The President of the LSD Golf Club

Album Review

Hooverphonic is Belgium's premiere psychedelic ambient dream pop ensemble. Their sixth studio-produced album retains the trippy qualities that have earned them a faithful following since they emerged from the ethers in 1995, while steering towards a relaxed and slightly more conventional accessibility. Word up is that President of the LSD Golf Club was supposed to be the title of the album released in 2000 as The Magnificent Tree, but that someone at Sony wouldn't allow it. That kind of blockheaded censorship was already outmoded more than three decades earlier when the Rolling Stones were forced by executives at London and Decca to release their Beggars Banquet album with a crème colored RSVP "invitation" cover instead of the originally intended and now familiar photo of a graffiti-decorated water closet! True to form, Hooverphonic saw to it that certain editions available in Sweden, Spain, Italy, and France contain an eleventh bonus track entitled "The Perfect Dose."