MIND DE-CODER 23

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MIND DE-CODER 23

‘Everybody says music is love’.

                                       David Crosby

JULIAN COPE     KOLLY KIBBER'S BIRTHDAY

The mighty Julian cope in full psychedelic mode with this radically different version of the song you'll find on his debut album WORLD SHUT YOUR MOUTH. This version comes from the 'official' bootleg album CHRIST VERSUS WARHOL, a collection of demos that preceded that first solo album. Originally found on the internet, Julian bought all the copies available and released them through his own website.

THE TICKLE     SUBWAY

The Tickle only made this one single, released in 1967, and their fans voted on what should be the A-side and what should be the B-side. This is the A-side and, it turns out, slightly faster than the original recording. I was given a tape of the original by the DJ of a now semi-legendary psychedelic club I used to go to back in the early 80's called Alice In Wonderland (The DJ was 'The Doctor' from Doctor and the Medics, trivia fans) where, no doubt, the seeds of Mind De-Coder were first sewn (I dropped my first trip at an Alice In Wonderland Magical Mystery Trip to Chislehurst caves, Kent, and, all things considered, I've enjoyed what you might call a certain unfolding of psychedelic enlightenment ever since). Over the years the tape must have stretched or something, something I hardly noticed at the time, but after I'd hunted down the original recording and heard it played at its proper speed I decided that I preferred this slightly faster version as this was the version I'd been listening to for the last 25 years or so. This is one of my favourite songs ever, this.

ERIC ZANN     VOOLAS

Released through Ghost Box in 2005, Eric Zann’s album OUROBORINDRA, is a distinctly  different affair from most other hauntological recordings of late – a certain antiquarian pre-1970’s focus remains but it is turned towards arcane mysteries of a malignant and misshapen kind. Zann merges his sampledelic soup of radio signals from non-Euclidean channels with wailing strings, brass and percussion instruments and sounds like something from an H.P. Lovecraft novel has moved in next door, which is where he got his name from (his mum calls him Jim Jupp who, keen followers of the show will know, also releases albums under the name The Belbury Poly). 

ANNE BRIGGS     BLACKWATER SIDE

An absolutely gorgeous interpretation of the folk ballad Down By Blackwaterside; a tale of lost love and broken promises, recorded by (the lovely) Anne Briggs in 1971 for her album ANNE BRIGGS, though it can also be found on either of her compilation albums 'Classic Anne Briggs' and 'A Collection'. Anne's singing is hypnotic, and despite the sadness of the lyric itself - a suitor breaks his promise of marriage - this remains one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. Bert Jansch, her lover at the time, provides the guitar accompaniment based upon an earlier instrumental version that Briggs taught to him herself, having learnt it from that great collector of British folk A.L. Lloyd, and appeared on his 1965 album JACK ORION, which, and everyone knows this, but I like to remind people of it anyway, Jimmy Page ripped off for Led Zep’s Black Mountainside.

WYRDSTONE     PUCELANCYRCAN

Wyrdstone is the work of multi-instrumentalist Clive Murrell who plays psychedelic folk guitar and other noises inspired by the beauty, myth and strangeness of the English countryside. He’s only released the one album, called CUFFERN in 2009, which I think was limited to 50 copies or something, of lovely pastoral psych-folk instrumentals consisting of simple guitar lines that get stuck in your head for ages after.

Pucelancyrcan, however, is to be found on the album WEIRDLORE: NOTES FROM THE FOLK UNDERGROUND, released 2012, which showcases music from the shadier, more left-field extremities of your acid folk spectrum, which is where you’ll find Wyrdstone. Very fine.

TWINK     DAWN OF MAJIC

Mind De-Coder favourite Twink with an eerie filler from his 1970 album THINK PINK.

