MIND DE-CODER 15

MIND DE-CODER 15

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‘(Trocchi)…defended his right to take any drug he chose to take. The murderous behaviour of most modern states –Auschwitz, Katyn, Hirishima, Dresden – having led him to find societies so vicious, any drug that weakened the loyalties they aroused was holy, a blessing.’

                                                                                                      Christopher Logue 

DAMON ALBARN     THE GOLDEN DAWN

This is the opening track from Damon’s opera focusing on the life and work of Dr. John Dee, polymath, magician, astrologer and spymaster for Queen Elizabeth I. Inspired by comic book legend Alan Moore, Dr. Dee: An English Opera, was performed in Manchester as part of Manchester’s International Festival 2011, with the album finding release in early 2012. Simply called DR. DEE, it’s a bucolic affair finding Damon refracting folk and church music through the African influences he has been steeped in since 2002’s MALI MUSIC. The Golden Dawn, an organ-heavy track, opens with running water and Devonian birdsong, and is possibly, given the work’s subject matter, a reference Aleister Crowley’s The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but I might be making that bit up.

KEN NORDINE     SCRATCH

Ken Nordine was a hip word-jazz poet with what can only be called a deep and resonant voice. He’s most famous for a couple of albums he recorded at the peak of the beat era in the mid-1950s, namely WORD JAZZ, and SON OF WORD JAZZ, but his career has taken in commercials, movie trailers, and book readings. Scratch is taken from his 1979 recording STARE WITH YOUR EARS and may possibly be about a psychedelic hipster dog, or just a psychedelic hipster, or a hipster dog. 

THE AQUARIAN AGE     10,000 YEARS IN A CARDBOARD BOX

An absolute psychedelic pop classic from Twink and Junior, the rhythm section of Tomorrow, whose 1968 debut single as the newly christened Aquarian Age illustrates their feelings toward singer Keith West’s departure from the band following his success that year with Excerpts From A Teenage Opera, but still remains a playfully psychedelic pop song. Twink would later re-record the song on his debut solo album, THINK PINK, without the harsh chorus, but that was a spacier, slower affair. 

BROADCAST AND THE FOCUS GROUP     TUESDAY’S OFFERING

Broadcast and The Focus Group are responsible for the mind-bendingly trippy BROADCAST AND THE FOCUS GROUP INVESTIGATE WITCH CULTS OF THE RADIO AGE which, as I may have mentioned before, is verily a trip unto itself, but this track, Tuesday’s Offering, is taken from the single STUDY SERIES 6: FAMILIAR SHAPES AND NOISES, released in 2010 as part of a series of singles put out by Hauntology’s very own record label Ghost Box, who’s musical aesthetic is influenced strongly by music for schools, cosmic horror stories, library music, English surrealism and the dark side of psychedelia, which pretty much describes this spookily nostalgic track in a nutshell.

GONJASUFI     THE CALIPH’S TEA PARTY 

 (BROADCAST & FOCUS GROUP REMIX)

The unpromisingly named Gonjasufi (Sumach Ecks to his mum) is, and perhaps even more unpromisingly, an American rapper, singer, deejay and yoga teacher who, despite all this, remains a mystical individual caught somewhere between the Mojave Desert, the LA streets, and somewhere altogether more cosmic than you’d think. His debut album, A SUFI AND A KILLER, released in 2010, was a hallucinogenic mix of hip hop beats, 21st-century acid rock, and a corroded analog wall of zero-fi psychedelic noise, all focused around the man’s remarkable voice - a raw, otherworldly vocal style that can be a bit trying for the unwary. Shortly after, he released THE CALIPH’S TEA PARTY, in which a variety of producers were invited in to tinker around with it. Broadcast and The Focus Group lose the voice entirely and instead spin loops of backspun string-sections and incidental music cues that, in all fairness, owe more to BROADCAST AND FOCUS GROUP INVESTIGATE WITCH CULTS OF THE RADIO AGE than it does the source material, but then, that’s what they do and I’m not complaining.

ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI     REVOLUTION’S A LIE

More music of a hauntological nature, this time from America’s Ariel Pink who, like his British counterparts, invests his music with a newness cobbled together from the ghosts and traces of the past. That being said, his approach to hauntology is so completely at odds with the British version that it makes the comparison more or less meaningless. Nevertheless, Pink’s use of 8-track technology, cheap guitars and synthesizers married to a lo-fi aesthetic which combines hazy nostalgia with a fiercely experimental pop palette is hauntological to the core. Revolution’s A Lie is the opening track from his 2010 album BEFORE TODAY, the one on which he got a band and a budget behind him and produced something more cohesive than usual. It’s camp, kitschy, ridiculous, and manages to sound more right than wrong without losing sight of the fact that, quite often, it’s its wrongness that makes it sound so right.

DONOVAN     ATLANTIS

Atlantis was a huge hit for Donovan in 1968 and reached the top of the charts around the world, including Switzerland, which just goes to show that in 1968 hippies were everywhere.

TREMBLING BELLS     OTLEY ROCK ORACLE

Trembling Bells are a Scottish experimental psych-folk band who owe more, possibly, to Pentangle than they do The Incredible String Band, but on this absolutely marvelous track, the wild and pounding Otley Rock Oracle, they add some Jimi Hendrix to the mix. This thrilling track is a re-telling of an old Yorkshire legend regarding a seven-headed dog in which vocalist Lavinia Blackwall’s voice soars over wigged-out guitars, proggy organ, and horns and is to be found on the band’s 3rd album THE CONSTANT PAEGENT, released 2011. It remains my favourite track from last year. 

BEYOND THE WIZARD’S SLEEVE     DOOR TO TOMORROW

This lovely track, the first release in quite a while from Erol Alkan and Richard Norris, is the b-side to the single BLACK NOISE, a tripped-out psych-rockin’ wide-screen monster of a track, released in 2012. Door To Tomorrow is a very different affair – a baroque, folk-tinged meditation that recalls the pastoral beauty of the Left Banke, featuring former Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci frontman Euros Childs on yearning vocals. Lovely.

TNKERBELL’S FAIRY DUST     2010

As charming a piece of whimsical psychedelia as you could ask for, Tinkerbell’s Fairydust’s second single, 2010, released 1968, was a Bach-inspired piece featuring the liberal use of wah-wah vox organ, mellotron flutes, Spanish-style guitar, and choir-like vocals that should have fitted the period like a glove - sadly it sunk without a trace. It’s funny how far off into the future 2010 must have seemed back then, now that we’re looking back on it from six years further on. I wonder if it lived up to the band’s expectations?

NOEL GALLAGHER’S HIGH FLYING BIRDS     AKA…WHAT A LIFE

(AMORPHOUS ANDROGYNOUS REMIX)

Another hint of what a collaboration with Amorphous Androgynous might have produced - the epic AKA…What A Life is a tripped-out, 16-minute cosmodelic remix that was relegated to the b-side of the otherwise forgettable Everybody’s On The Run, thus underscoring the fact that between them they could create psychedelic magic if only they’d all just get on with it. I hope there’s a few more remixes tucked away for a rainy day in there somewhere.

VIBRAVOID     THE POLITICS OF ECSTASY

Hypnotic vibes from Germany’s Vibravoid, a psychedelic 3-piece from  

Düsseldorf who, whilst not necessarily aligned to the krautrock aesthetic, do create some pretty far-out sounds guaranteed to take you on a deep trip to the far side of the vibrationary scale (if, indeed, such a place exists and it’s not just me playing with words). This is the title track to their 2008 album which pretty much does what it says on the label.

MOON WIRING CLUB     THE SUMMER DOOR

This is the opening track from the hauntological compilation DOWN TO THE SILVER SEA, released earlier this year; the kind of aural equivalent of a Whizzer & Chips summer special, where they all go to the seaside, although, in truth, not quite as good as it sounds. Still, you can't go wrong with anything by the Moon Wiring Club, that's what I say.

LANA DEL REY     VIDEO GAMES (PLANET L REMIX)

Regardless of what you may think about Lana Del Rey, I think that this mind-bending remix is just sick (and not in a bad way).

JANELLE MOŃAE (feat. DEEP COTTON)     57821

Another track you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find on Mind De-Coder, this time from Janelle Mońae, whose 2010 album THE ARCHANDROID (SUITES II AND III) gained a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary R& B Album. That may be so, but 57821, featuring Deep Cotton, who themselves are no stranger to the funk, has a lovely pastoral feel to it that wouldn’t find it out of place on an album of contemporary acid folk.

