Released in the mid-summer of 1971, Maggot Brain was the third album from George Clinton’s Funkadelic, a psychedelic opus of supreme magnificence.

Funkadelic are so drenched in funking grooves, they are practically onomatopoeia. The band was formed in late 1960s Detroit under the leadership of George Clinton, originally as the backing band for his doo-wop group Parliament as part of the vibrant P-Funk collective, before evolving into a self-contained entity that flowed with boundary-breaking psychedelic funk-rock. The outfit’s 1970 eponymous debut had introduced a collective high on improvised and free-flowing energy, and their following Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow (also released in 1970) had started to really expand the psychedelia - Clinton even described the album’s recording as an attempt to “see if we can cut a whole album while we’re all tripping on acid” - but Maggot Brain was the center point between the two, incorporating rock’s heaviness with funk grooves and was a seminal early work in the Afrofuturism movement.

The album opens with the remarkable ten-minute-plus title track, a wailing prog-rock guitar opus. Clinton famously told guitarist Eddie Hazel to play the opening title track “like your mother just died” producing a searing, grief-soaked guitar solo that perfectly encapsulates the album’s rich opulence whilst also sounding unlike anything else across the following half hour. Recorded at United Sound Systems, Detroit, the sessions blended raw improvisation with studio experimentation and that duality echoes through so much of Funkadelic’s music. Bernie Worrell’s classically trained keyboard approach brought harmonic depth that contrasted with Hazel’s Hendrix-inspired guitar fire, likewise, Tiki Fulwood’s drums anchored the chaotic energy and provided the skeleton for extended jams to truly roam. Funkadelic were similarly both a party band and proud voice of protest, with Maggot Brain reflecting the turbulence of early 1970s America, with themes of social injustice, the Vietnam war, drug culture and Black Power. All of this converges on the trippy album closer, Wars of Armageddon (also up around the ten minute mark), a collage of drums, chants, voices and chaos… and a cuckoo clock! The album’s iconic sleeve image - model Barbara Cheeseborough screaming with her head buried in dirt - is also an image of beauty, power, and mind-expansion.

Although polarising upon release, struggling to find either a commercial audience or the critical acclaim it deserved, Maggot Brain’s reputation has continued to grow over the last fifty years and is considered a cornerstone of psychedelia and proto-punk experimentation. From its furious funk workouts to the acoustic hues and gospel-inspired vocals, it is an album of complexity and rawness. Avant-garde, deeply grooving and utterly uncompromising.