MIND DE-CODER 14

MIND DE-CODER 14

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MIND DE-CODER 19

“I’ve hummed this tune to all the girls I’ve known’’

                                                                                Leyland Kirby

THE ADVISORY CIRCLE     SWINECOE EPISODE 2 – RELEASE THE BIRDS

Jon Brooks, of The Advisory Circle, describes his sound as "Everything's fine, but there is something not quite right about it," which nicely sums up the opening track on the show, the eerie Swincoe Episode 2 – Release The Birds, from his first album proper, OTHER CHANNELS, released in 2008, on the ubiquitous Ghost Box label – home to all things of a hauntolgical nature – that is, music that contains a certain pastoral eeriness; weird electronics and warped collages of noise and samples; music inspired by '70s kid's TV shows; vintage public relation films; almost anything by Delia Derbyshire; ancient witchcraft and rituals, as well as, as is the case with this album, music that explores timely advice on issues such as domestic isolation, tranquillizer addiction and the nuclear threat. Light synthesizer melodies and moments of surreal humour float by in a drift of pastoral melancholia and fuzzy music concrète. Fragments of public information broadcasting are filtered through the distorting lens of prescription tranquillizers, malicious gossip becomes jumbled and confused with continuity announcements, snatches of speech and fragments of banally beautiful melodies conjure a vivid suburban nightmare of Mogadon coffee mornings, treacherous frozen ponds and imminent nuclear war. 

It’s an album that both chills and charms – it really is that good. 

   ROJ     MEDITATION ON NOTHINGNESS/

                                                         

THE ADVISORY CIRCLE     AND THE CUKOO COMES

Roj Stevens was the original keyboardist with Broadcast, so he knows a thing or two about weird audio. His debut album, THE TRANSACTIONAL DHARMA OF ROJ, was also released on the Ghost Box label in 2009, and on it he transforms vintage meditational Library Music into a mysterious wonderland of Germanic voices, glinting ambience, Hare Krishna hand drums and washing machine music that once again blurs the lines between past, present and future. 

And while all that’s going on, I added And The Cuckoo Comes from The Advisory Circle’s debut EP, MIND HOW YOU GO, released in 2005.

DEUTER     PHOENIX

Georg Deuter was one of the lesser known Krautrock acts, but his second album, AUM, released in 1972, is rightly considered a thing of great beauty - it’s a dreamy, peaceful, dark, spacey album with a deep tantric feel to it.  Deuter blends acoustic and electronic instruments, ethnic influences, and sounds from nature which sadly led to something of a new age style following a few years on an ashram – but AUM is considered a Krautrock classic. 

THE ADVISORY CIRCLE      SWINECOE EPISODE 1 – ENTER SWINECOE

As you can see, I’m a bit of a fan.

PETER SCION     BUTTERFLY

A lovely track, this. Peter Scion is a Swedish singer/songwriter who does a very fine line in pastoral psychedelia. All his albums are currently online at his website for free download (he just wants you to hear the music), but Butterfly, a cover of an obscure B-side from the only single by an even obscurer British psychedelic band called The Fox, which was released in 1970, appears on the compilation album PULL UP THE PAISLEY COVERS released in 2003, a collection of 60’s psychedelic covers by modern artists which, if Peter Scion is anything to go by, you may or may not have heard of.

DEUTER     SOMA/SHURAT SABADA

The songs are so short on this wonderful album (the whole album comes in at 30 mins – I was tempted to play all of it as one long track) that I thought I’d play a couple of tracks together. These are lovely, but all of AUM is this good.

ORGANISATION     TONE FLOAT (excerpt)

The flutey bit from the otherwise sprawling 20 minute Tone Float, the title track to Organisation’s only album, released 1970. Organisation were one of the earliest Krautrock groups – a fiercely experimental group that essentially combined two components that were pulling in entirely different directions. Following a free-form bass-less wig-out on German TV in 1971, the band split into two distinct groups – Kraftwerk and Neu!, two of the greatest Krautrock bands ever. These days Organisation’s TONE FLOAT out-there noise-rock is not an easy listen, but I do like the flutey bit. 

