MIND DE-CODER 35

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"I hear nothing myself’, he said, “but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers."

JULEE CRUISE      UP IN FLAMES

Back when Twin Peaks was first on, Julee Cruise was the girl for me. She was the coolest girl around; she sang numbed out songs about broken promises, crushed relationships and heartache in a way that made loneliness seem almost narcotic. She looked great too. Words by David Lynch and music by Angelo Badalamenti, this track is from the album THE VOICE OF LOVE, released in 1993. This particular track is from a live performance from Lynch and Badalamenti's INDUSTRIAL SYMPHONY #1 in which she starred as The Dream Of The Heartbroken Woman. It still gives me shivers.

BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD      EXPECTING TO FLY

I've never really been a big fan of Buffalo Springfield, but this particular Neal Young written track, taken from 1967's BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD AGAIN, is as light as a feather and never fails to enchant - enchant, in this sense, taken from original sense of being entranced, bewitched and spell-bound by the faeries. It really does have that sense of fascinated delight about it .(It was arranged for orchestration by Jack Nietzche, trivia fans).

LEVITATION      NADINE

The first thing that you notice about this opening track from their 1991 debut COPPELIA EP is how short it is, given everyone was expecting 'Topographic Oceans'. The sound is one of syrupy vocals spiralling around this condensed wash of noise that cascades to a sudden stop and leaves you simply needing more...sugar oceans, indeed.

C.C.C.      MAN ALIVE

This evening's only mash-up, and very clever. C.C.C.'s speciality is to mix classic 60's tracks together. In this track he combines The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Spencer Davis Group, Pink Floyd and Mick Jagger's one outstanding solo track Memo To Turner (from the soundtrack to Performance) to mesmerising effect. You can find it here along with a whole bunch of excellent mash-ups. CCC is the creator of REVOLVED and CRACKED PEPPER, two Beatles Mash-up albums also available at the same site.

VELVET UNDERGROUND      LADY GODIVA'S OPERATION

First time I heard this track it blew me away. When Lou Reed's voice breaks in over John Cale's blank vocals on this Burroughsian rendition of the Lady Godiva tale I very nearly leapt out of my skin. It’s taken from 1967's WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT, of course, one of my favourite albums of all time. I'd never heard a record like it before, and I haven't heard anything like it since. I've never re-bought The Velvet Underground on CD, preferring to stick with the original vinyl recordings After all, if you take away the background noise in a VU recording, you've taken away half the song. I believe the studio was actually being built around them as this album was being recorded. Mo Tucker sounds like she's playing telephone directories - which I think she was.

TRAFFIC     PAPER SUN

The debut single from Steve Winwood’s Traffic, ensconced in their Berkshire cottage and otherwise away with the daisies. It was released as a taster for their forthcoming album MR FANTASY which followed in 1967 (although not actually included on the album).

THE SMALL FACES     ITCHYCOO PARK

Well, I had to play this at some point, in many ways the definitive English psychedelic pop record of the 60’s – whimsical, playful and a touch of the pastoral about it. Released in 1967, it was one of the first pop records to use flanging, which was soon to become a staple amongst the psychedelic FX repertoire.

DONOVAN       HURDY GURDY MAN

The sound of this song has a lysergic quality about it that I suspect may have been created by the use of the tambura, but which, in any case, has a harder, rockier sound than Donovan’s previous work, employing the use of distorted guitars which may, or may not, have been provided by Jimmy Page, although from what I can work out, it was a long time ago (1968) and in the true spirit of the times, no one can quite remember who was playing what or even if they were there at all.

The lyrics recount the tale of a nameless narrator being visited in his dreams by the eponymous Hurdy Gurdy Man and his close associate, the Roly Poly Man. Both men come "singing songs of love”. Despite being very much of its time, only Donovan was able get away with this kind of thing.

THE LEMON PIPERS      GREEN TAMBOURINE

With Green Tambourine, The Lemon Pipers scored themselves the very first bubble gum pop record to hit the top of the charts in America, but as is often the case in these things, the band hated it, thinking it unrepresentative of their sound. In fairness, their only album, GREEN TAMBOURINE, released 1968, had a heavier, rockier sound with a few odd country-ish moments thrown in than the hits they were compelled to knock out for their label, but rather than make the album compellingly eclectic, it rather made for a more difficult listen. Best all round if they’d just stuck with the bubblegum hits, in my opinion.

