MIND DE-CODER 16

MIND DE-CODER 16

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“I’ve glimpsed, I have tasted, fantastical places…”

FREDERICK DELIUS     ONE NIGHT ON A RIVER

I don’t know much about your classical music, but I read about this particular piece in Rob Young’s masterful analysis of folk music in the British Isles, ‘Electric Eden – Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music’, in which he draws a direct line between the pastoral classicism of Frederick Delius and the kinds of experiments in hauntology that I’ve been playing a lot of lately. By all accounts One Night On A River is an impressionistic masterpiece - a distilled tone poem, mystical and atmospheric, that paints a picture of mists settling, amidst an ambience of peace and tranquility, over a river on a warm summer night, which I think it does quite nicely. Written in 1911 as one of two pieces written for a small orchestra (the other being On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring), it evokes an Edwardian idyll wherein one can see quite clearly Ratty, Mole, Toad and Badger partaking of a glass of Elderberry wine, or perhaps something stronger, with the spirit that would become Syd Barrett, as they picnic lazily on the banks of the Thames; so it comes as something of a surprise to learn that the river in question is the Loing, upon which the wildly blossoming garden of Delius' villa, in the French village of Grez, faced – and where he no doubt spent a meditative hour or two, with a glass of Elderberry wine, or perhaps something stronger.

Welcome to Mind De-Coder 16

THE A. LORDS     FREOHYLL

This gossamer opening track from The A. Lords self-titled debut album, which saw release in 2011, comes from a session recorded over two nights in a dusty old Dorsetshire barn during harvest festival in which microphones were placed in trees outside and under the floorboards to give an authentic rustic air to the songs. Lovely.

ITHACA     JOURNEY 

Regular listeners of the show will know I’m quite the fan of peter Howell and John Ferdinando, two musicians who came together to record incidental music for The Ditchling Players performance of Alice in Wonderland. They were so taken with the result that they released another album under the name of Agincourt, and then a further album under the name of Ithaca. Like their previous albums, A GAME FOR ALL WHO KNOW, released in 1973, was a privately pressed affair of between 50-100 copies, which makes any vinyl copies you may come across insanely rare, but it has, as with their previous albums, been given a CD release. It sounds like a folkier version of whatever Pink Floyd were knocking out at the time, with some nice tape experiments going on, and added vocals from Lee Menalaus (from the Agincourt sessions). I understand that they released a fourth and final album together as Ithaca for which only one vinyl copy was ever created – it is currently owned by a collector in Japan.

SHELAGH McDONALD     STARGAZER

The legendary Shelagh McDonald, with the title track from her second, and what was to be her last, album STARGAZER, released in 1971, shortly before her abrupt and mysterious disappearance later that year. The story goes that following a bad acid trip that left her paranoid and hallucinating for the best part of a month, she returned home to Scotland from London, where she was just making a name for herself as the Scottish Joni Mitchell, and lived with her parents in Edinburgh until she met and married a bookseller with whom she lived a nomadic lifestyle in north Britain, living on welfare benefits and moving from house to house, and later tent to tent.  She resurfaced briefly in 2005 following the CD release of her two albums and suggested she was interested in making music again, but, sadly, since then, nothing has been heard from her.

POSITION NORMAL     SQUEEZE TIME

Position Normal seem to operate in the same rareified atmosphere as your hauntological inspired bands, although they seem to have been doing it for a bit longer. Their first album came out in 1998, and their second, GOODLY TIME, from which this track is taken, was released in 2000. It combines an early Badly Drawn Boy feel with the kind of records your mother bought you from Woolies when you were 8. Super.

WHITE NOISE     THE VISITATION 

Spooky electronic goings-on from White Noise, the experimental band formed in 1968 by David Vorhaus, a classical bass player with a background in physics and electronic engineering, and by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson, two composers from the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop. Everyone knows this, but I’ll mention it anyway – Derbyshire was responsible for the electronic realization of the Ron Grainer’s Doctor Who theme, so you can see the kind of background she was working from for the album AN ELECTRIC STORM, from which The Visitation was taken. It seems to be some sort of ghost story, and I actually had to tone it down a bit – the crying and forlorn wailing was bumming me out a bit, so I edited them out of the final mix and just left you with the eerie tape manipulation and the use of the first British synthesizer (the EMS Synthi VCS3, of course).

THE CARETAKER     MOMENTS OF SUFFICIENT LUCIDTY

The Caretaker – James Leyton Kirby to his mother – is an ambient musician who specializes in reworking old ballroom 78s, exploiting their nostalgic characteristics.  Moments Of Sufficient Lucidity is taken from his 2011 release, EMPTY BLISS BEYOND THIS WORLD, a collection of edits of prewar parlor-room music built from layers of sampled 78s and albums. The album was inspired by a 2010 study suggesting that Alzheimer's patients have an easier time remembering information when it's placed in the context of music. Kirby rearranges the music in places, and brings the natural surface noise of the original vinyls in and out of focus making music that mimics the fragmented and inconclusive ways our memories work. In a similar fashion, I have this piece fade away into a psychedelic mélange that features, at the very least, the work of that semi-legendary producer Esquivel to create something equally as disorientating (if I’ve done my job right).

