"Alchemy - 30 Years of Counter Culture" is an alchemical fusion of dub, jazz, celtic, ambient, psy-trance and spoken word. The album features Youth, Raja Ram & Simon Posford, Howard Marks, Brian Barritt, Bush Chemist, JC001, Drum Druids and many more, brought together by Lee Harris to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the oldest headshop in the creative melting pot of London's Ladbroke Grove area.

The album project is introduced by Drezz of Nervasystem:

"When Sean Williams (Process) first asked if I fancied doing a tune with
Lee Harris, I thought that it sounded like an interesting and fun thing to do.
A few weeks later Lee came to the studio and we partook of the herb and
started jamming. In the next few hours we entered the ethereal world
of the gonzo alchemists, riding upon waves of incandescent sound,
arriving at a place where we seemed to have given birth to the piece
"Alchemical Changes". How we arrived there, like so many other studio
voyages, one can only speculate, but things would never be the same again,
as we seemed to have inadvertently kick started this album project into life.

Having now listened to the completed album many moons later and digging all the grooviness contained therin, it's great to be involved in such a spontaneous
happening. Most of the tunes have been created in small bedroom or budget
studios with few exceptions, but they all stand up and the album seems to have
an organic flow to it which in turn reflects the way that the project has grown
from day one. Nearly all the musicians have some connection with the Portobello
Road and Ladbroke Grove areas, the strange pull of the Portobello Triangle as expounded by Brian Barritt.

Most of the artists involved are regular visitors to the most classic of headshops - Alchemy, which seems to be, along with its proprietor, a catalyst for synchronistic creativities. All the heads, beautiful people, shakers, takers, brain benders & menders, gurus, rastas, ascended masters, travellers, seers, see-ers, starseed extraterrestrials, and whatever else lives and breathes in London seems to find its way to that colourful emporium of all things alchemical.

There's such a wealth of talent on the album. Some artists will already be familiar to many, and I'm sure that great things will be heard in future from the others. Listening to it brings back great memories - getting very stoned with Howard and Lee whilst contemplating who we were going to throw off the boat (and trying to play our instruments without cocking it up by laughing too much), trying to get my head round Brian Barritt's lyrical and surreal use of the English language ???!!**??, asking Youth to throw caution to the wind and accept responsibility for playing cymnbal at an impromptu live rendition of "Alchemical Changes" at a wedding!!! Floating downstream to Raja Ram's flute, dubbin out in fine style with the Bush Chemists, communing with the Sea God Lir, keeping the ego in check whilst ackowledging the presence of An-unna-ki, saving Pop's hard drive, and of course spending fun filled hours with many of the protagonists involved.

A few years ago I heard Ken Keasey speak to an assembled hall of freaks, beats, young-uns, old-uns, scruffy ones and tidy ones, everyone as rapt as I by the message that Ken & the pranksters have to bring to us, and the ultimate message was... "It's all about LOVE people". I'm with Ken on that one and if that makes me a hippie then so be it! One thing is for sure, there's a lot of love on this album and that can't be a bad thing. I hope everyone has as much fun listening to it as I know all the groovy people involved had making it."

Drezz - 20th August 2002

The Alchemy CD album is complimented by the inclusion of a colourful
12 page booklet designed and created by aLi-Om.

It contains background info, counter-culture heroes, famous quotes and insights and sparkling images which have already earned the album the description of a "quality product".