The nineties alternative rock scene changed forever when three men from Seattle unleashed a poppy-style version of grunge on the world.

Bands such as Pearl Jam and the Stone Temple Pilots profiteered from the explosion of grunge; prompting a rise in sound-a-like bands, hoping to get in on the action. However, in Los Angeles three men refused to bow down to the mainstream; instead choosing to focus on their own interpretation of psychedelic rock.

Fuzz Beloved was ahead of their time in revisiting the early sounds of seventies rock. Sitting dormant since the trio’s break up in the mid-nineties; band member David Melbye, produced and released a newly mastered version of the album in 2008 through Intrepid Sound Recordings.

“The recording of Fuzz Beloved was an interesting and memorable experience,” explained David. “We did all the basic tracks live in my parents’ old house. My father designed the house to have a huge living room, much like a small church that could accommodate a pipe organ, so the acoustics in there were great for recording just about anything.”

By using an AKAI 12-track analogue tape machine and the best microphones they could get their hands on, Fuzz Beloved had inadvertently stumbled across their signature sound. However, in the following summer, guitarist Kevin Kareth took the analogue tape machine back to his apartment in nearby Hollywood to re-track many of the guitar parts.

“You might say he was inspired at that point because what he came up with was really brilliant in my opinion,” said David.

“In short, he dispensed with all the busy playing he had put down previously, and instead recorded simple, sparse riffs with a really nice dark and quirky quality to them.”

Playing in venues around Los Angeles also proved to be essential in perfecting the sound that is spread across their only release; as from playing these venues, Fuzz Beloved gained a dedicated following, prompting the band to organise two psychedelic rock festivals in the Mojave Desert.

“The first one was really just a bunch of local friends, and we invited a second [electronic] band we knew to join us.”

“It was an amazing setting, with desert foothills all around us like a natural amphitheatre. The next year we had about ten bands play and it was really great.”

The success of the Mojave Desert festivals encouraged David to revisit the idea with his current band, Heavy Water Experiments in 2007, however, unlike the mid-Nineties, the festival did not go to plan.

“It was a disaster,” David said. “The sleazy guy I had partnered up with the first time sabotaged the festival by mailing our flyers to the local Bureau of Land Management authorities, who did not like seeing that we were going to sell tickets for an event in their desert without acquiring the proper permits from them.”

“When they came to our spot and told us they would be shutting us down, we tried to move to a completely different spot on the same day of the event.”

The new location was a two hours’ drive away from the original Mojave Desert setting and saw the local Bureau of Land Management stepping in to shut the festival down for a second time.

“The whole experience really stressed me out, and I decided NO MORE illegal desert festivals after this one,” asserts David. “It’s funny to think that it was those modest little Fuzz Beloved desert parties in the nineties that lead to all this more recent, and still ongoing, psychedelic desert festival activity!”

Fuzz Beloved defined a generation for those who were lucky enough to witness or be a part of the small group of bands who decided to shun the pop-grunge mainstream.

“We really believed in what we were doing at the time, and even though we never really had any singles, I think that the artistic integrity of our sound still comes across on that album, and so it possesses a timeless quality.”