38:38

VINYL FORMAT. Repressed. "38:38 is the lone release of The George-Edwards Group, an autumnal alien soundtrack that, over thirty years after being recorded (but not really released) defies time and categorization. If you've never heard of it before, that just means it's rare, right? This makes The George-Edwards Group's 38:38 one of the rarest private press albums of all time. 38:38 departs from the norm of the genre: instead of a low-fi demo-quality outing elevated mainly by dealer hype, it's a haunting piece of music that offers an unusually highbrow take on the archetypal Midwestern rock n roll existentialism usually addressed with a solid beat and sneering vocal. Crafting their sound out of the many influences of the day, Edward Balian and Ray George (aka, The George-Edwards Group) created pop music with acoustic guitars and harmonies, heavily-reverberant piano riffs, cold sheets of synthesizer, bells and chimes. Operating amidst the factory-charred grime of late 1960s Detroit, Balian and George's first group was the garage-rock obscurity Andromeda, regularly sharing bills with local heroes like The Frost, Rationals, and Amboy Dukes. Unlike these groups, Balian and George spiked their guitar blowouts with incongruous sound-on-sound experiments whose strangeness recalled lounge/exotica records of the 1950s. Too heady for the Motor City hard rock scene, they gradually lost interest in the restriction of playing all-covers gigs and turned to the basement, powered with multi-track tape recorders, processors and Moog synthesizers, flanging and phasing heavily with space effects and backwards loops, leaving a fair share of destroyed microphones and tape machines in their experimental wake. They first called themselves The Sorrento Steel Band to emphasize their metalloid leanings, but in 1974, Balian and George renamed their duo The George-Edwards Group (a la Pink Floyd, but using their own names) and began working on 38:38.

Like other fascinating basement loners (Bobb Trimble or brain-fried Youngstown, OH scuzzers Stone Harbour), they wrote songs inspired by top 40 staples like The Beach Boys, Mamas and the Papas and Lovin' Spoonful. Their use of synthesizers to fill out the sounds created a melodic yet freakish hybrid. Listening to 38:38 one would assume that the George-Edwards Group were copping moves from Krautrock records (with a disheveled Arthur Lee-inflected singer/songwriter tinge), but those records were not sold at local mall outlets - the guys had never heard them. All original artwork is included plus one more equally rare 45 track!