TOMORROW     REVOLUTION

One of the greatest psychedelic singles ever made, and certainly the equal of anything The Beatles or Pink Floyd produced during this period (1967). In fact, the band only released two singles, and you’ll know singer Keith West as the vocalist on Excerpt From A Teenage Opera which more or less was the #1 single for England’s Summer of Love, but nothing the band did blew me away like hearing Revolution for the first time under euphemistically enhanced circumstances. They performed regularly at UFO and in his book 'White Bicycles - Making Music in the 1960s' Joe Boyd, who produced their debut single White Bicycles, describes that the band's performance of Revolution one night at the club as the 'apotheosis of the 60s UK underground'. Sounds right to me.

DAMIEN YOUTH     KILBURN TOWERS

A lovely cover of The Bee Gees’ Kilburn Towers, recorded by Damien Youth, a singer song-writer with a touch of the early Julian Cope/Robyn Hitchcock about his ability to get to the melodic heart of a song. Kilburn Towers can also be found on PULL UP THE PAISLEY COVERS, released, as mentioned above, in 2003.

THE ADVISORY CIRCLE     MOGADON COFFEE MORNING

Pretty much does what it says on the label – another track taken from the ever-so-clever OTHER CHANNELS.  

JACK CHESHIRE     WE ARE ELECTRIC

\

Mildly psychedelic, quintessentially British, stoner folk from English song-writer Jack Cheshire, whose second album COPENHAGEN was released in 2011 and invited comparisons to Nick Drake, Syd Barrett and Roy Harper. There, you now know as much about him as I do.

MOUNTAINS     BACKWARDS CROSSOVER

Mountains are a Brooklyn based noise-drone duo whose panoramic electro-acoustic soundscapes drift across the canvas of your mind through a slow-motion landslide of elongated tone-textures, but which somehow manage the trick never feeling aimless or inert – Backwards Crossover being a case in point. It’s taken from the duo’s second album, AIR MUSEUM, released in 2011.

RAMASES     JOURNEY TO THE INSIDE

This is from the mind-blowing album SPACE HYMNS, released in 1971, the debut album by the artist Ramases (Martin Rapahael to his mum), former central heating salesman and PT instructor, who was inspired to take up the mantle of the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses, of whom he believed himself to be a reincarnation. Recorded with a nascent 10 c.c., the album is a kaleidoscopic mix of acid-drenched madness, combining spaced-out rock with moogs, sitars and guitars to the fore.

The album also features the most expansive artwork Roger Dean was ever allowed to produce with a 6-page fold-out on printed card of a Cathedral steeple lifting off into the cosmos. On the other side, in infrared style colour, Ramases and his wife Selket (Dorothy Frost to her mum, who contributed to several of his early singles) stride forward holding aloft wheat in a Demeter like pose from the Eleusinian Mysteries. When illuminated from behind, the two sides of the cover art comes together as a divinised humanity mystically steps out of and over an outmoded religious establishment into cosmic/life-affirming destiny. Truly, they don’t make them like this anymore.

THE ADVISORY CIRCLE     EYES WHICH ARE SWELLING

More electronic tinkering from The Advisory Circle, and yet another track from OTHER CHANNELS, which increasingly looks like it needs a show all to itself.

LUSH     THOUGHTFORMS

I loved Lush from the moment I heard their debut mini-LP SCAR in 1989, from which this version of Thoughtforms is taken. I mean, they were on 4AD for a start, so the battle was half won with the packaging alone, but when their shimmering guitars and weightless voices swept across my longings and wants, I knew I’d found a band I could take to bed with me and hold on tight to through my lonely student nights – and let’s face it, Miki and Emma were hot. Robin Guthrie of The Cocteau Twins had them re-record Thoughtforms with him as producer on their MAD LOVE EP because he loved the track so much, but, almost inevitably, he turned them into The Cocteau Twins. The original is better – spiky, hurt and defiant, despite the fragile vocals (but then I’ve always been a sucker for fragile vocals). And shimmering, of course.

FAUST     THOUGHTS OF THE DEAD

This is what Faust sound like these days - or this version of them, anyway; and you’ll agree, no doubt, before I enter into a brief synopsis of the band, that nothing much has changed – they are still very much confounding and contrarian, still just as capable of moments of astounding beauty, and they’re also quite fond of their fillers, like this little track taken from their 2011 album SOMETHING DIRTY. Well, I say ‘their’ – the original line-up split in 1975, reunited in the 90’s (I think I was at that gig) only to split into two groups, both called Faust a decade later. This is the version of that band that’s led by founders Jean Harvé Peron (bass) and Werner Diermaier (drums), and not the other version, led by the other founder, Hans Joachim Irmler, whose own Faust released an album in 2010 called FAUST IS LAST. I hope that’s cleared that up for you.

