MIND DE-CODER 45

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MIND DE-CODER 45

“We must learn to translate both plants and stones in order to walk within ourselves”.

                 Friedrich Nietzche

TOY     CONDUCTOR

The opening track and one of several instrumentals from the second and most recent album from Toy, 2013’s JOIN THE DOTS, on which the band do just that – combining their influences from the first album into something pleasingly their own. 

GILA     THE BUFFALO ARE COMING

Gila were essentially a Krautrock act who, on their first album, were big on cosmic space jams but who eventually evolved into a post-Hosianna Mantra version of Popul Vuh. This is the album they released between those two incarnations – BURY ME HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE, released in 1973, an album clearly inspired by the book of the same name by Dee Alexander Brown that presented to the world for the first time the genocidal policies that were at the centre of the United States treatment of its indigenous population. Clearly affected by what he read, band founder Conny Veit created an album of haunting, shimmering dream-like psychedelia, combining Native American influences with beautiful vocal harmonies and acoustic acid-folk flourishes. 

THE NAZZ     OPEN MY EYES

A classic garage-punk single from 1967 with Todd Rundgren’s acid fuzz guitar barely disguising the fact that this was a band clearly enthralled with English power pop acts and Beatle’s inspired melodies. It should have been a massive hit for the band but didn’t even make the top 100, although Rundgren was able to forge a career out of the b-side, Hello It’s Me which became a worldwide hit some years later.

ORANGE MACHINE     REAL LIFE PERMANENT DREAM

This an excellent cover of Tomorrow’s Real Life Permanent Dream from little known Irish outfit Orange Machine who managed to release two singles before fading away into psychedelic obscurity. They should have been a lot bigger - check out that terrific lead guitar riff by Robin Crowley - but sadly exist barely as a footnote in musical history.  This is the b-side to the debut single, Three Jolly Little Dwarfs, released in 1968 and also a cover of a track by Tomorrow.

THE PEEP SHOW    MAZY

Another act lost to the 60’s - The Peep Show existed for a couple of years, produced a couple of singles and then disappeared from whence they’d come, having left behind one classic single from which to remembered by, if they’re remembered at all. Such is the case of The Peep Show who  left us the single Mazy, recorded in 1967, and generally regarded as something of a psychedelic classic despite having a slightly pessimistic tone to it that marks it as slightly out of place in an otherwise swinging London.

MIDWICH YOUTH CLUB     FROM THE CITY TO THE COUNTRY PT. 5 

Despite arriving wearing impeccable Hauntological credentials – the echoes of John Wyndham’s classic puts the Midwich Youth Club in the same psycho-geographic territory as The Belbury Poly, and there are subtle Radiophonic Workshop incidentals throughout the recording - this is an album that owes more to a prog sensibility. FROM THE CITY TO THE COUNTRY, FROM THE COUNTRY TO THE SEA, released earlier this year by multi-instrumentalist Allan R. Murphy, is essentially two long tracks each split into five parts that describes the journey of ‘a recently departed spirit attempting to reach the place they were happiest in their life, as a child on the beach at dusk, so as to be able to depart peacefully’. Broadcasting from New Zealand, of course, I’m put in mind of the Maori myth of spirits travelling north along country to depart on the voyage from its northernmost tip at Cape Reinga. Now, sitting on the beach at Cape Reinga watching oceans collide while the air above is filled with the souls of departing spirits – that’s a place to take a trip.

JIM WILLIAMS     BALOO MY BOY

Anyone who has seen Ben Wheatley’s mind-bending psychedelic British horror film A FIELD IN ENGLAND will recognise the sweet Baloo My Boy (based upon the Scottish folk tune Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament, fact fans) from the film’s soundtrack, produced by Jim Williams, whose music very much defines the uneasiness produced by the film. The first half of the film produces instrumentation the characters could have played themselves (actor Richard Glover’s rustic yet endearingly lovely rendition of the song will not be forgotten by those who have seen the film), but as the film descends into mushroom induced madness the music becomes electronic and psychedelic, channelling a menacing elemental Krautrock vibe influenced by the likes of Tangerine Dream or Ash Ra Tempel at their most ambient and far-out. The soundtrack, like the film, is a trip that lingers long in the mind.

TEMPLES     A QUESTION ISN’T ANSWERED

A Question Isn't Answered can be found on the band’s debut release, SUN STRUCTURES, an album that has garnered some mild criticism for not being far-out enough. In capturing a specific snapshot of a particular period of English psychedelia between, ooh, say 1967 to 1968, the album is a delight and never less than hummingly tuneful, but what Temples really need to do now is find a way beyond the reverential production and simply wig out. A Question Isn’t Answered points the way.

FINGATHING     HAZE

Far-flung funky vibes from Manchester based instrumental hip hop duo Fingathing whose 2002 release SUPERHERO MUSIC is all about the scratch and the bass. Somehow they find an unlikely meeting point between turntablist dexterity and upright double-bass pluckings, combining the skills of hip hop DJ Peter Parker and classically trained double bass player Sneaky, which they somehow turn into a compelling mix of tripped-out jazzed-in psychedelic going’s-on.

