MIND DE-CODER 22
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''Jimi Hendrix played his cock"
Bill Hicks
AMON DÜÜL 1 LOVE IS PEACE
This track is taken from the album PARADIESWÄRTS DÜÜL released in 1970 as the fourth album from the politico-musical commune known as Amon Düül. This track actually turns into a massive Teutonic folk-groove freak-out that takes up the whole of side 1 of the album, but we leave it after the opening minutes as I wonder about what all those dots actually do; especially those two over the A – that doesn’t look right at all.
MOUNT VERNON ARTS LAB BROADCASTING
Experimental goings-on of a hauntological nature from The Mount Vernon Arts Lab, the musical project of Scottish avant-garde musician Drew Mulholland, whose spooky noodlings are said to have been the inspiration for the Ghost Box music label, home for all things hauntological. Broadcasting is taken from the album ‘E’ FOR EXPERIMENTAL, released 1999, a compilation album that collects together all his work up to that date. These days he works under the name Mount Vernon Astral Temple and continues his psycho-geographic journey to where ever his muse takes him.
VASHTI BUNYAN WINDOW OVER THE BAY
Taken from her now semi-legendary debut album, JUST ANOTHER DIAMOND DAY, released in 1969. The story goes that she wrote the songs for this album while travelling by horse and cart from London to join a commune in the Isle Of Skye. This lovely and fragile song makes me wish that I lived over a bay too.
STEALING SHEEP THE GARDEN
Stealing Sheep do a very fine line in experimental folk played through a psychedelic time machine and are big on dextrous three-part vocal harmonies, but that’s only half the story – on their debut album, INTO THE DIAMOND SUN, released 2012, they also throw Warpaint vocals, Kills garage licks, Stereolab synths, Doors-y psychedelia, and some Animal Collective apocalypto-tribalism into the mix, too. Quite simply marvellous.
THE END SHADES OF ORANGE
Destiny only allowed 60’s psych-pop also-rans The End two singles, but as is so often the case, their second, Shades Of Orange, released 1968, is quite rightly considered something of a psychedelic classic these days. It was produced by Bill Wyman (who also managed them) during the Stone’s sessions for their Satanic Majesties Request, so there was a lot of free time available – that’s Charlie Watts on tabla, who was also at a loose end.
THE FOCUS GROUP THE BOHM SITE
Cool name for a track, taken from the album WE ARE ALL PAN’S PEOPLE, released 2007, featuring oddly assembled sampledelic collages, stitched together from fragments of library records and forgotten soundtracks from the hauntological school of perception. A beautiful, unhinged stream of consciousness that seems to prod at buried memories.
LAVENDER DIAMOND DANCE UNTIL IT'S TOMORROW
The almost unbearably lovely Dance Until It’s Tomorrow, by Lavender Diamond, taken from the album IMAGINE OUR LOVE, released in 2007. Despite being known for their largely winsome and sometimes ethereal psych-folk sound, singer Becky Stark’s voice can also knock your socks off at 20 paces when she gets going. I remain a fan.
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS II. ANDANTE SOSTENUTO
The sublime Spurn Point from Vaughan William's pastoral composition SIX STUDIES IN ENGLISH FOLK SONG, written in 1926, and performed here by the Nash Ensemble, one of England's finest chamber music groups, in 2001.
FLYING WHITE DOTS THERE IS HOPE
The only mash-up to appear in today's show, this mashes Mazzy Stars' Hope Sandoval's ghostly vocals over Primal Scream's towering Higher Than The Sun to mesmerising effect. The album from which it's taken, 3D, released in 2008, is available for free download here
JULIAN COPE KNOW (CUT MY FRIENDS DOWN)
The mighty Julian Cope from his heathen-folk masterpiece, 1992's JEHOVAKILL. This track is a stark and thrilling charge to the head.
JIMI HENDRIX 1983 (...IF A MERMAN I TURN TO BE)
This is Hendrix in truly experimental form, taken from side three of ELECTRIC LADYLAND. I wish he'd lived long enough to explore this direction because he was never this psychedelic again. I let it segue into in Moon, Turn The Tides...Gently, Gently Away and lay some Bill Hick's underneath it. I think they'd both approve.
BEYOND THE WIZARD'S SLEEVE - SUNDAY MORNING SUN-G
From the 2009 release, GEORGE, Sunday Morning Sun-g is a trippy psychedelic edit of the surprisingly over-looked cult-classic DREAMIES by Bill Holt, given the treatment by Erol Alkan and Richard Norris.