THE OWL SERVICE     BANKS OF THE NILE

A stunning re-work of the folk standard Banks Of The Nile from their 2010 album THE VIEW FROM THE HILL, on which vocalist Jo Lepine’s soaring vocals tell the traditional tale of the maiden who follows her lover off to war. To show just how very good The Owl Service are, they’ve taken the lyrics from what many people consider the definitive working of the song by Sandy Denny’s Fotheringay, and set them to the tune of that other folk standard Jenny On The Moor in a way that I can only describe as stirring.

TANGLE EDGE     HALF-MOON FLOWER

Minimalist folk noodlings from Tangle Edge, Norway’s finest underground experimental instrumental group about whom I know next to nothing. I found this track on the sampler album FUN WITH MUSHROOMS, released as a showcase for Delerium Records in 1993, which pretty much does what it says on the label.

OPTIGANALLY YOURS     OAR

Optiganally Yours were, and possibly still are, a band formed around the optigan - a toy organ produced by Mattel in the 1970s that records the sounds of instruments that have been recorded onto a celluloid disk. This track is taken from their second album EXCLUSIVELY TALENTMAKER, released in 2000. It’s lilting and slightly dizzy, and yet has a way with a woozy tune that I really like.

NOBODY AND MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY     FLOATING

The kind of music you wish your ears had taste buds for, this track is taken from the album TREE COLOURED SEE, released in 2006. This is an album of jelly-pink loveliness, in a folky Stereolab-ish kind of way - one of my favourite trip albums. This track drifts and floats around like the sigh of someone who just realised he's fallen in love with the girl from the trouser shop and needs a good walk around the park to think about it. Or something.

MOON WIRING CLUB     SENTIENT TOPIARY

You know exactly what to expect with a track called Sentient Topiary from Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring Club – a spooky nostalgic trace echo of something half remembered; the essence of hauntolgy, in fact. This track is taken from his most recent album, CLUTCH IT LIKE A GONK, released 2012.

KAHIMI KARIE     KEMURI

Or, Kemuri (Remixed by DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid), to give it it's full title. Taken from the album SPIN! released in 2000, this dreamy slice of whispered psychedelia by the jap-pop princess is as rare as hen’s teeth. Psychedelic hip-pop, anyone? 

CRANIUM PIE     THE GEOMETRY OF THISTLES

Cranium Pie evolved from a cave in deepest Wiltshire into a progressive psychedelic acid-folk quartet who do a very fine line in hallucinatory soundscapes. Geometry Of Thistles is the title track from their most recent release, 2012, which appears to be a collection of folk-styled experimental tracks of a highly psychedelic nature recorded between 2006 and 2008. My favourite new band.

DAVID CROSBY     MUSIC IS LOVE

Released in 1971 (following the success of Crosby, Stills and Nash's DEJA VU)  David Crosby's solo album IF I COULD ONLY REMEMBER MY NAME  actually featured the cream of L.A.'s  loved-up rock set. On the mantra like Music Is Love, Crosby is joined by such luminaries as Neil Young, Jerry Garcia, Grace Slick and Joni Mitchell, in an organic, blissed-out jam that only exists because the sound engineer remembered to press the record button before partaking in whatever it was that everyone else was having.   

VIVIAN STANSHALL     SIR HENRY AT RAWLINSON END

An excerpt from the legendary Rawlinson End saga, performed by the great Vivian Stanshall for John Peel’s radio show in the early 70’s. Although Stanshall later collected all these sporadic pieces onto one album which he released in 1978 as SIR HENRY AT RAWLINSON END, the piece I’ve included is taken from one of the original recordings made by Stanshall for broadcast on the John Peel Radio show. Genius.

THE PILLBUGS     3D MONTAGE

Psychedelic filler provided by The Pillbugs who released 6 albums between1998 and 2008 and billed themselves ‘the world’s most psychedelic band’. They weren’t, of course, but anyone who releases an album called THE 3-DIMENSIONAL IN-POPCYCLE DREAM (2003) are going to get something played on this show.