BEYOND THE WIZARDS SLEEVE     MIDAS REVERSED

The Hollies, of course, whose 1967 single King Midas In Reverse is given the remix treatment by Beyond The Wizards Sleeve on their album BIRTH,  released in 2005 – this is the album on which they thanked LSD, the 11 dimensions and various Gods and denounced all wars, oppression and conflict. The world has been warned.

THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE     VOODOO CHILD (SLIGHT RETURN)

The closing track on ELECTRIC LADYLAND, of course (released 1967), and a piece that’s generally regarded as the greatest piece of electric guitar work ever recorded and a beacon of humanity – if you listen to it on acid it will literally blow your mind.

THE BEACH BOYS     GOOD VIBRATIONS

Hendrix was rather dismissive of The Beach Boys and on one famous occasion referred to them as little more than a psychedelic barber shop quartet, which doesn’t actually sound like the worse thing in the world; but I think even he would have be hard put to deny that Brian Wilson’s pocket symphony, released in 1966, is one of the single greatest recordings of all time. Actually, he probably wouldn't have, but that shouldn’t detract from the fact that there is nothing but perfection here.

THE DOORS     BREAK ON THROUGH (TO THE OTHER SIDE)

Surprising as it may seem now, The Doors debut single, released in 1967 to coincide with their album, hardly dented the charts but today remains pretty much their signature tune on which Morrison, on something of a Blake-ian trip, makes clear the band’s entire manifesto – sex, poetic musings, darkness, vulnerability and exploring the inner landscape whilst high on drugs.

THE BYRDS      8 MILES HIGH

I listened to this once under agreeable circumstances and the experience literally thrilled me. I never knew how much was going on it, how important the noise of it was. It's one of the greatest records ever made, and taken from their 1966 release FIFTH DIMENSION, the last to feature Gene Clark in the line-up. This was, without doubt, his finest hour. I'm a big fan of their next album, 'The Notorious Byrd Brothers', but I think this was The Byrds at their very best.

PINK FLOYD      SEE EMILY PLAY

And then we come to quite simply my favourite record from the sixties, Pink Floyd's See Emily Play, released in 1967, when England was swinging liked a pendulum do. Playful, childlike, slightly taunting, sonically amazing - it's the perfect pop song, and trippy as anything. Syd Barrett’s finest moment. It never fails to put a smile on my face.

After that I thought a play a section from one of those helpful educational films warning against the dangers of mixing LSD with hotdogs. The film is a trip in itself. You can watch it here. All I can say is, it's never happened to me.

THE BEATLES      IT'S ALL TOO MUCH

By no means The Beatles' greatest song (George Harrison wrote it, for a start, but it does have that brilliant intro, though), but a very good example as to why I prefer English psychedelic music over the American approach. American psychedelic music is notably rock-based, and at its very best is pretty far-out, transformational, and usually has something to do with losing yourself in some desert and riding a wild snake, or something. English psychedelia, on the other hand, is usually pop-based, has a cosy, traditional Victorian nursery-rhyme feel to it and the limits to personal transformation can be summed up in Harrison's lines: "Show me I'm everywhere, and get me home for tea", a lyric I've always found enormously comforting. Although recorded in 1967 in the midst of their post-Pepper comedown, you can find It's All Too Much on THE YELLOW SUBMARINE soundtrack, released in 1969.

LISTEN WITH SARAH      BLUE PARSLEY

Avant-garde, experimental folk music from Sarah Nelson, aka Listen With Sarah. This particular track can be found on the Folk Off: New Folk And Psychedelia compilation album, released in 2006, but can also be found on THE BLUE PARSLEY/JULY EP released in 2004. She specialises in cut 'n' paste, dada-esque sound collages and was discovered by John Peel about a week before he died.

