MIND DE-CODER 27

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MIND DE-CODER 27

"Would you like some sweets, Willy?"

KATE BUSH      INTERLUDE

The intro to this weeks show comes from Kate Bush who remains pleasingly hat stand on her 2005 release AERIEL. 

MAGNET (feat. LESLEY MACKIE)      WILLOW'S SONG

Regular listeners to the show will by now know that I champion this song as one of the most beautiful ever written, and it can take on all-comers - I have versions by The Mock Turtles, The Go! Team, Isobel Campbell, Doves, Tinkerscuss, and Kelli Ali who even made The Sneaker Pimps give it a go, but this is sung by Lesley Mackie - who plays the slightly unhinged school girl Daisy in the film ("The little old beetle goes 'round and 'round. Always the same way, y'see, until it ends up right up tight to the nail. Poor old thing!") - from the recently discovered master tapes of the cult British horror film THE WICKER MAN that were lost for 30 years or so. The re-mastered sound track was released in 2002 and remains one of my favourite soundtracks from one of my favourite films. Willow's Song, itself, stops me dead every time I hear it. Lovely lovely lovely.

FLYING WHITE DOTS      WALKING ON CLOUDS

The only mash-up on tonight's show is taken from the album INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN by The Flying White Dots, released in 2007, and available as a free download from his website here. This takes the original interview with Rickie Lee Jones that The Orb sampled for their track Little Fluffy Clouds and then plays it over the Orb track to suitable dubby/ambient effect - one of the most inventive bootleg artists around.

SAINT ETIENNE      WILSON

Before mash-ups there was sampling and none did it as well as Saint Etienne. Their debut album FOXBASE ALPHA, released in 1991, is a sugary concoction of delicious 60's basslines and dubby bedroom beats. It also features this mad little pre-hauntological track - all together now: "Would you like some sweets, Willy...?"

NICK NICELY      HILLYFIELDS (1892)

Completely ignored at the time of its release in 1982, Hillyfields (1892) is nowadays rightly considered a modern psychedelic classic. It can be found on the album PSYCHOTROPIA, an LP featuring his two singles and selected unreleased tracks which was released in 2004, that more or less accounted for everything he'd recorded up to that point. He has, however, enjoyed something of a renaissance in the last few years and appears to be releasing new material that's as tripped out as this - there's even an acoustic version he recently re-recorded for the very fine Fruits De Mer record label in 2012 that is by no means the lesser cousin. This track reputedly inspired Andy Partridge of XTC to come up with their psychedelic alter-egos The Dukes Of Stratosphear, and rumour has it that Kate Bush supplies the voice for the "pimply little post-boy" bit, but nick (lower case only, apparently) will neither confirm nor deny this, which means, where I come from, that it must be true. The other two interesting things about this song are: 1) It took a year to make, and 2) it is generally regarded as the first non-hip hop record to employ scratching.

THE TYRNAROUND      COLOUR YOUR MIND

When I first heard this record I was convinced that this was a genuine artefact from, ooh, 1967. Turns out it was released in 1986 on a 12" EP by Melbourne band Tyrnaround, who made great 60's influenced psychedelic pop records until the death of lead singer Michael Phillips in 1999. The 1980's marked a return of the psychedelic pop record in underground circles. I think it's because life was generally difficult in the 80's and sensitive pop souls needed something to lose themselves in between Smiths albums. Or maybe that was just me.

JULIAN COPE      CHEAP NEW-AGE FIX

From the last truly great pop album Julian Cope produced, 1997's INTERPRETER, this song simply fizzes with crackling energy. Copey has rarely been this playful since. For the best part of 1997 I took this album with me everywhere I went, played it to everyone I met. It even came with a map. I took the map and went exploring. In some ways I never came back.

FRANZ FERDINAND      ELEANOR PUT YOUR BOOTS ON

Lovely track, this, taken from 2005’s more or less YOU COULD HAVE IT SO MUCH BETTER. They were right, of course; we could have had it so much better, and despite the release of their 4th album last year, I'm still kind of waiting – in the meantime, this is the last song they produced that I loved.

