MIND DE-CODER 41

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Mind De-Coder 41

“A sombre yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things…the shade of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness”.

                                                             Edgar Allen Poe, ‘ The Island of the Fay’, 1841

YUYA UTCHIDA & THE FLOWERS     HIDARIASHI NO OTOKO

Something of a Hawaiian-styled cosmic freak-out, featuring the little known use of psychedelic lap steel guitar, from a nascent Flowers Travellin’ Band, with Yuya Uchida in the control box. Uchida had just returned from a very swinging London where he’d hung out with his friend John Lennon, and he was keen to bring the sounds he’d heard there back to Japan and kick start his own psychedelic scene. Originally recorded as Yuya Uchida and the Flowers, they were initially envisioned as a covers band to take on tracks by the likes of Cream, Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane, but rapidly found their own style and this wigged-out instrumental saw release on the album CHALLENGE in 1969, the debut album by the Flowers Travellin’ Band in all but name. A far out and gone intro to tonight’s show. Welcome to Mind De-Coder 41.

SARAH ANGLISS     SUMMER’S LEASE

With her obsessions with defunct machinery, faded variety acts and dark English folk-tales you’d be forgiven for labeling Sarah Angliss as a hauntological artiste (see that ‘e’ I stuck on the end of ‘artist’ there? That’s a very important distinction, that is), and in truth, she contributed a recorder or two to Ian Hodgson’s most recent Moon Wiring Club release, TODAY BREAD, TOMORROW SECRETS, extemporizing fragments of the  kind of minuets and gigues that were taught to birds in the eighteenth century, so the label isn’t entirely unfounded. Hodgson is certainly a fan, which explains her presence on the recently released album DOWN TO THE SILVER SEA (2013), a kind of hauntological trip to the seaside, compiled by Hodgson and also featuring music by such hauntological stalwarts as Jon Brooks, Pye Audio Corner and the Moon wiring Club itself. Of the three tracks she contributes, Summer’s Lease, is my favourite, but it’s not one that entirely conjures up images of a trip to the seaside with attendant ephemeral memories of England in the summertime; it does, however, play around with her fascination with talking and singing birds – I read somewhere that she once produced a Radio 4 documentary on the curious practice of teaching birds to sing human tunes. Anyway, very lovely.

ICARUS     YELLOW BALLOON

This is one of those records that has sadly been lost to the psychedelic mists of tyme, but I believe it was an unreleased 1969 single from the band Icarus who went on to create the semi-legendary hard-prog album THE MARVEL WORLD OF ICARUS in 1972, on which each track is based on a Marvel superhero character (Stan Lee even designed the cover for it, trivia fans). I found this track, however, on the very fine compilation, REAL LIFE PERMANENT DREAMS: A CORNUCOPIA OF BRITISH PSYCHEDELIA 1965-1970, released in 2007. It’s the sort of playful psychedelia (read: craven, opportunist cash-in) that confuses acid-tinged enlightenment with a wistful, childlike state of mind wherein yellow balloons become very important, but is nevertheless worth a listen for all that.

TAGES     SHE IS A MAN

Florid psychedelic pop from Sweden’s Tages, one of that country’s most highly regarded acts during the late 60’s. They never really cracked the American or UK markets, although at least some of their final album, STUDIO, released in 1967, from which She Is A Man is taken, was recorded at Abbey Road. It regularly gets compared to Sgt. Pepper’s and Oracle and Odyssey, two albums it seems to have pre-dated, but this is a little disingenuous. It’s not without some spot-on psychedelic flourishes, however, but its roots lie less within the usual psychedelic influences (of India, say) and owes more to traditional Swedish folk music – with backwards guitars. It also beat The Kinks on the sexual ambiguity front by three years or so.

THE BUCKINGHAMS     JUST BECAUSE I’VE FALLEN DOWN

By all accounts The Buckinghams were the most listened to band in America in 1967, a band so enormous that every single they released was a massive hit (I hope I’m not de-constructing any kind of Mind De-Coder mythology by admitting that, until I came across them on Mark Vidler’s very fine Trypshop podcast recently, I’d never actually heard of them). Anyway, they were a bit like The Hollies, capable of knocking out wonderful pop songs that took them to the top of the charts, but who seem to have lost it all when they tried to embrace psychedelia (which, I’m told, was kind of forced onto them by their producer). That being said, Just because I’ve Fallen Down, taken from their third album PORTRAITS, released in 1967, is an absolute blinder, and the rest of the album is not without its share of quasi-psychedelic weirdness either, although it more or less finished them off as America’s most listened to band.

THE BEATLES     ONLY A NORTHERN SONG

Dour-faced mysticism from George who was feeling somewhat miffed at the band’s contractual requirements wherein Lennon-McCartney earned more from his songs than he did himself. That being said, despite its seemingly uninspired melody that appears to borrow much from his far superior If I needed Someone, it hides its lack of enthusiasm behind some pretty far out psychedelic going’s on which meant I was almost duty bound to include it in the show at some point or other. It ended up being tucked away on the much unloved YELLOW SUBMARINE soundtrack, released in 1968. 

ULTIMATE SPINACH     MIND FLOWERS

Heavy lysergic vibes from Boston’s Ultimate Spinach. Mind Flowers is taken from the band’s second album BEHOLD AND SEE, released in 1968, an album of soaring psychedelic embellishments that aped the sounds coming from the West Coast without ever actually transcending them – but it will still get you high. I think Julian Cope once said: I want Safe Surfer to sounds like Mind Flowers by Ultimate Spinach, and thus, it did. 