RIDE      ROLLING THUNDER

A lovely tune, this, taken from their third album CARNIVAL OF LIGHT, released in 1994, after they'd left the shoe-gazing scene behind decided to get all authentic. It's a sweet album, but I think the in-fighting had begun by now and they were not much longer for this world. It was more or less at this time that Oasis burst onto the scene with 'Definitely Maybe'. Singer/guitarist Andy Bell was heard to opine that he wished his band sounded like Oasis. A few years later he joined them - which just goes to show that you should be careful what you wish for.

JAPANESE TEMPLE BELL      ISEHARA

Sometimes you just need to give your mind a little space in which to drift away. This does the job perfectly. Taken from the album JAPANESE TEMPLE BELLS 8-17th CENTURY (every home should have one), this particular bell can be heard at Isehara, near Yokohama, apparently.

VLADIMIR COSMA      PROMENADE SENTIMENTALE

Taken from the soundtrack to the defiantly stylish 1982 French art-house film debut DIVA by director Jean-Jacques Beineix, who went on to make the classic Betty Blue (still my favourite film ever). Exquisitely shot, the film is well served by this beautiful piano piece by Vladimir Cosma. The film absolutely haunted me the first time I saw it and I spent months searching the record shops of London until I was able to track down a copy of the soundtrack in a little back street off Covent Garden. This was in the days before the internet, of course, and if you really wanted to find an obscure French soundtrack you had to be prepared to give up your weekends for the hunt. I've never regretted the time it took, because Promenade Sentimentale is one of the most beautiful pieces of music you will ever hear, and I seem to have owned a copy of it for over 30 years. Cool.

JULIAN COPE      METRANIL VAVIN

Metranil Vavin was a fictional Russian emigré living in Paris in the 1970's who wrote soggily sentimental poems about his mother, who was either dead or possibly stayed behind in Russia; I understand it was never made entirely clear. None of this has anything to do with this track, which for me always sparkles like a jewel in the Julian Cope treasure chest of songs. You can find it on WORLD SHUT YOUR MOUTH, his debut solo LP which he released in 1984 and which remains my favourite of the 50 or so albums I seem to own by him. In the sleeve notes, he writes: 'Metranil Vavin was a good poet', but I always thought he was singing about me.

MICHAEL HORDERN      PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN

The great English actor Michael Hordern reading from The Wind In The Willows, one of my favourite books. It typifies the kind of Englishness that English psychedelic pop of the 60's aspired to, so it's only fitting that I play my favourite chapter here - the magical, haunting Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (needless to say it made something of an impression on Syd Barrett, too). Think of it as a bed-time treat. It will take you somewhere far away.

SCHUBERT      TRIO IN E FLAT OP.100

I know nothing about classical music - I don't even know what 'Op.100' means - but I do know that I like this; that it fit the mood of comfortable reverie I was trying to create, and that you can find this particular recording on the soundtrack to Tony Scott's THE HUNGER, that I played a little something from last week. Seems to me that once the psychedelic bubble burst a lot of bands were burnt out and were looking for something simple and authentic to return to. A lot of bands found it in American roots music, others looked to the blues. I can't really be doing with either - but having enjoyed a bit of Schubert under engaging conditions, say, I don't think that you can get very much more authentic than this. Bach's pretty good, too. (And I think we can safely leave The Band at The Big Pink).

THE BEATLES      TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS

Possibly The Beatles' finest moment, certainly one of the greatest psychedelic records ever made, if not the greatest - the exhilarating Tomorrow Never Knows. "I want the sound of a thousand Tibetan monks chanting..." said John, and he got it. From 1966's REVOLVER, of course, when Lennon sings: 'Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream', it sounds like a call to arms...

MIND DE-CODER 46

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MIND DE-CODER 46

“…that’s the way love am.”

                                            Julian Cope

SERENDIPITY     CASTLES

Serendipity were a little known psych-rock band that seem to have existed at that exact point in music history when the psychedelic experimentation of the late 1960's was just slipping into prog. In truth, I know next to nothing about them – I couldn’t even find a picture of them – but a version of this track Castles, was the b-side to their second, and for all I know final single, If I Could Tell, released in 1969. This version of Castles, is a longer, unreleased acetate from which that was edited, and recently appeared on the impressive compilation LOVE, POETRY AND REVOLUTION: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE BRITISH PSYCHEDELIC AND UNDERGROUND SCENES 1966-1972 (released 2013) which, over three CDs features outrageously rare oddities, misses and early takes of which this band are a very fine example. Once again, if you are a keen musicologist, this will excite you enormously, etc. …etc. … etc.