STEALING SHEEP     SECRETS

Stealing Sheep are three medieval babes (who must be tiring of that epithet by now) who do a very fine line in pagan pop featuring backward dulcimers, psychedelia, folk music, electronica, and funk (if funk could in anyway be mistaken for a dark madrigal, say). Their debut album, INTO THE DIAMOND SUN, has just been released, and very fine it is too, but this track is taken from NOAH AND THE PAPER MOON EP released 2011.

WITTHÜSER AND WESTRUPP     KARLCHEN

I love umlauts. I wonder what they do? Karlchen is taken from the Krautrock album TRIPPS AND TRÄUME, a lovely, unassuming little album of tripped out, cosmic folkiness, released in 1971, by the German duo and featuring the splendidly named Renee Zucker on vocals and flute.

SILVER APPLES     OSCILLATIONS

Silver Apples, of course, were one of those seminal and hugely influential groups that never really found fame until much later on, by which time their music had been picked up by the likes of Suicide, Spacemen 3 and Stereolab. Their sound explored interstellar drones and hums, pulsing rhythms and electronically-generated melodies played on an instrument dubbed the Simeon after its creator, the vocalist Simeon, which, according to notes on the duo’s self-titled 1968 debut LP consisted of “nine audio oscillators and eighty-six manual controls...The lead and rhythm oscillators are played with the hands, elbows and knees and the bass oscillators are played with the feet.” It was an utterly uncommercial record — consisting of beeps, buzzes and beats in place of actual music — and sold poorly, but John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix were said to be fans. Oscillations was their debut single, also released in 1968. Weirdly, shortly after that, they more or less got themselves sued out of existence by Pan-Am.

SANDY DENNY AND THE STRAWBS     WHO KNOWS WHERE THE TIME GOES

I think the version of Who Knows Where The Time Goes that she recorded a couple of years later with Fairport Convention on UNHALFBRICKING was recently voted The Best Folk Song Ever or something, but I’ve always had a soft spot for this earlier, less polished version of Sandy’s signature song that she first recorded with The Strawbs in 1967 on the album ALL OUR OWN WORK. For some reason it never saw release until 1973 when it was finally rushed to the shops to coincide with the unexpected success of their single Part Of The Union.

THE ECCENTRONIC RESEARCH COUNCIL     DEVICE KIDS FIND A BOX OF CHATTOX MELODY

A noodling little filler taken from the album 1612 UNDERTURE by the splendidly named Eccentronic Research Council featuring actress Maxine Peak (the one that looked like Myra Hindley on TV’s ‘Shameless’) as they tell the story of the Pendle Witches who were executed in Lancashire, England, on 20 August 1612. In the form of a 12 chapter sound poem, it’s a marvelous concept album that takes in 1960s feminist poetry, mythical news stories, a synthesiser folk duet and the raising of a dead witch via a ouija board to curse all that is bad about the Jubilee Year. It’s a concept record. 

TWINK     FLUID

Twink is one of Britain’s unsung national treasures, having played a key part in the UK underground psychedelic scene by playing in such bands as Tomorrow, The Pretty Things, The Deviants and The Pink Fairies, but THINK PINK, released in 1970, was his first solo album. Regardless of the connotations the term “psychedelic” carries with it, it’s not all magic mushrooms, elves skipping around at the bottom of the garden wearing paisley overcoats and Tolkien, though. Things get ominous and dark on Fluid but by then, and the end first half of the album, the mind is expanded enough to take in side two, where the presence of collaborator Steve Peregrin Took (of Tyranosaurus Rex fame) really starts to come into play. Essential stuff, not to be missed by those following the U.K. underground psychedelic scene circa 1968-1972. 

LILACS AND CHAMPAGNE     METAPHYSICAL TRANSITIONS II

One day I’ll play something a little more substantial by this band because I find them intriguing – a sample heavy combination of lounge-exotica tunes combined with 70s porn soundtracks and hippy lyricism. Metaphysical Transition II closes their second album, 2013’s DANISH AND BLUE (possibly named after a documentary from 1968 that advocated for the legalization of pornography in Denmark) and offers a very suggestive solution to something that’s been troubling me recently. And on that note…

…that was Mind De-Coder 15. I thank you.

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