MIND DE-CODER 19

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MIND DE-CODER 19

“Freak out, baby…the Bee is coming”

JUNIOR PARKER    TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS

A soulful, chilled-out little version of the Beatles’ classic by Junior Parker, blues singer, and musician, who sadly died shortly after making his second album, the marvelously titled LOVE AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT A BUSINESS GOIN’ ON, released in 1971. There are two other tracks by the Beatles on an album characterized by Parker’s sweetly soulful voice, honeyed and velvet smooth, which pretty much cost him his blues fans. Back in the day, he wrote and recorded Mystery Train, later covered by Elvis. If there is more to know, I never learned it.

PINK FLOYD     ATOM HEART MOTHER SUITE (excerpts)

The Atom Heart Mother Suite from side 1 of Pink Floyd’s much unloved ATOM HEART MOTHER. Not the full 23-minute epic, mind. Fans of the album, of which I’m one (despite what the band thinks of it), will know that the Suite is divided into six parts, including voiceless vocals, full orchestra, choir and brass section. I’ve used three or four segments and left out some bits that the less committed listener may have found trying.

THE TIME AND SPACE MACHINE     ODYSSEY

Some cosmodelic vibes from The Time And Space Machine, taken from the third in a series of edits and remixes of Krautrock rarities by Richard Norris. Now, as fans of mind De-Coder will know, Krautrock rarities are not unknown to the show, but I’m blessed if I know what this once was before he got his hands on it. You, however, can find this track, Odyssey, on the album VOLUME 3, released in 2010.

PETER COOK AND DUDLEY MOORE     THE L. S. BUMBLE BEE

While the world was freaking out over LSD, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore offered them an alternative: LSB, a psychedelic pastiche which, with its distant shimmering pianos, screaming babies, and seagull-like guitar effects, outshone much of the music it was satirizing. At the time (1967) it was mistaken as an unreleased Beatles' track, or else an advance from their forthcoming and highly anticipated SGT. PEPPER’s album, although Dudley Moore has since claimed that it was, in fact, PET SOUNDS-era Beach Boys he was parodying, rather than paisley-decked, acid-steeped swinging London. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, it failed to chart.

ESQUIVEL     CHUBASCO/WALK TO THE BULL RING

Juan Carlos Esquivel was the king of space-age bachelor pad cool but was also a highly experimental composer, and in many ways, SEE IT IN SOUND, recorded in 1960, is his own PET SOUNDS. It was an album that expanded the idea of what an album could be – combining off-kilter music with real-world ambient sounds, and in many places is like a soundtrack to an imaginary film. It was so out there that the record company refused to release it at the time, and for years it became one of the great ‘lost albums’ until it finally saw the light of day in 1999, 39 years after it was recorded. It’s one of the coolest albums I own.

H.P. LOVECRAFT     IT’S ABOUT TIME

I think I read somewhere once that H.P. Lovecraft’s second album, H.P. LOVECRAFT II, released in 1968, was one of the greatest psychedelic albums ever made, which must have been why I bought it. It clearly isn’t, but there’s a rumour attached to it that it was the first major label release to have been recorded by musicians who were all tripping on LSD at the time, a very commendable effort, I’m sure you’ll agree, given that I’m barely able to make a cup of tea under similar circumstances. Originally from Chicago, they relocated to San Francisco where they fitted in very nicely, but much of the band's music was possessed of a haunting, eerie ambiance, and consisted of material that was inspired by the macabre writings of the author whose name they had adopted which, in the case of some of their songs, makes it something of a bad trip album as far as I’m concerned. It’s About Time works for me, though.

FLAMING GNOMES     CARE OF CELL 44

The Flaming Gnomes seem to have come together solely to enter a competition hosted by Dave Gilmour in 2007 to see who could record the best version of Pink Floyd’s Arnold Layne, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the single. They didn’t win the competition, but somehow their version was heard by Keith Jones of the very fine Fruits De Mer record label who specializes in psychedelia, prog rock, krautrock, acid-folk, and space-rock (I’m quite the fan) who approached the band and asked them if they’d like to release something for them. In 2009 the band produced two tracks, Love Song With Flute by Caravan, and Care Of Cell 44, from The Zombies’ classic album ODYSSEY AND ORACLE, and there their story seems to end. I dare say you’ll be hearing more from them on forthcoming shows.