TAME IMPALA    STRANGER IN MOSCOW

Tame Impala with a cover of your late-period Michael Jackson Stranger In Moscow – one of his ‘hits’ that seemed to pass me by, I must confess, but this is incredible, regardless of the original – released on their Facebook page earlier this year.

TEETH OF THE SEA     YOUR MERCURY

Ravishing prog vibes from Teeth Of The Sea who, on this track, have a Miles Davies thing going on that eventually collapses into a full-on Goblin-inspired  soundtrack combustion that’s every bit as good as it sounds. This taken from their 2010 release YOUR MERCURY which really ought to have garnered a lot more attention than it did.

BEAULIEU PORCH     ANNO DOMINI

Gorgeous psychedelia from Beaulieu Porch whose second album, WE ARE BEAUTIFUL, released 2013, is a marvellous mix of harpsichords, trumpets, church organs and backwards electric guitars that displays a Wilson-esque delight in exactly how much fun you can have in the studio when you’ve got some really good tunes to play around with.

PETER HOWELL AND JOHN FERDINANDO    THE JABBERWOCKY

The first release from the home studio of future Radiophonic Workshop composer Peter Howell (he wrote the second version of the Doctor Who theme tune) and his musical partner John Ferdinando was a private press recording produced as a musical backdrop for a stage version of “Alice through the Looking Glass” by local amateur dramatics group the Ditchling Players, who approached the two musicians, both living in Sussex village of Ditchling at the time, to provide a few musical incidentals for the production. The resulting album, ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, released in 1969, is one of my favourite albums, blending dialogue recorded straight from the play with Carroll’s surreal poetry and acid folk charm that makes it the pastoral equivalent of PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN. Limited at the time to less than a hundred copies freely given away to the cast as a souvenir of the show, it saw a welcome re-release on CD at some point in the 1990. Now, if you are a keen musicologist…etc., etc., etc. 

HAWKWIND ZOO     HURRY ON SUNDOWN

Another ridiculously rare recording to be found on the album LOVE POETRY AND REVOLUTION, this time from the pre-Hawkwind, Hawkwind Zoo, who recorded this previously unreleased demo version of the track Hurry On Sundown in 1969. It was one of the earliest tracks they ever recorded and eventually turned up on their debut album HAWKWIND, released in 1970. This is a lovely, if rather undeveloped affair, but not bad for a demo, I’m sure you agree. In fact, if you were a …etc., etc., etc.

PENTANGLE     SO EARLY IN THE SPRING

I fear that I have done Pentangle’s Jacquie McShea a grave, grave mis-service here, and may I be struck down for it and all, but this is almost entirely the point of having your own radio show. This lovely track can be found on the band’s 1968 double album SWEET CHILD; the first album of which features the band in concert at the Royal Albert Hall, June 29th 1968. So Early In The Spring is a folk traditional, possibly made more famous by Judy Collins.

MARC WILKINSON     RALPH CHOPS TREE

This is possibly the only lovely track on the soundtrack to Piers Haggard’s 1970 cult British horror film THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW. The rest of the music has a sinister undertone to it, made all the more explicit by its descending chromatic scale which features throughout the music. This, of course (he says, knowledgably, reading from Wilkinson’s notes on the back of the sleeve, although I might as well be talking gibberish) omits the perfect fifth (the only true consonant in the chromatic scale) and therefore highlights the diminished fifth, which ever since the middle ages in Europe has been known as the Devil's Interval. Your musicologists go mad for this sort of thing. 