VIBRASONIC     KINGSLEY J.

Killer single from 1994 by Vibrasonic, a psychedelic duo whose sound took in 60’s pop, garage and surf in one glorious cocktail of noise. This single contains just about every psychedelic effect ever invented which, rather than overwhelming the listener, leaves them helpless for more.

THE OUTSIDERS     CQ

The Outsiders were one of the great lost psychedelic bands of the 60’s, and their third and final album CQ, released in 1968, whilst largely ignored at the time, is now thought of as something of a masterpiece of psychedelic garage rock. On it they explored several styles that included the snarling punk of fast-paced R & B, Syd Barrett-style space rock, folk rock, and as is the case with the title track, eerie experimental material. Often they did this in the same song. Did I mention they were Dutch?

ASH RA TEMPLE     TRAUMMACHINE

On last week’s show I played the mighty Amboss, the 20 minute cosmic freakout that takes up all of side 1 of the first album by Ash Ra Temple. Side 2 contains, or is contained by, the 25-minute Traummachine, a percussionless dreamscape of sounds, with some wailing going on, which envelope the listener in a warm shimmering multi-dimensional glow. That word again.  Copey reckons that ASH RA TEMPLE, released in 1971, is one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll LPs ever made, and who am I to disagree?

THE A LORDS     SUMMERHOUSE

The A Lords make songs about Dorset; their debut EP, released in 2006, was improvised on summer days spent in gardens, churches and a lovely old wooden summerhouse. I’m a big fan.

That was Mind De-Coder 14. 

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MIND DE-CODER 13

MIND DE-CODER 13

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MIND DE-CODER 13

 "Perhaps we could make the middle darker and maybe the end a bit middle afternoonish.”

                                                                                                                                               Syd Barrett

JULIAN COPE     BOSKAWEN-UN

The mighty Julian Cope (©) with the opening track to his 2011 release THE JEHOVAHCOAT DEMOS, an intense 65-minute journey through the music and mind of the Archdrude during the research period for his two indispensable guidebooks, Krautrocksampler and The Modern Antiquarian – in other words, 15 unreleased tracks and 5 poems written throughout 1993 in direct response to having been dropped by Island Records the previous year.

Boskawen-un is a mellotronic wig-out of pagan-astral proportions. 

Welcome to Mind De-Coder 13.

MOON WIRING CLUB     AUTUMN THEATRICALS

This is excellent – more hauntology from Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring Club and another track from the very fine A SPARE TABBY AT THE CAT’S WEDDING, released 2011.

TRAFFIC     HOUSE FOR EVERYONE

My favourite track from Steve Winwood’s Traffic, taken from their trippy debut album MR FANTASY, released in 1967. Traffic were one of the first bands to leave the distractions of London and, instead, get it together in the country – in their case, The Cottage, a remote dwelling near the Berkshire hamlet of Aston Tirrold - where, thanks to the enormous amounts of drugs they took with them, they were able to experiment freely musically and otherwise enjoy nature in all its loveliness which, in itself, fed back into the way they made music in the first place. The wind-up intro to House For Everyone playfully replicates the disassociation one might feel whilst tripping and, as author Rob Young suggests, in his excellent book Electric Eden, it’s the sound of a band chugging along until the energy was used up (or the drugs wore off). 

THE MOVE     I CAN HEAR THE GRASS GROW

 A stone-cold psychedelic classic from The Move, with their second single, the lysergic I Can Hear The Grass Grow, released in 1967. I’ve never heard the grass grow myself (God knows I’ve tried), but I have seen it turn into little stick men who run around in circles and generally get into a right state.

VIRGINIA ASTLEY     A SUMMER LONG SINCE PASSED

More loveliness from Virginia Astley and another track taken from her cult album, FROM GARDENS WHERE WE FEEL SECURE, released 1983. This song has a holy quality to it that captures the spirit and takes it back to times long forgotten, to times half-remembered and safe. (That might just be me though).

