When the Grateful Dead wound up, the natural progression of Deadheads everywhere was to flock to Phish, who quickly established themselves at the head of the hippie band movement in the early ‘90s. The Siket Disc, named after engineer/mixer John Siket, is a fascinating by-product of the recording sessions for the band’s 1998 album, The Story of the Ghost. Siket, who has produced work from such luminaries as Medeski, Martin and Wood, The Replacements, and Diesel, culled this disc from approximately 75 hours of session jams, boiling it down to a 35-plus minute set of purely improvisational tracks.
The result, while not really a conventional album, is a generally very atmospheric and hypnotic package, rock’s spacey groove answer to the chill out, get-in-the-beanbag-chair scene. The Siket Disc’s classic is “What’s the Use?” featuring a jazzy, bluesy riff that serves as a backdrop for some tremendous wailing guitar work with a scaled down, mellower Robert Fripp-like feel to it.
Fans of Brian Eno’s sampling techniques on My Life in a Bush of Ghosts will enjoy “Fish Bass,” one of the disc’s shorter offerings. “Quadraphonic Toppling” is another short jam, but much more minimal in its scope. “Insects” is about as Fripp as it gets in its frenetic guitar work.