JAMES McKEOWN     RHIZOMATIC

Sublime acid folk offering from James McKeown, an artist who creates ambient hauntological sounds of an almost quintessential Englishness that are both timeless and druidic in nature. Rhizomatic is taken from the album SUBLIME KNIGHT ELECT, released last year and inspired by astronomy, masonic ritual, alchemy and Neolithic ceremonial sites cast using a palette of acoustic and electric guitars, bass, ebow, and various keyboards, synths and tape manipulators – in other, operating well within Mind De-Coder territory, so you can expect him to be all over future shows.

SUNFOREST     MAGICIAN IN THE MOUNTAIN

Sunforest were a short-lived acid folk outfit comprised of three American’s who arrived in London in 1969, decided to form a band and were discovered almost immediately before they’d even recorded a note. Inexplicably two of their recordings ended up on Stanley Kubrick’s soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange, and both can be found on their only THE SOUND OF SOUNFOREST, released in 1969, which features ornate baroque vocals, novelty children’s songs, music hall numbers and the jazz-tinged folk work-out Magician In The Mountain. The album was too eclectic to appeal to any one taste and with poor record sales the band split shortly thereafter but Magician In The Mountain remains as fine an example of the genre as you’re ever likely to hear.

JULIAN COPE     KELLY

Cope’s DROOLIAN album, on which the weirdly likable Kelly can be found, was originally released in Texas only in order to raise funds for 13th Floor Elevator frontman Roky Erikson who, following years of involuntary shock treatment in a Houston Psychiatric Hospital for having been in possession of a single marijuana joint, had taken to collecting his neighbours mail and sellotaping it to the wall. I’ve no idea if the record raised any money or not (Cope’s name was not to be found anywhere on the sleeve), and in any case the charges were later dropped on account of Erikson not actually having opened any of the mail (sorry, is this too much information?), but I found the record in Virgin Records along Oxford Street  - how it got there I don’t know, but for some time it was a prized possession until it finally saw a CD release in England a few years or so ago. It’s a very lo-fi affair, in much the same vein as Skellington, if not even looser, but it’s the sound of Copey clearly enjoying himself in the studio following some contractual disagreements with his then record company Island Records and we Cope fans tend to like it for its playfulness as much as anything else.

D.D. DENHAM     TONIGHT, WE DANCE AMONG THE STARS

Electronic noodlings that rather fittingly sound as if they’re being beamed in from outer space but which can actually be found on ELECTRONIC MUSIC IN THE CLASSROOM by D.D. Denham who may be a pseudonym for The Advisory Circle’s Jon Brooks, or who may well be a teacher who taught music to children in schools in the mid-70’s  and who released the results to the parents of the children involved on limited edition of reel-to-reel tapes that Brooks has patiently, if not obsessively, sourced and released on his own Café Kaput label – the provenance is unclear and it may be a hauntological sleight of hand, or joke. All of which works for me. 

LANA DEL REY     ONCE UPON A DREAM

I, for one, am as surprised as anyone that Lana Del Rey has popped up twice now on Mind De-Coder, but there is something about her interpretation of the tune from the 1959 Disney classic Cinderella that works for me on so many levels…

DELIA DERBYSHIRE AND BARRY BERMANGE        COLOURS

Colours is the final movement from a remarkable album called DREAMS, produced by Delia Derbyshire, from the Radiophonic Workshop, in collaboration with poet and dramatist Barry Bermange in 1964. On this ground-breaking record (The Beatles would have been working on A HARD DAY'S NIGHT round about this time) Bermange recorded people talking about their dreams and spliced them together creating a collage of five suites that generally reflect some of the major themes associated with dreaming – running away, falling, landscape, underwater and colours. The results were given to Derbyshire who added a background of pure electronic musique concretè sound which was often dissonant, big on ring modulators and distinctly uneasy to listen to. Altogether it makes for a strange journey through the subconscious, and more or less invented the hauntological template.

THE ECCENTRONIC RESEARCH COUNCIL FT. MAXINE PEAKE     MAXINE’S DREAM

Inspired by the above, experimental sound design duo The Eccentronic Research Council reunited with actress Maxine Peake, with whom they last worked on the 1612 UNDERTURE – an album inspired by the Pendle witch trials - and recorded Maxine’s Dream, in which she recounts a dream about a last minute flight to Ibiza while the boys provide a suitably dissonant soundtrack. It was released last year as a seven inch single. Marvellous.

