Karmic Dream Sequence #1

The Millennium's Begin has been rated as one of the late '60s recorded masterpieces, and the lengthy "Karmic Dream Sequence" is undoubtedly the album's centerpiece. A virtual mini-suite, the song opens with a delicious, bittersweet fingerpicked guitar pattern that has its roots in folk music. The somewhat syncopated bridge acts more as an interlude and spirals down like a snail's shell. Filled with psychedelic imagery, the lyrics fully capture the feeling of birth, death, and rebirth that were often part of the psychedelic experience. Like LSD usage, the listener's own experience and interpretation is indeed central to the experience, and he or she will certainly draw their own cathartic conclusion. The song's final section is a true slice of late-'60s avant-garde record-making, complete with swirling sound effects underneath and around a raga-inspired pattern of plucked bouzouki (a kind of Hungarian mandolin) riffs, concluding with a brief snippet from the album's opening song, "Prelude."