Zaius Tapes keep ticking off the Discog grails with this latest repress of the sole Terry Reed record, first released all the way back in the shadow year of 1975. Upgraded from the original 7 to a 12, we get four tracks that find Reed eschewing his Nashville citizenship and indulging a sound caught between garage rock lonerism, psych(ic) transmutation and a kind of proto-punk singularity he likely had little awareness of but could clearly feel the call of deep down in his plums. People were doing this kind of thing before Reed, and plenty have continued to do it long after (and all almost certainly without any awareness of his existence - it's a long queue, that one), yet there remains something eternally captivating about this kind of thing, that sense of the fearless outsider coming sideways at an idea they've misunderstood in the best way possible. You'd not be surprised if you were to discover Reed were a fan of all of any of Sabbath, Roky Erickson and Gong, though the results are so far situated in the land of Private Press expressionism that it's best off viewing On Way To Alpha as a kind of Train Dreams of coulda-been rock star outsiderdom, a man lost to time and a fleeting vision. We get to revisit it now, and bootleg notwithstanding, I like to think Reed's out there somewhere doing the same.