THE APPLE     BUFFALO BILLYCAN

Psychedelic pop from 1968, from The Apple, a little known Welsh band, whose only album, AN APPLE A DAY, released in 1969, was pretty much ignored by the record buying public of the day, although these days it’s considered something of a lost psychedelic classic – and with tracks like Buffalo Billycan on it, it ought to be.

DANTALION’S CHARIOT     A MADMAN RUNNING THROUGH THE FIELDS

Another band that had only the one single in them, Dantalion’s Chariot’s A Madman Running Through The Fields, released in 1967, is nowadays regarded as one of the essential psychedelic tracks of the 60’s. At the time, though, it was widely ignored by the record buying public. The band split the next year having their debut album rejected by their record label – drummer Andy Summer found a career in The Police, though, so things sort of worked out for him, anyway.

RUSALNAIA     DANDELION WINE

If you’re essentially an acid folk act, you can’t really go wrong with a track called Dandelion Wine, but Rusalnaia, consisting of Gillian Chadwick and Alison Krauss, two artists who have blossomed in the overlapping world of folk, bohemia, and psychedelic sounds, shy away from the heavenly voices side of things into a more experimental and raw sounding affair. However, Dandelion Wine, from their debut album, RUSALNAIA, released 2008, does have that fairy-like whimsical quality that a song title like that deserves – the flutes, cello’s and voices overflow into something dizzying and very satisfying indeed.

LOCH LOMOND     ELEPHANTS AND LITTLE GIRLS

Loch Lomond are a 9-piece band from Portland, Oregon, who do a particularly good line in peyote-trip folk-rock meditations informed by the darker elements of Celtic music and the druggier side of Americana. Elephants and Little Girls is from the band’s third album, LITTLE ME WILL START A STORM, released in 2011, and is as lovely as the title suggests.

TINKERSCUSS     TO MAKE YOU STAY

To Make You Stay is a gentle seduction of a song which seems to be based upon Lullaby from the Wicker Man soundtrack, although I appear to be the only person to have noticed this. Tinkerscuss (my favourite band name for ages, by the way), two ladies who’ve been performing together since the ’70s, are attracted to story and myth and all that entails – love, fear, darkness and light that carries a dreadful beauty, so it’s only natural that they would have been attracted to The Wicker Man. This track is from their 2007 album, MYTHAGO, although I first came across it in the very fine compilation album of weird British folk, JOHN BARLEYCORN REBORN, also from that year.

PAUL WELLER     PAPERCHASE

More kaleidoscopic psychedelic pop from Paul Weller who’s been on something of a creative roll since 2008’s 22 DREAMS. This year’s SONIK KICKS, from which Paperchase is taken, is once again alive with vocal echoes, Krautrock flourishes, acid-fried aural experimentaion and stereo whooshes through the headphones, but it will be interesting to see whether he can keep it up now that he’s fallen out with collaborator Simon Dine.

SHARON TANDY WITH LES FLEUR DE LYS     HOLD ON

An absolute killer single from underground psych-mod rockers Les Fleur de Lys, one of those cult bands from the ’60s who never gained the recognition they deserved. This was partly due to their never having a hit record, but also due to a number of line-up changes that meant it was difficult to take the band to your heart (at one point I believe they were little known psychedelic pop band Rupert’s People, Shyster and Chocolate Frog as well as being Les Fleur de Lys, none of which sold any records). By 1967 the sixth version of the band were backing South African vocalist Sharon Tandy, with the shockingly under-rated Hold On relegated as a B-Side to her single Stay With Me, before being re-released as an A-side in 1968 as Sharon Tandy with Les Fleur de Lys. It’s one of my favourite singles from that era (swinging London at its most swingingest) and you could probably draw a straight line from there to The Primitives’ Stop Killing Me to Stereolab’s John Cage Bubblegum. Brilliant.

THE PRETTY THINGS     DEFECTING GREY

The late 1967 single Defecting Grey inaugurated the Pretty Things' psychedelic phase and marked a radical break from their previous, heavily blues- and R&B-influenced British Invasion style which I could never be doing with.  It wasn’t a hit, but like many of the singles I’m playing on the show, it’s now regarded as something of a highlight of 1960’s British psychedelia, wildly experimental and not so much a song as a suite of disparate parts, the resulting shifts in sound and imagery resembling the kaleidoscopic effect of an acid trip - it’s all bass-heavy reverberations, backward guitars, tinkles and flourishes and a waltz-timed verse in which singer Phil May's vocals sound as if they're being filtered through an underwater megaphone. Brilliant.