H.N.A.S.     GANZ UNVERBINDLICH

Yes, well, quite. H.N.A.S. (or Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa, if you prefer, but I understand it translates approximately as ‘no deer allowed on the sofa’) was founded by Christoph Heemann and Achim Flaamin, also known as Dr. P. Li Khan, in 1983, and for many, if not all, that would be more than enough information. In actual fact, there’s not much more to know about them – they are of the experimental/electronica variety, German (I expect), and the lovely Ganz Unverbindlich can be found on their 1987 release IM SCHATTEN DER MÖHRE, which is generally regarded as their masterpiece. I’ve probably said too much.

TUUNG     SOUP

This is just one of those pieces of music that I love unconditionally. That repeated riff on xylophone and acoustic guitar is a thing of rare beauty that the band fails to spoil by yelling SOUP! all over it. This is taken from Tuung’s third album, released in 2007, called GOOD ARROWS, on which they lose much of the awkward (but fairly entertaining) electronica, and become, instead, a delightful experimental pastoral pop group whose influences include Icelandic prog rock, choral music, and film soundtracks.

AMON DÜÜL II     SHE CAME THROUGH THE CHIMNEY

A lovely little track, almost throwaway in its simplicity, and compared to some of the other tracks on the album that engage in more of your Krautrock wig-outs, She Came Through The Window manages to be understated and pretty while it’s at it. It’s taken from the band’s third album, the mighty YETI, a sprawling double-album released in 1971 that Julian Cope reckons is possibly the Ur-Kraut album of them all.

OS MUTANTES     O RELÓGIO 

If The Velvet Underground and Nico had played Brazilian psychedelic pop, it would have sounded like this. O Relógio (which translates, rather surprisingly, as ‘the clock’, and not as ‘oh religion’, say) is taken from the band’s debut album, the eponymous OS MUTANTES, released in 1968, and a hugely influential part of Brazil’s tropicália movement – which, of course, rose in the late 60s and took in theatre, poetry, and music (but you probably already knew that). The album, though, is as fizzy and as colourful as a packet of psychedelic sweeties from Señor McNobby’s Olde Psychedelic Toffee Shoppe.

ASH RA TEMPLE     AMBOSS (excerpt)

And referring once again to Julian Cope’s essential Krautrocksampler, we learn that the 20-minute freakout blitzkrieg that is Amboss, the opening side-long track of ASH RA TEMPLE, released 1971, is less a heavy metal assault and more of a methodical breaking down of the senses until you are crushed and insensible. So halfway through it, I have it evolve into…

DRUIDS OF STONEHENGE       I PUT A SPELL ON YOU

…one of the best versions of this song that I ever heard. The Druids of Stonehenge were, surprisingly I guess, given the name, an American psychedelic rock outfit who exemplified the surly essence of teen garage-punk and the experimental spirit of psychedelia on their only album, the snarling CREATION, released in 1968. As you might imagine, an earlier, more blues-based, version of the band, simply known as The Druids, also recorded a killer version of Who Do You Love which may appear in a later show. This drifts off into psychedelic bits and bobs that seem to involve Pink Floyd and Alice in Wonderland, then it’s back to…  

ASH RA TEMPLE     AMBOSS (excerpt)

…for the conclusion of Amboss, the greatest Detroit-est trip of all time (© J. Cope), and absolutely thrilling (me), which eventually, and rather organically, I thought, fell into…

GYÖRGY LIGETI      REQUIEM 

…recorded with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, used by Stanley Kubrick as part of the score for the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY soundtrack. Ligeti, who actually comes from Transylvania, was famous for his otherworldy electronic and micropolyphonal work (if that’s your cup of tea), but I first came across him on Waiheke Radio’s very own Variations On A Theme, presented by Mark Smith on a Sunday morning, and I knew then I could find a place for him on Mind De-Coder.

POPOL VUH     HOSIANNA MANTRA

This is devotional music, which treads the divine line between the Eastern musical discoveries of the time with the utterly unexplored world (in rock music circles at least) of Christian spirituality (Copey again). Hosianna Mantra, taken from the album of the same name, and released in 1972, is truly healing music, almost transcendent in its loveliness, and one of the core reasons I love Krautrock so much – it takes me to places I haven’t been before.

