LSD and the Search for God trips out at Mad Alchemy

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      As spectacles go, it promises to be one of the most mind-warping of the year, partly because of the bands involved and mostly because of the man in charge of orchestrating the visuals.

      “The main guy is Lance Gordon,” says Andy Liszt, singer-guitarist with San Francisco’s LSD and the Search for God. “He’s got to be about 68 years old or something, but he was back on the scene when he was a teenager, learning stuff at Grateful Dead shows and doing stuff with Bill Graham at the Fillmore West. It’s a pretty spectacular thing.”

      The thing that Liszt refers to is the Mad Alchemy Caravan tour, which brings six of the most fantastically monikered acts in new-millennium psychedelia to Vancouver as part of a package tour. In addition to LSD and the Search for God, you get the Stevenson Ranch Davidians, Jesus Sons, Dream Phases, Family of Light Band, Creatures Choir, and more, all for 12 bucks.

      But where things really get trippy is the visual component. Mad Alchemy bills itself as an analogue liquid light show straight out of San Francisco during the psychedelic years. That means multiple overhead projectors pointed at the stage, with a team of alchemists working to re-create a time when Haight-Ashbury was the most magical intersection on the planet.

      Orchestrating things is Gordon, who was last seen in these parts providing the acid-dipped eye candy for Temples at the Rickshaw in February. Although he formed Mad Alchemy only a half-decade ago, he honed his craft in the ’70s, working with the likes of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Roky Erickson, and It’s a Beautiful Day. When Gordon first stumbled onto LSD and the Search for God, he found himself an instant fan of the band’s mix of paisley-splattered psych and dream-warp shoegaze, a mixture in full effect on last year’s Heaven Is a Place EP. Liszt and his bandmates were equally enamoured.

      “The first time I met Lance was when we did a show in Salt Lake City, of all places,” Liszt recounts. “He was living in Utah at the time and he did a show that we were doing. He liked what we did, and we loved what he did. We maintained contact and then he relocated to the Bay Area, where he got really involved again with the light-show stuff. He’s done a number of shows with us since then.”

      It’s no surprise that Gordon fell for LSD and the Search for God. Raised in Minnesota, Liszt moved to the Bay Area after a stint in New York. He met guitarist and now bandmate Chris Fifield and they immediately bonded over music, not just the 13th Floor Elevators and Blossom Toes, but also the Smiths, Slowdive, and Luna.

      “We’ve definitely got a more broad range of influences than one might think,” Liszt says. “We definitely don’t feel locked into or pigeonholed into one genre. What we’re doing is making music that we really believe in.”

      The group released an eponymous debut EP in 2006, then took a Chinese Democracy–like length of time to produce its follow-up. In between, there were tours of Europe and appearances at psychedelic happenings across North America, including stands, naturally, at the Levitation festival in Austin. Liszt promises that new music is on the horizon, with the band heading back into the studio in September.

      As for the immediate future, get ready to have your mind blown in Vancouver by Mad Alchemy’s main visionary.

      “Lance is in his 60s, but he has the creative DIY spirit of an 18-year-old,” Liszt says. “He’s got a young couple of 20-year-olds who he is passing this on to, and he’s there before the sound check to get everything set up. It takes them longer to break down than the bands. They’re using oil and water to create live paintings on their overhead projectors, spinning plates and adding different colours and moving things around. It’s like what they did for lights before people had access to all these digital things. And it’s every bit as amazing.”

      LSD and the Search for God plays the Mad Alchemy Caravan tour at the Rickshaw Theatre on Friday (July 21).

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