Wonderful words by the ever erudite Adam Turner.

Project Gemini’s first album – The Children Of Scorpio – came out in 2022. It was a cinematic album that took in funk, psyche, freak folk, freak beat, and the sounds of Italian exploitation movies. In short, a wigged out deep dive into the world of late night cult films and their soundtracks. Now PG are back with a follow up, Colours & Light, which is more of the same but going further, and exploring a world of Eastern, French and Turkish influences. Taking a kaleidoscopic trip down the stairs into a basement club where everything is happening at once.

Project Gemini is the work of Paul Osborne, and the new album began with insomnia. The lyrics came out of those long late nights alone. Guests arrive in the form of Barrie Cadogan (Little Barrie, Primal Scream) on guitar and French singer Wendy Martinez. Drummer Tony Coote, percussionist Paul Elliott, and guitarist/ Moog player Bert Page also join in. Paul’s daughter Olivia plays keys on the final track along with Dorian Conway on flute. 

Colours & Light is very much a step on from the debut. It opens with the minute long psyche flute and tabla piece The Sun Devil Prelude, which segues into the title track’s fuzz guitar and `60s acid folk sounds. Jack Sharp’s fretwork weaves its way in, nodding its head to folk giants Pentangle and their blend of English folk with jazz, pop and rock.

After that we’re straight onto late 60s French TV with Extra Nuit – the spirit of Serge and Jane seeping through – gnarly guitar and organ and Wendy’s spoken delivery. The songs tumble past, hypnotic, early 70s counter-culture, film, music, freak outs, the underground press, the events of Mai ’68, riots in Grosvenor Square, Donald Cammell & Nick Roeg’s  Performance, and the hippy trail all bleeding in. Lost In The Woods (Paranoia) has some lovely finger-picked folk guitar and double-tracked vocals. The Sun Devil is unsettling, the Moog’s notes being bent on a pitch wheel, stretched on the rack, before the funk drums kick in and a flute drifts around on top. Seven Seconds To Sunrise brings some Middle Eastern strings, the taste of strong black coffee and the air heavy with the fug of smoke. Those Eastern melodies continue on After The Dawn, a song complete with layered, heavily reverbed harmonies.

The album feels like a journey, a trip, a night out. The penultimate track Twilight seems to suggest that not just an evening has been lost to the freak beat/ funk / psyche / folk underground but the full following day, and then the night after that as well. The closer – The Sun Devil Coda – is less than a minute long, just keyboard, flute and echo. You look around, the liquid lava lamp show is still spinning, its projections still bouncing off the walls, the band still playing, and round and round we go, deeper into this world of colours and light.

Project Gemini’s Colours & Light is out now, on Mr Bongo.

You can find more proper, on point, prose from Adam Turner over at his own brilliant blog, The Bagging Area. Adam is also part of the admin team at the mighty Flightpath Estate.