KING CREOSOTE AND JON HOPKINS     FIRST WATCH

This is the opening track to DIAMOND MINE, released in 2011, an album that, according to Creosote (Kenny Anderson to his mum) exists as a ‘soundtrack to a romanticized version of a life lived in a Scottish coastal village’, in this case, Fife. It’s a lovely combination of plaintive folk-like songs sung by Creosote over Hopkin’s classical Eno-esque backdrops. Seven years in the making, it’s an intimate album of low-key but surprisingly affecting songs that accrue a real emotional weight.

THE UNTHANKS     GAN TO THE KYE

You’d think that they don’t make them like this anymore, but they do. The quietly eerie Gan To The Kye can be found on The Unthanks 2011 release LAST, an album of gentle melancholia and elaborate, icy autumnal arrangements that revel in an emotional space that is as haunting as it is beautiful.

THE STONE ROSES     TIGHTROPE

Since Shaun Of The Dead, everyone rushed back to their copies of THE SECOND COMING, released in 1994, just to see whether they’d simply misunderstood it the first time around and there was, in fact, something to recommend it. And, of course, there wasn’t – except this, the very fine Tightrope, and Begging You, which are, no doubt, the two tracks that saved the album from being shattered on a zombie’s forehead. And who knows, now that they’ve reformed there may even be another album in them, but unlike last time, I’m not holding my breath.

PETER HOWELL AND JOHN FERDINANDO     THROUGH LOOKING GLASS WOOD

Peter Howell and John Ferdinando were residents of the small Sussex village of Ditchling at the end of the 60s, two local musicians with a string of minor bands behind them, who were approached by members of the local dramatic society, The Ditchling Players, to provide musical interludes for their production of Alice In Wonderland. The two were so pleased with the results – full of sound effects, backward tapes and distorted vocals – that they felt encouraged to press a limited edition vinyl album as souvenirs for the cast and audience alike. The two edited together the songs and incidental music, added dialogue from the production and added three extra songs that had been excluded from the show as surplus to requirements and optimistically had 50 copies printed up that pretty much sold out immediately, so they had another 20-30 printed up and that should have been that. These days, of course, ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, released in 1969, is a much sought-after artifact by fans of your acid folk as a uniquely English hybrid of folk and pastoral psychedelia. It’s as lovely and as whimsical as it sounds.

TANGERINE DREAM     FAUNI-GENA

The lovely, flutey, Fauni-gena, taken from Tangerine dream’s fourth album, ATEM, released 1973, probably my favourite album by the band - and one that is (quoting Copey again!) as glorious as a Cecil B. De Mille movie and about as dramatic. Float away to this track and come back a different person – no one will miss you for 10 minutes.

AGINCOURT     THROUGH THE EYES OF A LIFETIME

Peter Howell and John Ferdinando were so pleased with ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, they recorded three more albums with each other, this time under the name Agincourt. The album is called FLY AWAY, was released in 1970 and includes the lovely Lee Menelaus on vocals. Once again, it was a privately released affair of no more than a hundred copies, and is folkier than Alice…, but it’s a lovely slice of psychedelic whimsy nevertheless. 

THE FOCUS GROUP     SWIRLING PATHS

And finally, a trifling little piece from The Focus Group to end the show. Swirling Paths is taken from the 2004 album SKETCHES AND SPELLS by Julian House, co-founder of the Ghost Box record label. SKETCHES AND SPELLS was his first release and is a psyched-out stream-of-consciousness patchwork of collaged samples evoking the school music room, dusty archives and hidden rural rituals.

And that was Mind De-Coder 13. Thank you for your time.

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MIND DE-CODER 12

MIND DE-CODER 12

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‘Music that swallows all misery whole.’

Iggy Pop

                                                           

PINK FLOYD     ALAN’S PSYCHEDELIC BREAKFAST (RISE AND SHINE)

Pink Floyd with the opening segment from Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast, featuring the words and thoughts of then-roadie, Alan Styles, as he prepares, discusses and, in fact, eats the breakfast in question. Taken from the band’s much unloved ATOM HEART MOTHER, released in 1970 – much unloved by the band themselves, that is – I’ve always been a fan myself.