BROADCAST     I FOUND THE F

A lovely track, this. This is Broadcast reduced to a duo on their third album TENDER BUTTONS, released in 2005, but still making music that sounds like the ghost of a tune trapped inside in an old transistor radio that’s broadcasting music from an alternate 1960’s where John Barry’s soundtrack to the 1960 film Beat Girl influenced a generation, Delia Derbyshire was a pop princess and The Beatles never happened.

JULIE DRISCOLL, BRIAN AUGER AND THE TRINITY     SEASON OF THE WITCH

A glorious hippy-folk-acid-R & B vibe on Auger’s 1967 debut album as The Trinity, OPEN, featuring Julie Driscoll on vocals, of course, covering Donovan’s classic Season of The Witch. I’ve no doubt that it is the season of the witch (and that beatniks are out to make it rich, and, oh, look, there’s two rabbits running in the ditch) but why, exactly,  do we have to pick up every stitch? It was never made entirely clear (although I never did trust those beatniks).  

A.R. & MACHINES     THE ECHO OF THE FUTURE

I first came across Achim Reichel (A.R.) in the book KRAUTROCK: COSMIC ROCK AND ITS LEGACY and was so blown away by the album’s questing psychedelic gnosis that I wondered why Copey had never mentioned him in KRAUTROCKSAMPLER, because his album ECHO, released in 1971, is so far out and every bit the equal to Amon Duul’s YETI, and Ash Ra Temple’s FIRST; but it turns out Copey was wondering the same thing, and he subsequently gives it a huge write up on his Head Heritage website’s Album of the Month back in February 2002, some seven years after the publication of his trusty tome. It’s that sort of album – once heard it kind of inhabits you and you want everyone you know to share the experience with you. Echo Of The Future, all 18 minutes of it, takes up all of side 3 of the album. Copey has this to say about it: “Over four sides of vinyl, Reichel creates a vast parallel otherworld which allows listeners to sink so deep within themselves that the return to the real world at the end of side 4 always comes as a genuine shock.” Check out the whole article here because this album deserves better words than mine. 

BETWEEN     OM NAMO BUDDHAYA

More Krautrock loveliness from one of your lesser known Krautrock acts, Between, who on their astoundingly beautiful third album, DHARANA, released 1974 , tread a delicate balance between eastern mysticism and the poetic meditative aspects of Popol Vuh to create a sound of almost transcendental loveliness that is both transformational and luminous. Highly recommended for moments of blissed out reverie.

PEOPLE     FLOWER STREWING

More transcendental loveliness, this time of a Japrock nature, with the ethereal Flower Strewing from the super-session LP PEOPLE - ROCK MEETS BUDDHA, an introspective meeting between psychedelia and Buddhism, released in 1974 and such a strange, progressive record that even now there’s not really been very much like it. Flower Strewing begins with a bell, a Kirisange chant (he wrote, authoritatively), a short refrain intended to lead to religious ecstasy, some bass, a very slow beat and a deeply meditational vibe that allows the mind to wander off hither, and in some cases, tither, in ruminative thought about the nature of, oh, something or other. It’s good. I like it.

EGG     BOILK

Weird psychedelic shit from Egg, loosely part of the Canterbury scene in the late 60’s (that included The Soft Machine and Caravan, of course) and a track called Boilk from their second album THE POLITE FORCE, released in 1971, which, with its avant-garde instrumental approach and its heavy organ-led sound, is generally regarded as their best album amongst your fans of progressive rock, except, crucially, for the track Boilk, which is usually dismissed as, well, weird psychedelic shit (but in a bad way).

COMUS     TO KEEP FROM CRYING

TO KEEP FROM CRYING, the second album from the now semi-legendary Comus, firmly split fans into two distinct ranks – those that worshipped at the deeply pagan altar of their debut album FIRST UTTERANCE, who dismissed the second album as a disappointing, mildly inoffensive piece of pedestrian acid-folk at best, and those in the second camp who, possibly never having heard the first album at all, think that TO KEEP FROM CRYING, released in 1974, three years after the classic debut, is merely a mildly inoffensive piece of quirky acid-folk at best. As for me, apart from the almost unbearably gorgeous Herald, I always found the first album far too dark for my necessarily fragile tastes, and marveled at a couple of tracks from the second album, at best; but I do think those two tracks are very good indeed. The album’s title track is one of them, and I played the other one last week.

STEVE HILLAGE     FOUR EVER RAINBOW

Side two of Hillage’s 1979 release RAINBOW DOME MUSICK, so beloved of The Orb, in which he simply carries on as if punk, and indeed Gong, happened to somebody else.  This is music of the womb, floating guitar glissandos and blissed out synths, designed to take you somewhere pretty far out and leave you there wrapped up in cotton wool. Doesn’t really work if someone insists on doing the hoovering while it’s playing.

Finally, I have it drift away into the final track from side 1 of a mix tape by the Moon Wiring Club called ASDA: THE MUSIC, released 2010 for WIRE magazine (you can download it for free here). If the track listing is anything to go by then what you’re listening to is a track called Electronic Track 13 from an album called ELECTRONIC TRICKS by Cecil Leuter and Peter Bonello – essentially Library Music from the early 1970’s. What Ian Hodgson (as the Moon Wiring Club) seems to have done is to have added a small film clip over the top of it – I’m guessing from the Hammer horror The Devil Rides Out, which I kind of remember seeing when I was about 12 and reading a lot Dennis Wheatley, attracted no doubt, by the lurid covers. But I might be entirely wrong. 

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