Bullshit 3 ¼

Bullshit 3 ¼ is one of the more unlikely psychedelic masterpieces of the sixties – and it has no small amount of competition. Ben-Israel was a mainstream musician in Israel during that decade, performing with the Northern Command military band, a role that earned him the right to make a solo album. He’d had a few hits by the time of Bullshit 3 ¼, but this album floats in from left-field; you can hear that Ben-Israel has been seduced by sixties psychedelia from its opening moments, where “A Different Song” descends on the listener in a freak-out fury of warbled drums and buzzsaw guitar. Backed at times by Israeli group The Electric Stage, Ben-Israel takes everything he’s learned about songwriting from his mainstream career and subjects it to various acid tests; there are Syd Barrett-esque laments here, and Red Krayola freakouts, while the production is feverish and loose at the same time, disrupting Ben-Israel’s songs with samples from film, quacked-out kazoos, and other wild incidents. It’s a total one-off.