MOON WIRING CLUB     DISTANT GAZEBO

Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring Club have been all over this show. As is his wont these days, he’s released two versions of his latest album, 2013’s A FONDNESS FOR FANCY HATS – the CD version, on which you’ll find Distant Gazebo, is presented as the soundtrack for an imaginary old skool computer game, from which you might never emerge. It imagines a mind-palace consisting of a large number of scrolling mazes and areas of peculiar architecture, including the fabled Moontower and Mouldsmoth Hall, each containing countless rooms. Within the rooms the player may find items of Occult Haute Couture to add to an endless wardrobe. These must be collected and utilised to your best advantage. It advises the player to be wary of slamming doors and distant voices. There is a second version of the album, limited to 150 and released as a 45 minute tape cassette; A FONDNESS FOR FANCY HATS (SOFT CONFUSION) is an altogether dreamier affair that I’ve dipped into throughout the show - chases the original into a lower resolution world of fancy dressed role-playing memory dredge. Marvellous.

THE CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN     NIGHTMARE

This was Arthur Brown’s first single, released in 1968 before finding short-lived fame and fortune with Fire. Nightmare sank without a trace.

TYRANNOSAURUS REX     DEBORAAROBED

In these modern cynical times it’s easy to mock Tyrannosaurus Rex for their faux-naïf fondness for Middle Earth and the little faerie folk that dwell therein, (quite rightly, in my opinion; look at what percussionist Steve Peregrine Took plays on their second album, 1969’s PROPHET’S SEERS AND SAGES, THE ANGELS OF THE AGES – bongos, African drums, kazoo, pixiephone and Chinese gong) but there’s no doubting that Deboraarobed, a fairly radical re-working of their debut single, Debora, in which the song segues into the same version played backwards, is an absolute thrilling introduction to the album.

TEMPLES     MOVE WITH THE SEASON

A lovely track from Temples debut album, SUN STRUCTURES, released earlier this year and perhaps just a bit too polite when it could have done with a little more attitude; other than that its reference points are spot on. This track enjoys a sun-kissed bucolic charm that will have you humming in post office queues.

MARY-ANNE PATERSON     LOVE HAS GONE

Gorgeous acid-folk of the slightly medieval kind (I’m a fan of the slightly medieval kind, me) from Scottish folk singer Mary-Anne Paterson who recorded her one album in 1970 as a means of raising funds for a children’s arts centre she wished to open. It’s surprisingly magical - all acoustic guitars, flutes and Paterson’s gentle voice – given that, according to the legend, it was recorded with some street buskers she found on the London Underground with whom she barely rehearsed and who she never saw again; and along with its wispy loveliness there’s also one or two free-folk freak-outs making it, all in all, a bucolic, witchy affair. Sadly she had no desire to promote or tour the album so it sank without trace, leaving some commentators to suggest that this is one of the rarest records of all time. I’m not sure what happened to the arts centre.

JAMES McKEOWN     ENGLISH DREAM

ENGLISH DREAM is the second solo album from Hi Fiction Science guitarist James McKeown. It’s a lovely work – sparse, experimental acoustic songs that have a gentle pastoral feel to them that puts one in mind Echoes-era Pink Floyd. Wistful, dream-laden and steeped in 70’s acid-folk the songs have an autumnal feel to them – like wisps of smoke on a trusty wood burner, they drift away.     

JULIA HOLTER     SO LILLIES

Julia Holter works on the far reaches of, what we’ll optimistically call, the avant-folk spectrum and we’ll see how far that gets us. Her debut album, TRAGEDY, released in 2011, is an exquisitely poised work based on a 2,439-year-old Greek play by Euripedes (and if anything spells avant it’s a 2,439-year-old Greek play by Euripedes). It’s by turns dreamy and intense, filled with sounds you can’t recognise, and tunes that fade in and out of consciousness. In fact, now I come to think of it, there’s not very much folk about her at all; her work owing more to an experimental, art pop ambience than anything else, but recently she’s been playing with acid-folk goddess Linda Perhacs and they both share that sense of wonder that informs their music, so that must be where I got it from.