THE FACTORY     PATH THROUGH THE FOREST

This is MIND DE-CODER all over. Take an obscure 60’s psych-pop classic from 1968, and then play the even obscurer previously un-released version for your listening pleasure. Path Through A Forest is a mysterious and completely intoxicating journey into a psychedelic netherworld that transports the listener into an intense, multicolored void and then leaves you there to find your own way out. Every psychedelic effect and gimmick is thrown into the mix, screeching guitar effects, underwater bass pulsations and of course the heavily phased, disorienting vocals. Then in 1990’s, some long lost master tape appeared that had extra effects that were originally intended to be used on the single but were trimmed off by the record label for being a bit too excessive. This version comes with added jungle type sound effects and vocals that were even more off the rails than the original. The group only released one more single before disbanding, and weren’t together long enough to release an album, but Path Through The Forest should be in anyone’s list of top 10 psychedelic singles. 

D.D. DENHAM     SHIP TO SHORE

The name D.D. Denham looms large in your hauntological circles - fans of the Hammer Horror film (I'm reluctant to call it a classic), The Satanic Rites of Dracula, will know that this is the persona adopted by Christopher Lee's reclusive Count as the titular head of the mysterious Denham Corporation, in his quest to wipe out all humanity in a case of suicide-by-starvation as it were - whereas Jon Brooks' Advisory Circle recasts Denham as a peripatetic music teacher and composer, active in the 1970s, who presents, on the album ELECTRONIC MUSIC IN THE CLASSROOM, his pupil’s efforts in the field of sound-making. The album is a mix of the BBC’s Radiophonic workshop, outer-space, creepy television themes, Cold War fears, weird vicars, theremineque effects, cat’s meow, tape loops, drones and, as in the case of this track simple piano motives and spooky sound distortions. It was released in 2011 on Jon Brooks’s Café Kaput label, which he created for his own Advisory Circle releases. The whole package is put together so well that you might begin to wonder who will adopt the persona next...

THE MERCHANTS OF DREAM     THE STRANGE NIGHT VOYAGE OF PETER PAN

The Merchants Of Dream were a studio outfit put together to realise song-writer Jack Murphy's dream of putting together a concept album based around J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. It comes across as a curious mix of toytown-psych, sunshine pop and a stage musical that, despite its considerable charm, fails to be either one thing or the other.  Released in 1969 as THE STRANGE NIGHT VOYAGE it failed to dent the charts, perhaps because the album cover was giving nothing away, or the lack of an obvious single. The Strange Night Voyage of Peter Pan, all rolling power-pop rhythm, pulsating bass and disorientating tempo changes throws a waltz and some Philly strings into the mix for good measure. They don’t make them like this anymore.

                THE AQUARIAN AGE     THE GOOD WIZARD MEETS THE NAUGHTY WIZARD

If tripped out psychedelic whimsy is your thing, however, then look no further than The Aquarian Age, a band formed by Twink and Junior in the wake of their former band, Tomorrow’s, dissolution following the success of singer Keith West’s solo single Excerpt From A Teenage Opera. This track is, in fact, the b-side to their only single 10,000 Words In a Cardboard Box, released in 1968, and generally regarded as a British psychedelic classic. This sort of thing represents the very peak of British psychedelia, inasmuch as it was impossible to get any higher, but that's not necessarily a recommendation.

THE ROLLING STONES     IN ANOTHER LAND

Speaking of which, this is Bill Wyman’s response to the summer of love and particularly his own band’s goings-on with THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST. It was released as a single in 1967 and remains the band’s only song to feature Bill Wyman on vocals, made while the rest of the band were sleeping off various indulgences, shall we say.

THE BELBURY POLY     IN PAN’S GARDEN

Belbury Poly’s third album, THE OWL’S MAP, released in 2006 came with a tourist guide for the fictional ancient market town of Belbury, featuring its landmarks and legends which combine to form ‘an uneasy mix of ancient and modern': Iron Age ramparts and a 'picturesque 11th century church', but also 'some notable modernist architecture', including the Polytechnic which gives its name to creator Jim Jupp’s hauntological excursions. 

In Pan’s Garden, rather like the rest of the album, sounds futuristic and pastoral at the same time, whilst the album’s design is inspired by old school textbooks and Penguin paperbacks, and partly from old tourist guides - you know the sort of thing, murky old photos of Chichester Cathedral and a guide to local Roman ruins. I love this sort of thing, me.

