MIND DE-CODER 11
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I am about to embark on a hazardous and technically unexplainable journey into the outer stratosphere.
The Wizard of Oz
VIRGINIA ASTLEY WITH MY EYES OPEN I’M DREAMING
Pastoral loveliness from Virginia Astley’s cult 1983 album, FROM GARDENS WHERE WE FEEL SECURE. It’s an album that’s best described as one of bucolic minimalism, mostly instrumental, that takes the listener on a journey through an entire day, and although we never seem to leave her back garden, my goodness, what a journey it is - from the opening dawn chorus that leads us into With My Eyes Open I’m Dreaming (from the line by W.H.Auden), to the final owl hoot that closes the album, Astley creates an album of up-lifting bliss to get the show off to a dreamy, magical ol’ start, which is pretty much where we intend to stay for the next couple of hours. Virginia Astley never achieved the fame of her many collaborators, which include Dave Sylvian, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Kate St. John to name but three, but when you release an album of such fragile grace, you’d hardly be the sort of person who went round shouting about it.
PAUL WELLER AIM HIGH (A MONSTROUS PSYCHEDELIC BUBBLE REMIX)
A mind-bending remix of Paul Weller's Aim High, taken from his celebrated 2010 release WAKE UP THE NATION!, by those Amorphous Androgynous boys. It’s a transcendental trip in four parts, namely, 1) Aim Higher, 2) A Dream In Pieces, 3) The Higher Aim, and 4) Like Water Needs A Flower and comes in at a full 21 minutes of soulful psychedelia with added bells and whistles. This record was originally limited to 500 copies, released on vinyl, to celebrate the 2010 Record Store Day but can be now be found as one of the bonus tracks available on WAKE UP THE NATION! special edition CD.
GORILLAZ THE SPEAK IT MOUNTAINS
Essentially Damon noodling around with his iPad, but none the less lovely for all that, The Speak It Mountains is to be found on the deliberately low-key 4th album by Gorillaz, THE FALL, which was released on Christmas day a few years back as free download, but has since seen release on both vinyl and CD.
BELBURY POLY A YEAR AND A DAY
Whimsical hauntology from Belbury Poly, otherwise known as Jim Jupp to his mum, who creates music inspired by old library music, 60’s psychedelia, folk, and public information films. This track is taken from the wonky 2009 album FROM AN ANCIENT STAR, which manages to sound like NASA scientists working on a new score for Alice in Wonderland in a doll’s house, which works for me.
NOONDAY UNDERGROUND CLOSING TIME
Noonday Underground consist of former Paul Weller collaborator Simon Dine and singer Daisy Martey, who used to sing for Moorcheba and, for all I know, still does. Dine creates a m̩lange of retro easy-listening vibes then pumps them up with some funky-assed hip-hop beats, exotic film scores, spooky theremin electronics and psychedelic flourishes РDaisy sings over them. Closing Time is taken from 2002 release SURFACE NOISE.
MILD EUPHORIA SOMETHING NASTY IN THE NURSERY
Pretty much does what it says on the label. This is taken from the album SOMBRERO, released in 1999, on the brilliant Spanish label SIESTA RECORDS, who periodically release these marvelous little compilation albums of psychedelic pop songs for children – not that you’d let your kids hear this particular track, no matter how many sherbet lemon fizz bombs they were on.
At some point this track floats off into some bits and pieces I’ve stitched together from the cult TV show The Prisoner (the original version, of course)
BELBURY POLY TIME SCALE
Another track that also pretty much does what it says on the label. Time Scale is once again taken from the album FROM AN ANCIENT STAR, which I can’t stop playing.
GORKY’S ZYGOTIC MYNCI LADY FAIR
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci with the almost unbearably lovely Lady Fair, a song so fragile it threatens to fall apart as it touches you, although in this case, ‘threatens’ is perhaps the entirely wrong word to use when describing any song taken from an album so exquisitely vulnerable as THE BLUE TREES, released in 2000.
DONOVAN WEAR YOUR LOVE LIKE HEAVEN
Wear Your Love Like Heaven is taken from my favourite Donovan album, 1967’s whimsical flight of fancy, A GIFT FROM A FLOWER TO A GARDEN. This is what Donovan has to say on the sleeve notes:
“Oh what a Dawn Youth is Rising to.
With all the love in my Heart
I bequeath this gift from one flower to many.
I wish only to enhance and beautify the days of youth that in doing so their young minds be filled with pleasant images.