THE SOFT MACHINE HOPE FOR HAPPINESS, JOY OF A TOY, HOPE FOR
HAPPINESS (REPRISE)
The opening suite from the debut album by The Soft Machine featuring a minute and a half long intro designed, no doubt, to ensure the uncommerciality of the project. The album was recorded in new York whilst supporting Jimi Hendrix on tour, but despite this, the record retains a quintessentially English psychedelic feel and is now considered a classic of the extraordinarily creative post-psychedelic, pre-progressive, period of the late 60’s. Trivia fans will be thrilled to learn that Joy Of A Toy is one of the first compositions to feature a bass guitar melody played through a Wah-wah pedal.
WOLF PEOPLE TINY CIRCLE
In the spirit of English psychedelic bands getting it together in the countryside, Wolf People recorded their second album, STEEPLE, released 2010, in a converted chicken barn on the grounds of a 17th century Welsh mansion. It’s full of arabesque electric guitars; groove-laden drums; entrancing folk-song; smoke-fogged, riff-stoked jams; ethereal vocals and on Tiny Circles, stuttering flutes on an album that cheerfully treads the lines between revivalism and timelessness.
THE SEE SEE AUTOMOBILE
If you’ve ever wondered, like I have, whatever happened to acid-folk band The Eighteenth Day Of May after they split (two of them went on the form The Left Outsides, by the way), then you’ll be pleased to learn that former frontman Richard Olson now leads The See See, a band steeped in its love for sun dappled West Coast psych-folk played through a Krautrock sensibility. The deceptively simple yet incredibly catchy Automobile, taken from their second album FOUNTAYNE MOUNTAIN, released 2012, with its slinky, hypnotic rhythm and jangling guitars captures the spirit of a summer day in all of its Byrds-ian psychedelic glory. (Now whatever happened to The Left Outsides, that’s what I want to know?).
THE FLAMING GNOMES LOVE SONG WITH FLUTE
The fairly wonderful Flaming Gnomes with a cover of Caravan’s Love Song With Flute, recorded as the b-side to their only single Care Of cell 44, for the excellent Fruits De Mer record label (check them out here), which specializes in releasing psychedelia, prog rock, krautrock, r ‘n’ b, acid-folk and spacerock on vinyl. There is little more to say about The Flaming Gnomes. They haven’t really made their minds up about recording anything else.
MOON WIRING CLUB MARMALADE SUN
Ian Hodgson’s The Moon Wiring Club turns a perfectly pleasant but half-remembered light tea served one summer’s afternoon in an English country garden into slightly disturbing yet quietly absorbing flash-back sequence that lasts exactly one minute and twenty one seconds. Taken from his third album, STRIPED PAINT FOR THE LAST POST, released 2009, the whole album sounds like one of the scary bits from an episode of Sapphire and Steel.
THE TIME AND SPACE MACHINE THE COSMIC COWBOYS RIDES AGAIN
The Cosmic Cowboy rides again! Hear him on VOLUME 3, released 2010.
THE LUCID DREAM DEVIL RIDES OUT (TIME AND SPACE MACHINE REMIX)
Richard Norris is everyone’s go to guy for a stripped down motorik remix, but to be honest, the The Lucid Dream were always there – the band’s name perfectly reflects their sound. Devil Rides Out is the b-side to their 2011 single Love In My Veins, but this heavily hallucinogenic version by Norris' The Time and Space Machine can be found on his album THE TIME AND SPACE MACHINE PRESENTS 'THE WAY OUT SOUND FROM IN', a 2014 release of heaveny psychedelic remixes by Norris of some of the most cosmically oriented groops around.
THE MOONFLOWERS GET DUBBER
And speaking of band’s whose name reflects their sound, these are The Moonflowers - possibly the funkiest bunch of hippies of the magic mushroom eating variety ever to take the indie charts by storm in the late 80’s, by which time your average indie-fan wasn’t as in to your punk-funk-reggae-rock-jazz-disco-psychedelic fusions as you’d think (for which I, possibly unfairly, blame the likes of The Wedding Present). The b-side to their debut single Get Higher, released 1992, simply called Get Dubber, ticked all my boxes, though, and has been one of my favourite tripped out dance tracks ever since.
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