Fat Mattress - Fat Mattress [1969, Esoteric Records, 2009]⭐

Genre: Psychedelic Rock
Album Release Year: 1969
Disc Release Year: 2009
Country: UK
Audio Codec: FLAC
Rip Type: tracks+covers
Audio Bitrate: Lossless
Duration: 1:06:01.427

Tracklisting:
01. All Night Drinker (3:14)
02. I Don't Mind (3:50)
03. Bright New Way (3:51)
04. Petrol Pump Assistant (3:03)
05. Mr. Moonshine (4:05)
06. Magic Forest (3:05)
07. She Came In The Morning (4:01)
08. Everything's Blue (2:47)
09. Walking Through A Garden (3:27)
10. How Can I Live (4:29)
Bonus Tracks:
11. Naturally (3:06)
12. Iridescent Butterfly (A & B sides of single) (3:45)
13. Magic Forest (Mono single version) (2:58)
14. Little Girl In White (4:11)
15. Eric The Red (Recorded during sessions for ''Fat Mattress'') (2:56)
16. Black Sheep Of The Family (B-side of single) (4:35)
17. Hall Of Kings (Recorded during sessions for ''Fat Mattress II'') (5:34)
18. Which Way To Go (Unreleased Jim Leverton solo single) (3:05)

Fat Mattress:
Neil Landon: vocals, production
Noel Redding: guitar, vocals, production
Jimmy Leverton: bass, harpsichord, organ, vocals, production
Eric Dillon: drums, tuned percussion, production

Guest musicians:
Mitch Mitchell: drums, percussion on "How Can I Live"
Chris Wood: flute on "All Night Drinker"
Jimi Hendrix: percussion on "How Can I Live"

Fat Mattress was formed in late-1968 by vocalist Neil Landon and guitarist and vocalist Noel Redding, who was then performing bass with the popular psychedelic rock band The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Landon and Redding had already written a number of songs for Landon's cancelled solo project and, with the recruitement of bassist Jim Leverdon and drummer Eric Dillon, completed writing and began recording their first material.

The self-titled debut was completed the next year, and was released in the United Kingdom by Polydor Records on 15 August and in the United States by Atco Records in October. In promotion of the album, the band also released their debut single, "Magic Forest".

Fat Mattress was later reissued in 1992 by Sequel Records featuring five new songs, all of which were later included on the 2000 compilation album The Black Sheep of the Family: The Anthology; Castle Communications subsequently re-released the 15-track reissue on 5 March 1996 under the title One.

The album was reissued again on 29 June 2009 by Esoteric Records featuring a total of 18 songs, including B-sides and previously unreleased material.

Reception:
The debut album by Fat Mattress was a minor commercial success, charting at number 134 on the American Billboard 200 albums chart (then known as the Pop Albums chart).

The album was described, in a review for music website allmusic, by critic Richie Unterberger as "passable, pleasant late-'60s psychedelia with a far lighter touch than the hard bluesy psychedelic rock [Noel] Redding played with [Jimi] Hendrix."

In said review, Unterberger went on to suggest that the album is "often like an amalgam of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, and Love, with some passing nods to British psychedelia by Traffic [...], the Move, and the Small Faces; there's even a bit of a Monkees-go-spacy feel to 'I Don't Mind.'"

Esoteric Records described the record as "A superb piece of Psychedelic rock in its own right," suggesting that it "has [...] been hailed as a classic of the era" (by Wikipedia)