GWYDION     SPRING STRATHSPEY

On a show featuring a great deal of rarities, Gwydion Pendderwen can justly hold his head up high and proclaim that he, too, is rare, and that no one outside of the pagan tradition has heard of his records either. Born Thomas deLong to his mum, Gwydion was an American folk-musician, writer, poet and witch whose first album, a privately-pressed affair called SONGS FOR THE OLD RELIGION, was released in 1975. Featuring the music of the California Wicca Blues Band, it includes songs for the Sabbats and love songs to the God and Goddess that brought Gwydion fame and high standing in the Pagan community in which he served as an initiate of the Feri witchcraft tradition. One only has to check out the album cover to learn much, but by no means all, of what you need to know about him. This absolutely lovely song (a strathspey is a Scottish dance, slower than a reel, for two people) is sung by Dana Corby, happily still with us and a practioner of the craft. Gwydion sadly died in a car crash in 1982.

JULIAN COPE     THE-WAY-LUV-IS

I think you’d be hard pressed to find a Julian Cope fan who would rate the drude’s 2003 release ROME WASN’T BURNED IN A DAY as one of his more essential releases. Originally conceived as an accompaniment to a three-day event organized by him at the London Hammersmith's Lyric Theatre (described by Cope as ‘Three Dementianal Nights of Barbarian Rock ‘n’Roll’), the album was inspired by his research for THE MEGALITHIC EUROPEAN, his epic and masterful guide to Europe’s Neolithic pagan temples in which something clearly illuminating occurred because he’s never been quite the same since, and marks the beginning of his more overtly-shamanistic, proto-metal prog trip in which his way with a tune was often lost to wilful primitivism – a position he’s more or less sustained ever since. That being said, the album also contains the sweetly plaintive The-Way-Luv-Is, possibly the last song by Cope that I unconditionally love, so it’s worth the price of admission for that alone (plus I also got the special edition featuring acts like Sunburned Hand of the Man, Sunn0))) and Vibracathedral Orchestra on a second CD, which is not without interest in itself).

SALAKO     MORE THAN SPARROW’S TEAR

This track is taken from the band’s final album, the knowingly named STORY OF OUR LIFE SO FAR, released in 2004. It’s a lovely little album containing sad, beautiful songs made to feel slightly weird by sympathetic studio production that’s full of interesting sounds running in to each other. Sadly they split up when no one was looking (or perhaps because no one was looking) which is a great pity because they were one of those band’s I truly loved in world that has less of them every day.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND     THE MURDER MYSTERY

By the time the Velvet Underground released their third album in 1969, Lou Reed had seen off John Cale and in doing so arguably turned the rest of the group into his backing musicians – which is not to say the eponymous VELVET UNDERGROUND doesn’t contain some of the best material the band ever produced. It enjoys a mellower, folk-rock pastoral vibe to the group’s previous two albums, but lacks Cale’s avant-garde experiments – except in this, the album’s closing track The Murder Mystery which, really, could be about anything, anything at all. 

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MIND DE-CODER 34

To listen to the show just scroll to the bottom of the page

MIND DE-CODER 34

“It's a very salutary thing to realize that the rather dull universe in which most of us spend most of our time is not the only universe there is. I think it's healthy that people should have this experience".

                                             Aldous Huxley

DJ FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION     TADESSE TESFARMICHAEL

 This is the opening track from a sampler collection by DJ Female Convict Scorpion (known as Josh Pollock to his mum) called THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO DJ FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION, released in 2012. It originally appears on his debut album PATIENCE CLEVELAND, which he released in 2005. I don’t know why he called it Tadesse Tesfarmichael because that appears to be the name of a highly respected dentist in San Jose, but I expect he had his reasons.  DJ Female Convict Scorpion composes psychedelic music with turntables, samplers, and the like and in many ways he’s the leading name in West Coast non-hip-hop psychedelic turntablism since 2004. Possibly available for weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and funerals.

MOON WIRING CLUB     ANOTHER DREAME

A new album from Moon Wiring Club’s Ian Hodgson is always a cause for celebration round these here parts but with his 2012 release, BREAD TODAY, TOMORROW SECRETS, Hodgson went one step further – two releases with the same name; one on CD and one on vinyl, each with a different tracklisting and a different vibe, but each starting with the same track – Another Dreame. After that the CD version has a cracked hip hop thing going on amidst the Edwardian banquets, singing birds and Bressian-wielding cats, whereas the vinyl version is almost entirely beatless, with the emphasis on tonal mood and atmosphere which, in this case, comes across like a particularly lysergic Hammer Horror film soundtrack. I got so excited I decided to make use of both liberally throughout the show.