THE SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS      ROCKFORD'S RETURN

The Soft Hearted Scientists first album, UNCANNY TALES FROM THE EVERYDAY UNDERGROWTH, a collection of their first three EPs, is one of my favourite albums ever. I know I say that a lot, but really, I shared a moment with that album and its wistful, dreamy blend of pastoral psychedelia, and soon came to treasure it. This track is from their second album, or first album proper if you like, 2008's TAKE TIME TO WONDER IN A WHIRLING WORLD, which was just a little bit too self-conscious to be as magical as the first. That being said, when The Soft Hearted Scientists tell you to Take Time To Wonder In A Whirling World, you really do have to listen.

LOVE      A HOUSE IS NOT A MOTEL (A BEYOND THE WIZARD'S SLEEVE RE-EDIT)

Contains my favourite line in any song - "You are just a thought that someone, somewhere, somehow feels you should be here", ever since the day I suddenly realised that I knew exactly what he, Arthur Lee, meant. This track was meant to be released on an album by Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, but it was withdrawn lest anyone inadvertently think they were trying to cash in on Lee's death a few years ago.

SPIRITUALIZED      ANYWAY THAT YOU WANT ME (DJ BLUE & JONATHON BARRET REMIX)

This is a really spaced out mix I had to rescue from a tape a flatmate gave me years ago so it may sound a little hissy. I was tempted to use their original recording as it's always been one of my favourite recordings by the group, Jason Pierce's singing sounded so lost and far away, but this remix, that accompanied their debut release in 1990, just takes it somewhere else.

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE      PINK LADY LEMONADE (YOU'RE SO SWEET)

This incredible track will be well known to anyone who was lucky enough to see Acid Mother's Temple on tour in the late 90's as they used it as the opening piece for their shows - it actually lasts an hour, which gives you some idea of what to expect at an AMT gig. Towards the end it picks up a bit, then it slows down again, then it returns to that same mesmerizing refrain. I saw them do this once in the backroom of a tiny pub in Brighton. Entirely blown away by the music I just stuck my head in the nearest speaker and let the song wash all over me. I couldn't hear anything for a week after - just walked around with a big idiot grin on my face. I still think it's an amazing piece of music and I really should have just played you the whole track despite my wife only letting me put it on when she's out. You can find this version (because there are at least two other versions to choose from) on the album DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO, DON'T DO WHAT YOU DON'T WANT TO DO!, released in 2002. If you've ever heard Pink Lady Lemonade all the way through then there's a part of your body where it's still actually playing and will do so for ever.

AKASHA PROJECT     QUANTUM MUSIC OF THE LSD-25 MOLECULE

The Quantum Music of the LSD 25 Molecule is based on the frequencies of the infrared spectrum of the LSD-25 molecule. Akasha Project, a musical venture of the sound artist Barnim Schultze, who deals exclusively with tones drawn from nature and their effects, opened the World Psychedelic Forum in Basel Switzerland with this music on March 21st, 2008.

While that was playing I included a similar piece called 432HZ-8HZ by Bart Wayshower  which purports to be the sound of you, or indeed me, or us, I suppose – this frequency vibrates on the principals of natural harmonics and unifies the properties of light, time, space, matter, gravity and magnetism with biology, the DNA code and consciousness producing profound effects on consciousness and also on the cellular level of our bodies. 

I thought both of them played together would have a nice effect whilst tripping.

MATT JOHNSON      ICING UP

Taken from the now semi-legendary album BURNING BLUE SOUL, released by a pre-The The Matt Johnson, in 1981. An album of melancholic grandeur, eerie melodies, lonely strummed guitars, Eastern chants and medieval trumpets that linger long after the record has stopped playing. I listened to it a lot in my bed-sit days. Sometimes it made me feel heroic.

And that was Mind De-Coder 27. Thank you for your tyme.