THE OWL SERVICE     NIGHT FALLS ON SUMMER’S END

Named after the classic and unsettling children's book of the same name, The Owl Service was formed by multi-instrumentalist Steven Collins in 2006 as a vehicle to explore his love of cult British films and television of the 1960s and '70s, the great outdoors, and the sound of the English folk revival. It was originally intended to be a solo vehicle for Collins, but as his vision for his debut album, A GARLAND OF SONG, grew, so did the number of band members he needed to make it happen. Nowadays the band seems to have a core line-up of seven members.

The lovely Night Falls On Summer’s End can be found on THE PETRIFYING WELL, a collection of pieces recorded before the release of their debut album proper in 2007 and as such offers a pure distillation of Collin’s folk vision. With the addition of two permanent female singers, the vision got better. 

LONE PIGEON     KING CREOSOTE’S WINE GLASS SYMPHONY

As founding member of The Beta Band, Gordon Anderson (Lone Pigeon to his parents) was responsible for writing the group’s greatest track, Dry The Rain, before illness forced him to leave them just as they went critically nova. There is a touch of that song in this track, King Creosote’s Wine Glass Symphony, taken from his debut album, CONCUBINE RICE, which saw release in 2002.

It’s a strange mix of half-formed loops, lost ideas, unfocussed, non-sequiter nonsense, and occasional giddy swirls of pop caught in a swirl of hiss, barely heard sounds, late night ambient drones, fractured sing-a-longs, dubbed out weirdness and Syd Barrett vocals, so you can see why I might be attracted to it. I feel that may be more of a warning than a recommendation, however.

He later went on to form Luna, who have so far released two great albums that still have elements of all of the above in them, and he’s brother to Scottish folk singer Kenny Anderson, otherwise known as King Creosote. You can just imagine it after school: “Excuse me, Mrs. Anderson, can King Creosote and wee Lone Pigeon come oot tae play, please?” 

THE BIRD TREE     LEAF FISH

Ethereal noodlings from San Francisco shaman Glenn Donaldson, and a series of experimental instrumentals, magisterial folk and lengthy drones taken from his 2003 album ORCHARDS AND CARAVANS. These tracks include delicate guitar melodies and pensive vocalizations, taking in the odd bowed oud, bells, toy accordion, Wurlitzer, harmonium, bouzouki, banjo, keyboards, and occasional drumming. As lovely as you can imagine.

PINK FLOYD     ALAN’S PSYCHEDELIC BREAKFAST (SUNNY SIDE UP)

In which Alan puts the kettle on and knocks up some fried eggs.

THURSTON MOORE     IN SILVER RAIN WITH A PAPER KEY

DEMOLISHED THOUGHTS, released in 2011, is the album on which Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore goes folky. This description doesn’t do it any justice at all, of course, because despite featuring 6 and 12-string acoustic guitars, harps and violins, this is still Thurston Moore we’re talking about. Nevertheless, producer Beck takes a track like In Silver Rain With A Paper Key and adds a trail of echo to Moore's plaintive tone, allowing the words to float like dust among guitars and string parts and, well, it sounds folky to me.

MOON WIRING CLUB     THE VICTORIAN BUTTER BOAT/THE QUEEN SPEAKS

These two tracks are taken from Moon Wiring Club’s 4th album, A SPARE TABBY AT THE CAT’S WEDDING, released in 2011, an album which takes some well-mined samples from lost TV transmissions and drags us back into the days of thick-knit sweaters, marathon bars and Old Spice. 

Moon Wiring Club originally evolved out of what was intended to be "a peculiar children's book, ‘Strange Reports from a Northern Village’. That project got stalled but it did spawn the Blank Workshop website, based on an imaginary town called Clinksell, which has its own brand of confectionery, Scrumptyton Sweets, and a line of fantasy fiction, Moontime Books. As you can imagine, The Moon Wiring Club’s Ian Hodgson is a friend and collaborator with The Advisory Circle’s Jon Brooks.

THE CHARLATANS     OPPORTUNITY

There’s something about the Hammond organ that I find hugely seductive – not in a Pedro and His Hammond Organ Plays the Hits of The 60’s Bossa Nova style! – but in the way that it can be positively lysergic when it hits the right groove, and Opportunity is a perfect example of what I mean. There’s Hammond all over SOME FRIENDLY, the debut album by The Charlatans, released way back in a baggy 1990, and despite the fact that they’ve gone on to release some 12 albums or so since then, this is the only album I return to.