We shall fill their days with fairies and elves and pussys and paints, with laughter and song and the gentle influence of Mother Nature…”
You can be arrested for that sort of thing these days.
THE SMILES AND FROWNS CORNELIUS
Cornelius is taken from the debut mini-album, released 2010, by The SmilesAnd Frowns, who seem to share a deep love of Syd Barrett, WHITE ALBUM-era Beatles, and acid-era folk-pop in general. The band describes their eponymously named 20-minute album as a series of haunted train-ride songs, children’s theme music songs, and psychedelic science fiction songs. Cornelius is a song about a boy who communicates with animals, plants and insects with his magic flute. You can see why I might like them, can’t you?
TAME IMPALA SOLITUDE IS BLISS
Tame Impala, on the other hand, fell in love with The Beatles' Paperback Writer/Rain period and recorded their debut album, INNERSPEAKER, released 2010, in that style, perfectly re-capturing that moment just before English psychedelia tipped over into heavy rock. I’m a big fan of that period myself.
GRACE SLICK AND THE GREAT SOCIETY WHITE RABBIT
A genuine rarity for the show, Grace Slick and The Great Society, performing an early version of White Rabbit, from the live album CONSPICUOUS ONLY IN ITS ABSENCE, released in 1966, before Grace jumped ship to The Jefferson Airplane. Whilst this version lacks the sonic overload of the latter, it has a trippy psychedelic vibe that makes it much less of a poorer relation than you’d think.
Over the intro to this song I’ve included a few moments from a vintage documentary into the effects of LSD on a typical suburban 1950s housewife. Compelling.
PASTOR JOHN RYDGREN DARK SIDE OF THE FLOWER
Pastor John Rydgren was a hip Lutheran priest who worked San Francisco’s Sunset Strip in the late 60s and creator of a daily radio show called Silhouette in which he became the reassuring, resonant-voiced hippy for God. This track is taken from his album SILHOUETTE SEGMENTS, which was originally released in 1968 and comprised of a selection of his best radio pieces. Dark Side Of The Flower dares describe the downside of hippiedom to a switched-on audience looking for God. The whole album is this good.
AMORPHOUS ANDROGYNOUS LET IT BE
A frankly marvelous cover of The Beatles’ Let It Be, taken from LET IT BE REVISITED, a tribute to the album released free with Mojo magazine last 2010, that also manages to incorporate Across The Universe as well as some fairly unhinged pagan going’s on into the splendid mix. Hats off to them, really.
DR. JOHN I WALK ON GUILDED SPLINTERS
Dr. John's second album GRIS GRIS, released in 1968, was a dark affair, connected back to old Creole chants and voodoo magic, full of incantations and trippy improvisations; but it also caught the mood of the psychedelic period, and with I Walk On Guilded Splinters The Night Tripper had the equivalent of a 7-minute pop song. It is, as the good doctor notes himself: ‘a witchy brew of sourcery and chicanery that fascinates as much as it disturbs’.
TWINK 10,000 WORDS IN A CARDBOARD BOX
There’s an earlier version of this track, released as a single by The Aquarian Age in 1968, the band Twink formed with bassist Junior when their previous band, Tomorrow, broke up following singer Keith West’s hit with Excerpt From A Teenage Opera. I was going to play it, but was slightly put off by the lyric’s harsh attack on West, who I’ve always admired as one of the great lost artists of the 1960’s counterculture. The original single was a faster, breezier record that, as usual, is now regarded as a magnificent psychedelic classic and I will definitely include it in the show one day. However, Twink re-recorded it for his solo album, 1970’s THINK PINK, in which he removes most of the bitterness towards West and slows down the original vibe to a heavier, spacier version which I think works just as well. Before THINK PINK, he drummed for The Pretty Things, joining them in time to record their classic SF SORROW, and after THINK PINK he formed proto-punk band The Pink Fairies. Turns out I’m a big fan of Twink, too.
THE BEATLES A DAY IN THE LIFE
The Beatles have been all over this particular show one way or the other so I thought it best to play A Day In The Life just to remind you what the fuss was all about. I’m not really that big a fan of SGT PEPPER’S per se, but few can deny that A DAY IN THE LIFE is possibly the greatest recording ever by the band at the very height of their powers (he said, authoritatively).
VASHTI BUNYAN WAYWARD HUM
I understand that Vashti was unaware that she was being recorded as she sat alone in the studio, humming along to herself. It’s a lovely story. Wayward Hum is the closing track on her second album LOOKAFTERING, recorded in 2005, some 35 years after her semi-mythical debut album ANOTHER DIAMOND DAY.
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