SAND SNOWMAN     ONE SUMMER

This lovely tune comes from Sand Snowman who describes his sound as 'a whisper in a world full of shouting, a rainbow in a raindrop, the shadowy corners of a child's psyche, veganism, Van Gogh's "Sain d'Espirit", De Chirico's Metaphysical afternoons and tall tales in small hours.....', but fortunately I  didn’t let that put me off, because the swooning production of a song like One Summer, taken from the album NOSTALGIA EVER AFTER, released 2010, puts me in mind of the later lush pop-styled Stereolab arrangements, and that’s always going to work for me. 

ANT TRIP CEREMONY     PALE SHADES OF GREY

Named after a book, now long forgotten, in which the author argues that human society is ‘an ant trip ceremony’, this short-lived experimental psych-rock group enjoyed two separate incarnations in 1967, but it was the second line-up that produced their only album, 24 HOURS, a raucous mix garage rock and gauzy psychedelia. They were badly served by their budget which only allowed for the use of the most primitive equipment in the recording studio resulting in a sound that was considerably at odds with what they’d hoped for. 300 hundred copies of the album were produced, which was all they could afford, which they sold at gigs and at the bookstore of the college they attended. These days, of course, its rarity value alone has resulted in a re-release and, whilst it’s no lost classic, it enjoys the occasional compelling number that might otherwise have passed you by, like the lovely Pale Shades Of Grey.

COUNTRY JOE AND THE FISH     MAGOO

This delicate little wonder is taken from the band’s second album of 1967 (this was the days when groups were expected to produce an album every six months or so) IT-FEELS-LIKE-I’M-FIXIN’-TO-DIE. It’s a more acoustic affair than their previous album, with the band celebrating their folk roots while still stretching their horizons.

CHILDREN OF ALICE     LIMINAL SPACE (EXCERPT)

Children Of Alice is a collaboration between to ex-Broadcast members – James Cargill and Roj – and Julian House from the Focus Group, who’d previously worked with the group on the hauntological classic BROADCAST AND FOCUS GROUP INVESTIGATE WITCH CULTS OF THE RADIO AGE. This collaboration in some ways picks up where that album left of, minus singer Trish Keenan’s evocative vocals, of course, and so far has been limited to just two or three releases. Liminal Space was released in 2014. It’s a rather aimless piece, truth be told, although ‘impressionistic’ might be a kinder term, created from fragmented collages of a slightly noodling nature but which nevertheless serves as a quality bit of filler.

LILACS AND CHAMPAGNE     ALONE AGAIN AND…

Lilacs & Champagne are the sample-happy duo Alex Hall and Emil Amos of instrumental experimental rock band Grails. Their second album, DANISH AND BLUE, released in 2013, apparently named after a 1968 documentary that advocated for the legalization of pornography in Denmark, offers a warped, psychedelic take on damaged funk and b-movie film scores. Alone Again And… (which name checks Love, of course) is a particularly pretty track that could have gone on all night as far as I’m concerned.

BOEING DUVEEN AND THE BEAUTIFUL SOUP     WHICH DREAMED IT

Boeing Duveen and the Beautiful Soup was the mastermind of Hank Wangford (formerly Sam Hutt), known by the British counter-culture as the ‘rock ‘n’ roll doctor’, who administered to musicians and practiced homeopathy and holistic medicine. The band only released the one single – the zany and yet unsettling Jabberwocky, released 1968, the lyrics taken more or less wholesale from the Lewis Carroll poem, which I will find a home for in a later show. The B-side, Which Dreamed It, is an altogether different affair – gentle acid folk played on sitars and flutes with flowing water and soft voices. As is usual in these cases, the single is now listed in the top 100 psychedelic tunes of all time.

THE BEVIS FROND     CRIES FROM THE INNER MARSHLAND

Since 1987 The Bevis Frond have released over 20 albums of more or less vintage psychedelic rock, reflective acoustic excursions and extended guitar wig-outs, and in truth, I can’t say that I really care for any of them. However, each album usually contains a little nugget of something, or at least a weird filler of backward noise or suchlike, which is pretty much what this short track is – a weird filler of backward noise. It’s taken from INNER MARSHLAND, one of three albums they released in 1987. It really irritates me that out of such an extensive back catalogue there’s nothing I can clutch to my heart. Oh, well.

PRIMAL SCREAM     HIGHER THAN THE SUN (AMERICAN SPRING REMIX)

This is more like it – my favourite version of Higher Than The Sun and one of four songs I want played at my funeral, although if the vicar is playing hardball and accepts only one, I think I’ll go with this one (obviously I reserve the right to change my mind on the day). I remember walking home from the opening night of their SCREAMADELICA tour at Leicester Square, 1991, with this track swimming round inside my head and feeling completely satisfied on every level – emotionally, physically, spiritually. When I got home I threw up in a wastepaper basket, but the song remains in my head, brightening the world with lost colours and vibrations.

And that was Mind De-Coder 16. Mind your head on the way out now.

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