PAUL WELLER     IN AMSTERDAM (NOONDAY UNDERGROUND REMIX)

An absolutely gorgeous mix of the track that you can find on Weller’s 2010 release WAKE UP THE NATION! by former collaborator Simon Dine, which you can find on the bonus disc of remixes and out-takes that accompanied the initial release.

JONNY TRUNK     THE HORN

Jonny Trunk (Jonathon Benton-Hughes to his mum) is actually the owner and founder of Trunk Records, a brilliant independent record label that specialises in lost film scores, unreleased TV music, library music, old advertising jingles, sexploitation and various kitsch releases, so as you can imagine I'm quite the fan. In 2004 he got tired of people making records using samples that his label was providing so he bought himself a sampler and had a go himself. The result was the fairly wonderful THE INSIDE OUT, an album of Dinkey-scaled manifestations of 50’s/60’s exotica. As wonderful as it sounds.

DAUGHTERS OF ALBION     CANDLE SONG

Aptly named after the poem by English visionary William Blake – Visions of the Daughters of Albion – the cruelly unknown Daughters Of Albion were actually inspired to create music by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but sadly failed to scale the dizzy heights reached by that album, which is a pity because their only album, simply called THE DAUGHTERS OF ALBION, released 1968, was full of great pop-hook songwriting, elaborate vocal arrangements with all manner of bells, xylophones, harps and clarinets thrown in to wondrous affect. It’s a pity nobody bought it, really.

DJ FOOD     INTERMISSION: A NEW LANGUAGE

More psychedelic filler, this time from DJ Food, whose most recent album THE SEARCH ENGINE, released 2012, is packed with little goodies like this, as well as thrashing guitars, pounding drums, break beats, spooky soundtrack music and spoken word samples.

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE     THE ASSASSIN’S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER

Acid Mothers temple, of course, are just as likely to swallow your brain with  a devastatingly heavy mind-bending freak-out as they are to make you want to go skipping across a meadow picking daisies, but on this track, The Incredible String Band referencing The Assassins Beautiful Daughter, they’re definitely in a blissful hippy mode. This track, taken from 2004’s DOES THE COSMIC SHEPHERD DREAM OF ELECTRIC TAPIRS? features such a gentle weave of guitar and recorder that one expects to stumble across be-smocked peasant girls, recumbent in haystacks with a comely glint in their eyes and pupils the size of saucers, at any minute.

WAX AUDIO     ANGKOR

Exotic sounds from Tom Pagnoni’s brilliant ambient album 9 COUNTRIES, released in 2009 and a big favourite of mine here on Mind De-Coder, recorded on location in Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Tibet, India, Egypt and Greece between 2005 and 2007 and entirely assembled from field recordings with no additional samples added. Angkor includes storm sounds from Kerala, insect noises from Bali and a performing landmine victim traditional singing group performing at Angkor Watt, Cambodia. You can download this album for free at the Wax Audio website here.

ALAN BLACK     TEMPLE/THE END

…and from one Mind De-Coder favourite to another, Alan Black’s album, END, is a self-cannibalising affair on which he samples past tracks and creates something new out of his back catalogue. I’ve segued two tracks together here to suit my own purpose – I’m sure he wouldn’t mind what with it being in the spirit of the thing and all – but essentially, your getting music from the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Biosphere, Nine Inch Nails (he's very big on Biosphere and Nine Inch Nails), Sigur Ros and Brian Eno mixed with samples from The West Wing, Six Feet Under, the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland and a reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, amongst others, with excerpts from five or six of his other albums – the mash-up at its most informed. You can find this and loads of other albums which you can download for free from his web site here. 

THE BEATLES      ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (PSYCHEDELIC VERSION)

This is a rare unreleased cosmic mix of the song (more cosmic than the above picture suggests, say) recorded in 1968 with added sitar and tambura sound – often referred to as the psychedelic version - that finally saw the light of day on Anthology 2, 1996. 

And that was Mind De-Coder 23. Thank you.

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