Please enjoy your trip.

BASIL KIRCHIN     ONCE UPON A TIME (EXCERPT)

 I’m performing Basil Kirchin a grave disservice by only playing a small excerpt from this track, one of two that make up the album QUANTUM, recorded in 1973 but not released until 30 years later by the fairly fabulous Trunk Records. It offers an intriguing glimpse of Kirchin's particular oeuvre of sonic weirdness, in which he borrows from free jazz, musique concrète, and splices them together with field recordings (animals, insects, trams), his wife and autistic children. It's all based on Basil's theories of sound and that when you slow down or speed up sound, you open up new doors, and new sound is revealed.  The first side, titled Once Upon a Time, starts off with the squawking of geese before a gentle drone calms things down, then a child's voice, possibly one of the autistic children Kirchin recorded off and on in a ten-year period in Switzerland, repeats "something special will come from me." More bird noises are mixed with some skronky free jazz that builds with intensity, with an ominous organ drone thrown in. At times, the horns and the bird chatter become so entwined it's hard to know which is which, but sadly you don’ get to hear much of this, as I cut it after the child’s voice, but you owe it to yourself to hear the rest of this album.

MOEBIUS AND PLANK     NEWS

 Marvellous. Krautrock goes reggae on the 1980 release RASTAKRAUT PASTA by Moebius and Plank, where the inner-city Bavarian vibes meet Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at his most absurd and mixes it with a Faust thing at their most far out. Opener, News, samples TV news over a heavy bass slide trombone groove; except, as Julian Cope notes in his ever trusty KRAUTROCKSAMLER, it’s not a slide-trombone at all , that’s just the effect created on this kosmiche masterpiece of anti-world music. I shall be returning to it later in the show,

MOON WIRING CLUB     DUSKY EVESDROPPER

 Pretty much sounds as the title suggests. From the CD version.

ILL WIND     PEOPLE OF THE NIGHT

 Ill Wind were a little known psychedelic folk outfit from Boston who only released the one album, FLASHES, in 1968, and never really had the chance to develop their sound. They were badly served by producer Tom Wilson, who’d worked with the likes of the Velvet Underground, The Mothers of Invention and Simon and Garfunkel but who could find little to interest him in the making of this album, which is a pity because some of the songs, like People Of the Night, are pretty cool and would have benefited from a surer touch. When the album was released every copy was damaged so had to be recalled. By the time it was re-released the world had moved on, and that was the end of Ill Wind who, apparently, blew no one no good.

VLADIMIR USSACHEVSKY & OTTO LUENING     INCANTATION

 A little something from legendary electronic composer Vladimir Ussachevsky who, in the early 50’s, with collaborator Otto Luening, created the first music using magnetic tape – specifically those reel-to-reel tapes, with which some of the most astounding musical innovations were realized.  Incantation is taken from the 1968 album TAPE MUSIC AN HISTORIC CONCERT, a recording of a live concert, performed by the two, in 1952 at the Modern Museum of Art which would radically change the way music was created forever and is, therefore, well worth two minutes of your time.

PERRY LEOPOLD     SERPENTINE LANE

 In the United States, at least, Perry Leopold is often referred to as the godfather of acid-folk, having combined his love of folk music, classical and the LSD based acid-rock to produce an album of progressive folk loveliness called EXPERIMEN IN METAPHYSICS, released in 1970, that, despite having a print run of only 300 copies, most of which, in the spirit of the times, were given away by Leopold on street corners where he used to busk, was truly a historical book mark in folk. His next album, CHRISTIAN LUCIFER, from which this track is taken, recorded in 1972, but not actually released until the year 2000, was an equally psychedelic affair and, if anything, even more lovely than his debut album, causing his clavinet player to remark that this record had ‘fulfilled the promise of psychedelia in a way that nothing else had before”.

CHAPTERHOUSE     SOMETHING MORE

 The first of four shoegazing tracks in this evening’s show, starting with Chapterhouse and Something More from their debut album WHIRLPOOL, released in 1991. