Ramases: Space Hymns (1971)
One of my favorite summer reads, Strange Stars (pictured above) chronicled the surprisingly frequent intersection of popular music and science fiction, going well beyond Ziggy Stardust’s obvious and sizable contribution to this interdisciplinary fusion, to the delight of interdisciplinary NERDS like myself.
The book diligently covered everyone from Hawkwind to UFO, Pink Floyd to Parliament, Kraftwerk to Klaus Nomi, merely using Bowie’s career launch via “Space Oddity” and 1980 Major Tom redux via “Ashes to Ashes” as convenient bookends to this surprisingly extensive (and still ongoing) interaction between musical and scientific escapism.
And, among the most obscure of all bands cited by author Jason Heller, was Ramases -- ostensibly a pseudonym for English singer and space cadet Kimberley Barrington Frost, who, in 1968, claimed to have been visited by the Pharaoh Ramesses, told he was the Pharaoh's reincarnation, and instructed to shave his head, start wearing colorful robes, and launch a musical career.
A few unsuccessful singles followed, but Frost’s luck improved once he was paired with future 10CC members Eric Stewart, Graham Gouldman, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme (the latter pair are better known to children of the ‘80s for their one-hit-wonder “Cry”).
And when I learned that 1971’s Space Hymns was released through the iconic Vertigo label, adorned with captivating Roger Dean cover art (*) and I simply had to track down this 1980 reissue and ship it all the way from Germany, mid-Pandemic.
Unfortunately, the music contained within is just about the least compelling piece of the Ramases story ...
Heller describes it as “haunting and exquisitely sad,” but it’s not nearly sad or haunting enough for me -- though I agree with his assessment of its “post-psychedelic eccentricity,” meshing futuristic space adventures with Egyptian mythology, universal truths with personal introspection.
None of which infused significant musical distinction into esoteric folk-prog like “Life Child,” “And the Whole World,” and “Earth People,” let alone narcoleptic mantras like “Hello Mister,” “Molecular Delusion” (sitar included) and “You’re the Only One.”
My favorite numbers -- the ones with a little more meat on the bone, as it were -- would be the cryptic “Quasar One,” the almost bluesy “Balloon,” the lyrically incongruent (but musically sound) “Jesus Come Back,” and the backwards-masked, electronics-spiked “Journey to the Inside” (think Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?” in zero gravity).
By the time the latter wraps things up with party banter in which Frost, I presume, points out the comparable ratios of interstellar and molecular distances, Space Hymns feels like something out of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but then, what else should we expect?
At least Ramases’ ensuing professional trajectory followed a predictable course, by quickly veering off course, and crashing to Earth after a 1975 sophomore LP called Glass Top Coffin, after which an increasingly despondent Frost took his own life in December of 1976, at age 42.
No doubt, he was bound for the stars ...
* I couldn’t afford to spend a BEEELLION dollars on an original 1970s pressing of Space Hymns, which revealed the full, six-paneled glory of Dean’s cover painting (see above), along with a hilarious reverse-side photo of Frost and his wife Dorothy Laflin.
More Space Rock & Sci-Fi Music: Alchemist’s Tripsis, Be-Bop Deluxe’s Futurama, Blood Incantation's Absolute Elsewhere, Enslaved’s Monumension, Hawkwind’s In Search of Space, Iron Maiden’s Somewhere in Time, Neil Merryweather’s Space Rangers, Monster Magnet’s Dopes to Infinity, Nektar’s A Tab in the Ocean, Novadriver’s Void, Orange Goblin’s Frequencies from Planet Ten, Parliament’s Mothership Connection, Alan Parsons Project’s I Robot, Pink Floyd’s A Saucerful of Secrets, Rush’s 2112, Samael’s Passage, Sun Ra’s Space is the Place, UFO’s UFO 1, UFOmammut’s Snailking, Vattnet Viskar’s Settler, Vektor’s Terminal Redux, Voivod’s Nothingface.