LINDA PERHACS     PRISMS OF GLASS

Back in 1970, former dental technician and acid folk love-child Linda Perhacs produced one of the most outré, sublimely gorgeous albums ever recorded, containing at least two tracks, and I’m thinking of Chimacum Rain and the title track Parallelograms here, which were almost transcendentally spell-binding – sadly, nobody bought it and she returned to her day job and for the best part of forty years that was that. In the meantime, and rather like Vashti Bunyan’s semi-mythical album JJUS ANOTHER DIAMOND DAY, her album slowly grew in legend and eventually was held as a cult classic amongst the newly emergent Freak Folk scene in the United States. And, like Vashti Bunyan, she has taken the unlikely step of recording a new album; the result, THE SOULS OF ALL NATURAL THINGS, recorded 44 years after her debut, was released earlier this month. Once again it demonstrates that Perhacs sees and hears things differently to the rest of us, and despite the gap, the album is a natural successor to the first – inspired by a solar eclipse, it contains the same lushly psychedelic folk atmosphere and a deep consciousness of spirituality in everyday things – Prisms of Glass, recorded with Julia Holter is every bit the equal of Chimacum Rain and Parallelograms.  Lovely.

WALTER WEGMÜLLER     DER WAGEN

Walter Wegmüller, a Swiss born mystic, teamed up with the Cosmic Jokers in 1973 to record an absolute Krautrock classic – the legendary TAROT is an epic interpretation of the tarot cards that can induce a trip of mind bending proportions, under the right circumstances. I have no idea of which card Der Wagen is referring to with this track, however – is there one called ‘The Dare’? 

NICK NICELY     LONDON SOUTH

Nobody does psychedelia quite like nick nicely. This is the closing track from his most recent album LYSERGIA, released in 2011 on tape cassette, whereon it pretty much does what it says on the label. 

ANAN     I WONDER WHERE MY SISTER’S GONE 

Another band that existed just long enough to record just a couple of singles before disappearing back into the psychedelic mysts of tyme (©) , Anan were more or less unknown even back then. I Wonder Where My Sister’s Gone is the b-side to their first single, released in 1968 and not even rating a cover from the record company, but is a superb, mind-bending track that comes smelling of patchouli oil wrapped up in paisley rags. But in a good way.

BEAULIEU PORCH     LOVE 80

Beaulieu Porch is the moniker under which British musician Simon Berry produces a particularly English brand of pastoral psychedelic pop that puts me in mind the kind of b-sides that The Beatles were releasing during their own psychedelic period; experimental, baroque and full of bubbling pop hooks . Love 80 can be found on an introductory album that combines tracks from two earlier now out of prints albums released last year by The Active Listener, a download site that champions releases of a psychedelic, acid folk, prog nature so, as you can imagine, it’s right up my street.  Check them out here.

KEITH WEST     EXCERPT FROM A TEENAGE OPERA

The salutary tale of Grocer Jack was all over the summer of 1967 and was only kept of the number one slot by Englebert Humperdink, of all people. Conceived by record producer Mark Wirtz, it was decided to call it Excerpt from a Teenage opera to imply there was more coming along – at some point it was even rumoured that there would be a West End production starring Cliff Richard – but it was not to be. Singer Keith West from psychedelic rock band and Mind De-Coder favourite Tomorrow provided lyrics and vocals, and fellow band member Steve Howe, who also went on to become a founder member of Yes, played guitar and it quickly became the defining sound of the Summer of Love. Sadly, work on A Teenage Opera caused an acrimonious split within Tomorrow so we never got to find out just how good they could have become.

TEETH OF THE SEA     CEMETERY MAGUS

Teeth Of The Sea are a spectacular London based psychedelic act who produced an enormously impressive second album with the release of YOUR MERCURY in 2010. It genuinely sounds like nothing I’ve heard before, collapsing cathedral like swathes of sound into a warped prog rock sense of experimentation and has a scope that sweeps all before it. Cemetery Magus creeps out of its enchanted intro and builds into something all mad trumpets and tom toms before returning to a state that reminds me of an out-take from the Wicker Man soundtrack if Delia Derbyshire had been asked to contribute. Fittingly, then, the band are to release a specially recorded 3-track limited edition re-interpretation of the soundtrack to A Field In England for this year’s Record Shop day, which I’m looking forward to immensely.

MOON WIRING CLUB     BOUTIQUE SPOOKY

A fairly irresistibly titled track from the most recent album by Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring Club, A FONDNESS FOR FANCY HATS, released 2013. The album is presented as the soundtrack for an imaginary old skool computer game, from which you might never emerge. Hodgson writes: “Lost inside your own mind palace, the objective is to locate the fanciest of fancy hats and retire to a dreamy garden party, where you can effortlessly display this magical titfer”. It’s a whole confusing world to explore.

HERON     LORD AND MASTER

Like several bands in that post-psychedelic era of 1969-1973-ish, Heron retired to the countryside and settled in the village of Appleford, Berkshire, to record their debut album, HERON, released in 1970. They set their equipment up in a, no doubt, delightful meadow next to the river Thames and recorded the album in one take, the surrounding ambiance of bird song and buzzing insects adding a gentle pastoral tranquillity to the results. It really is quite lovely.

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