Sly and the Family Stone's first effort doesn't have any of their signature hits and is generally slept on these days. But put it on, and you'll hear transmissions from another planet of funk.
This is impassioned, utterly bizarre music that belongs beside The Shaggs' Philosophy of the World as one of the great avant outsider anti-pop albums of all time.
Recorded shortly after Syd Barrett left the band, this is a transition between early up-to-their-eyeballs-in-acid-and-folk Floyd and the classic rock juggernaut they were to become.
On close listening, snippets of melody, harmony, and choral voicings slip in and out of the churning abstract sea—a beautiful, unique exercise in ecstatic annihilation.