Captain Beefheart

Safe As Milk / the Mirror Man Sessions Captain Beefheart

Double CD set features the 1967 album Safe As Milk and the 1970 album The Mirror Man Sessions. The genesis of the first Captain Beefheart album Safe As Milk is suitably shrouded in mystery, but the result is a collection of performances that meld blues, R&B, avant garde rock, and West Coast pop in a unique and heady mix that's like nothing else in the Captain's oeuvre. More than 30 years after these tracks were recorded, the Mirror Man Sessions are finally being released in the manner of Don Van Vliet's original vision. Some of the slated songs (supplemented with electronic effects) became Strictly Personal, released by Blue Thumb Records. Buddah followed suit, venturing into its vaults, choosing four extended songs, and packaging them as Mirror Man-obscuring facts by billing the album as "live recordings from 1965." This reissue adds five additional numbers, all of which show the band at an evolutionary point midway between the delta blues of its first recordings and the layered rhythmic stew of Trout Mask Replica. The Mirror Man Sessions is an essential document of an important ensemble. Sony. 2005.