Founded by Savage Republic and Independent Project Records lynchpin Bruce Licher, Scenic released their debut album in 1995: they had found their muse among the dunes of the Mojave desert and surfaced with a post-psychedelic brew of surf rock that rang deeply indebted to masters of the evocative such as Ennio Morricone.
 
The Acid Gospel Experience, the band’s third full-length, appeared in 2002, conjuring new unexplored sceneries while retaining the band’s signature cinematic flair. If the early days of Scenic were all sand and dust, The Acid Gospel Experience proves soothingly airy and enveloping: it’s an epic, sprawling 73-minute suite of evocative ambient space rock that finds Scenic expanding their improvisational skills and broadening their sonic palette to incorporate instruments such as sitar, vibes and congas, as well as new guitar effects and sounds.
 
From the upbeat krautrock-indebted psychedelia of ‘Lightspeed’ to free-flowing 18-minute closer ‘A Journey through the Outer Reaches of Inner Space’ - an improvised yet focused piece that captures the group at their most spontaneous, the kind of mini-epic that’s eager to transport listeners into another dimension - the impressionistic psychedelia at the heart of The Acid Gospel Experience looks back at the unfettered experimentations of early 70s German rock while remaining unmistakably Scenic. The album also includes a guest appearance by minimalist elder statesman Harold Budd, who had become a fan of Scenic’s music over the years and appears on ‘Under a Wing’.
 
Now available for the first time on vinyl, Independent Project Records’ newly-remastered double-LP release of this extraordinary album is packaged in a deluxe Unipak-style gatefold jacket on translucent ice green vinyl in a numbered edition of 1000 copies for Record Store Day 2024.