Coloured Balls - Ball Power

Ball Power is the debut studio album by Australian rock group Coloured Balls, originally released in 1973 via EMI Records.

By the time Lobby Loyde formed the Coloured Balls in March 1972, he was already a 12-year veteran of the local music scene. Working his way through R&B legends The Purple Hearts, psychedelic heroes The Wild Cherries and onto the bluesy Aztecs, Loyde had well and truly established his reputation as Australia's pre-eminent guitar master.

After releasing 2 singles on the Havoc label, the Coloured Balls Signed to EMI. With help from producer Ian D, Miller and highly experienced engineer John Sayers the band knocked out Ball Power in a couple of weeks.

One of the great progressive hard rock LPs of the era, Ball Power really had a lot going for it: great songs, inspirational playing, attitude to burn and an experimental edge that would have frightened the hell out of any lesser band.

The overall excellence of Ball Power makes for quality listening all the way through. The songs range from the crunching, melodic hard rock of 'Flash' and 'Hey! What's Your Name' to the simple, raw rock'n'roll of 'Mama Don't Get Me Wrong' and 'Won't You Make Up Your Mind' (a proto-typical punk ball-tearer at a breathtakingly brief one minute and 32 seconds) and a raucous cover of the Jerry Lee Lewis standard 'Whole Lotta Shakin''.

In between there are the sleazy blues of 'Something New' and 'B.P.R.' plus progressive, guitar-heavy monsters like 'Human Being' and 'That's What Mama Said'.

COLOURED BALLS are the godfathers of Aussie punk, hard rock, psychedelic boogie, etc. They played too many different styles to be just any one thing. Lobby, Bobsie, Trevor, and Janis created something very special with this album and it sounds as fresh and vital as the date it was originally released.

This pressing has been painstakingly sourced directly from the 1973 quarter inch mix-down master tapes and sounds incredible. This has been an entirely analog production chain and hasn't been touched by a computer at any stage of the process. Mastered by Lobby's close friend and former band mate, Gil Matthews (Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs).

Hear Coloured Balls as nature intended.

This album is a 2023 reissue on black vinyl housed in a single pocket sleeve with a printed insert and remastered audio, pressed in the US via Just Add Water Records.