FOXYGEN     SAN FRANCISCO

A lovely track from Foxygen, all glockenspiels and flowers, recorded the year Scott McKenzie shuffled off this mortal coil, is from their catchy-as-hell second album WE ARE THE 21ST CENTURY AMBASSADORS OF PEACE AND MAGIC, (released 2013). The album comes on like a cross between The Kinks and MGMT but manages to transcend those two influences by also taking in everything else that’s happened in between. A band, as they say, to watch.

PRIMAL SCREAM     GIVE OUT BUT DON’T GIVE UP (PORTISHEAD REMIX)

A mind-blowing remix by Portishead of the title track from the much unloved follow up to SCREAMEDLICA, released in 1994 as one of the bonus tracks on the Cry Myself Blind EP. If only they’d taken this direction and got Portishead in to produce the whole album they would have blown their detractors away. In fact, while the album itself was something of a disappointment for everyone who was expecting SCREAMADELICA 2, all of the remixes I heard at the time were excellent, which makes you wonder what they were playing at, although I suspect that the band’s drug of choice round about this time, namely heroin, didn’t help much. Still, this remix pretty much has a quality about it not dissimilar to synaesthesia – this is more or less what music sounds like on acid, kids.

AUGUSTUS PABLO     KING TUBBY MEETS ROCKERS UPTOWN

This was originally recorded by Jacob Miller and Augustus Pablo as Baby I Love You So on the album WHO SAY JAH NO DREAD in 1975. This version, however, as dubbed and spacey as you could possibly want, is from the album KING TUBBYS MEETS ROCKERS UPTOWN, released in 1976, featuring a collaboration between Pablo and King Tubby. It is, in essence, the definitive dub album, and the single more or less single-handedly defined dub for non-Jamaican audiences when it was released as a single in 1975, with Baby I love You so as the B-side.

THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN     UPSIDE DOWN

Even if they’d never released another record, this single would have cemented The Jesus and Mary Chain’s place in history. Released in 1984, pretty much when Spandau Ballet ruled the charts, this was a euphoric, exhilarating rush of white noise and feedback combined with the crystal pop beauty of The Shangri-La’s and somehow it made sense. I’ve included it here because I was just really interested in how noise like this sounds under the influence of LSD. In truth, I don’t have the words for it, but it’s not dissimilar to experiencing a spaceship taking off whilst having a transistor radio taped to each ear broadcasting nothing but white noise, so I have it disappear into…

ALAN BLACK     EARTHBOUND

Taken from Alan Black’s excellent THE OPTICAL album, a soulful and celestial mash-up album that takes the listener far away on a voyage through outer and inner space, or as he says on his website – deep sounds for deep space. You can find this album here.

BILL HOLT     PROGRAM 10

Just an excerpt from this remarkable album by Bill Holt who, back in the early 70s, and in his late 20s, quit his comfortable but uninspiring job, holed himself up with recently found and purchased musical gear and set out to realize his dream of becoming a musician. The result was the 1973 album DREAMIES, a groundbreaking album that picked up where the Beatles’ Revolution 9 left off. Inspired by the tumultuous times of the ’60s in America, the Vietnam War, the youth culture revolution, and other current events, Bill Holt created a landscape of sound bytes from the news arranged in an expansive collage, layered with his strumming acoustic guitar and experimental electronic sounds. It was an astonishing achievement, but, not unlike many Mind de-Coder favourites, failed to find an audience at the time. 

DJ FOOD      OUTERMISSION – SHEER FICTION

A small track from the kaleidoscopic album THE SEARCH ENGINE, released 2012, in which astronauts and robots float and bleep their way across a psychedelic rock album made with samplers.  

ALAN BLACK     APPROACH

Also to be found on the wonderful THE ORTICA album.

PRINCE FAR I      LONG LIFE

British dub master Adrian Sherwood collaborated with iconic Jamaican toaster Prince Far I for the first time on this powerful slice of version reggae, CRY TUFF DUB ENCOUNTERS CHAPTER 1, released 1976, and while Prince Far I's vocals are not to be heard on these sessions, the shamanistic power of these dub mixes speaks to the soul as much as the eardrum, and the results are a landmark of the form.

BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS     PARALLELOGRAMS

Beautify Junkyards are a Portuguese acid-folk band who are happy to share their influences on their  wonderful debut album, the eponymous BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS, released in 2013. The album is entirely dedicated to some of the band's major musical influences, taking in 60s and 70s psych folk from the likes of Vashti Bunyan, Nick Drake, Heron, Bridget St. John; some tropicalia from Os Mutantes and they even have a go at Kraftwerk’s Radioactivity, Mind De-Coder favourites all. On this track they produce a sublime adaptation of Linda Perhacs diaphanously lovely Parallelograms, a song so radiantly lovely it would be a brave artist who seeks to take it on – that they nearly succeed in capturing its beautiful and bewitching essence is testament to how good they are. Quite breath-taking.

GREEN MISTLETOE     SKYBEAR

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Green Mistletoe’s Brian Waters was born and raised in the deepest, darkest and dampest of Welsh woodlands when, in fact, he’s an American from Washington state, where, in fairness, they do have a lot of trees and, no doubt, a fair amount of rain too – but with song titles that celebrate stone circles in open glades, it’s an easy mistake to make. Skybear, in which frogs sing along while a distant flute whistles, is the opening track from his 2007 album FOREST DWELLER, a Druidic folk album inspired by mythologies and folklore of a decidedly pagan nature.

FAIRPORT CONVENTION     FOTHERINGAY

The lovely Fotheringay, a haunting portrait of Mary Queen of Scots in her fortress prison, appears on the band’s second album, WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAYS, released early 1969, and the first to feature Sandy Denny’s ethereal vocals, as the band moved on from their embryonic American-rock sound (they wanted to be The Byrds) to the more British folk-rock sound instigated by Denny’s arrival. When she eventually moved on from Fairport, following the release of the semi-legendary LIEGE LIEF, she took the name Fotheringay with her for her new band name.

HAKOBUNE     LIGHTS THAT GRADUALLY FADE AWAY

Ambient soundscaping from Hakobune (Takahiro Yorifuji to his mama-san), a Japanese musician who uses guitar drone and a few field recordings to create extremely beautiful noises on his album SENSE OF PLACE, released in 2007, that create 'compelling dream music that seeps into your psychic cisterns' (© J. Cope) and otherwise irrigates the outermost reaches of your most unloved spots. 

ATLAS SOUND      QUICK CANALS 

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Atlas Sound is the solo project for DEERHUNTER’s Bradford Cox. On Quick Canals, from the album LOGOS, released in 2009, he is joined by STEREOLABS’s Lætitia Sadier, who wrote the lyrics and sings lead on a song that opens with some gorgeously textured organ chords which sound like the feeling you get when you wake up from a particularly nice dream that you can lie in bed and think about for ages before you actually have to get up. It enjoys the kind of relaxed-but-propulsive neo-krautrock sound that Stereolab perfected very early on with Cox playing the part of the late Mary Hansen, adding 'la-di-da' trills behind Sadier as she intones phrases in her unfailingly lovely voice. He even throws in a Jenny Ondioline-style rupture about halfway through, sending the track into a breathtaking shoegaze section for its final four minutes, wherein it floats magisterially on a pillow of shifting guitar feedback. Quick Canal is almost nine minutes long and it doesn't waste a second.

ISLA CAMERON     ONCE I HAD A TRUE LOVE

This lovely song is taken from the album STILL I LOVE HIM, an album of traditional love songs, released in 1960 by Isla Cameron and Ewan MacColl, right at the beginning of the British folk revival. On the cover notes, Cameron claims this was a song that she learned from ‘some girl in Paris’, despite it being something of an English traditional. It was, of course, covered by Pentangle on their BASKET OF LIFE album, but Cameron’s version has a brittle authenticity to it that suggests that she did, in fact, once have a true love.

JULIAN COPE     LAND OF FEAR

The mighty Julian Cope and the final track on his epic 20 MOTHERS LP, released in 1995, a moogtastic version of a song that he’d tried his hand at least two times before. Presumably, this is the definitive version, because he’s not returned to it since – and a song that I take great comfort from in moments of darkness, possibly in the same way that your Christians take comfort in the 23rd psalm. This is your psychedelically informed version of that verse, and a very fine ending to Mind De-Coder 19.

I thank you.