LIQUID SOUND COMPANY     MESMERIZING EYES

Liquid Sound Company is the side project for John Perez of doom metal band Solitude Aeternus. Mesmerizing Eyes is taken from the band’s debut album EXPLORING THE PSYCHEDELIC, released in 1996. There’s no mucking about with this band – they pretty much do what it says on the label. 

TAME IMPALA     SOLITUDE IS BLISS (TIME AND SPACE MACHINE REMIX)

Tame Impala do psychedelia – The Time and Space Machine’s Richard Norris slips some ecstasy into the mix, gives it a groove, and produces a mind bending remix from the track that can be found on the band’s debut album, INNERSPEAKER, released in 2010.

WAX AUDIO     DEPARTURES

Wax Audio, Australian mash-up producer, is my current go-to get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to getting from one idea to another in the Mind De-Coder series. His album 9 COUNTRIES, was recorded on location in Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Tibet, India, Egypt and Greece and was assembled entirely from field recordings with no additional samples added. Departures, for example, uses the temple drone from the Chennakesava Temple in Belur, India, bells in the courtyard of the Mahamuni temple in Mandalay, dogs and fireworks from Rajasthan, the incoming tide at Rantee Bay on the island of Ko Phi Phi, Thailand, and a hotel elevator in Delhi to name just some of the recordings used in this one track. Marvelous and evocative. Download it for free here.

ALAN BLACK     ORSON IX 

Alan Black provides a lot of get-out-of-jail free ambient tracks himself, but Orson IX is taken from his SET 01 – BEGINNING, released in 2009, an album of work that includes all his earliest mash-ups. I’ve only used an excerpt from this 24 minute track, but even then it manages to include components by Boards of Canada, Edith Piaf, Radiohead, Vangelis’s Bladerunner soundtrack, Josh wink and Alberto Ginastera amongst the various beats and pieces. Epic. Download it for free here.

THE TELESCOPES     ALL A DREAMS

For a brief moment their star shone brightly, but they were in many ways the runts of the Creation litter, which is a pity, because I was a big fan, me, and saw them I don’t know how many times. I saw Primal Scream support them once, which must have been when their star was in the ascendant. They started off as a snarling and dense noise terror band, but at some point in the early 90’s they turned into this fragile psychedelic band capable of producing songs as tender and melodic as All A Dreams, the B-side to their 1991 single Celeste which, like most of their releases, failed to trouble the charts. I understand some version of the band still exists and they’ve gone back to the experimental noise terror. 

SPACEMEN 3     STARSHIP

This track absolutely blew me away first time I heard it, and even now it can leave me speechless as the sonic waves it produces in its wake turn to pulsating ripples that float around the inside of my head and swallow all misery whole (as Iggy Pop once said) (although not about Spacemen 3 specifically). One day I will make a Mind De-Coder devoted entirely to Spacemen 3 and we’ll see if they don’t have the same effect on you. This is the closing track on their incredibly rare TRANSPARENT RADIATION EP, released in 1987. Not many records can truly claim to change your life forever, but this is one of them for me. Play this track loud as hell. 

INCREDIBLE STRING BAND     AIR

Despite having had them explained to me at some length, I simply don’t get the Incredible String Band. Whilst others hear rich and eclectic arrangements, I wonder where all the tunes are. I like this song though, the atmospheric Air, taken from WEE TAM AND THE BIG HUGE, their highly regarded fourth album, released in 1968.

PINK FLOYD     ALAN’S PSYCHEDELIC BREAKFAST (MORNING GLORY)

And off he goes. Good old Alan.

SHIRLEY COLLINS     SWEET ENGLAND

Lovely. In 1958, years before she established her reputation as one of the finest and most inventive English traditional singers of the folk revival, 22-year-old Shirley Collins was living in London with the legendary American folklorist Alan Lomax, whom she later accompanied on his field recording trips across the southern states of America. Together with the English song-collector Peter Kennedy, Lomax produced her first solo album, SWEET ENGLAND, originally released in 1958 but which has recently been remastered. Collins has said she was apologetic about the young and naive vocals here, but she's being too modest. This is a record that never fails to take me home.

MOON WIRING CLUB      HOUSE OF TRICKS

 A final track from A SPARE TABBY AT THE CAT’S WEDDING to conclude the show. 

And that was Mind De-Coder 12. Thank you for visiting.

To listen to the show click here