The Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds (1967)

Gotta keep things mixed up a bit here with the occasional album one could best describe as... bad.  Pretty bad.  But a fun part of any complete music collection.

A one-off studio project, Cosmic Sounds paired moog-filled psychedelic weirdness with spoken-word poems, each song/narration dedicated to a sign of the zodiac.

The narration/poetry is quite terrible, of course, nonsensical and read in a deep, portentous voice (making it a more entertaining cousin of the posthumous Jim Morrison spoken word releases), but the music is at worst a silly yet joyous stab at low-grade psychedelia, the sort of thing grown-ups of the era might have come up with if they'd toked up and tried to figure out what exactly bands like the Jefferson Airplane and the Doors and Pink Floyd were up to.  Some of the tracks work better than others, but if you set aside the spoken-word stuff, the musical passages are ideal for recreating a swinging 1967 bachelor pad dense with the small of bad weed and patchouli, or maybe the soundtrack for a badly-dated sci-fi tv series.

Though probably not something they included on their resume alongside Pet Sounds, the musicians include members of the legendary Wrecking Crew, Carole Kaye on bass and Hal Blaine on drums.  So there's that.  But this isn't something you listen to for the musical virtuosity; it's something you spin every couple years wholly for its faux-trippy weirdness and delightful kitsch value.

Here's a video someone threw together for "Aries":

...and one for "Gemini":

 
...and "Leo":

...and "Virgo":

...and "Scorpio":

 ...and "Capricorn":