lives on in memory, of course. Pre-orders are available here and here.
Torch of the Mystics tracklisting:
01. Blue Mamba
02. Tarmac 23
03. Esoterica of Abyssynia
04. Space Prophet Dogon
05. The Shining Path
06. The Flower
07. Café Batik
08. Radar 1941
09. Papa Legba
10. The Vinegar Stroke
11. Burial in the Sky
• Sun City Girls: http://www.suncitygirls.com
• Abduction: http://www.suncitygirls.com/abduction
More about: Sun City Girls
Related
News
Sun City Girls’ infamous “Dawn of the Devi” gets reissued
Features
Sir Richard Bishop
“I doubt, at this point, that I’m going to have an epiphany that’s going to make me join a cult or a commune, or a magical fraternity. I’m more of a chaos guy, I think.”
News
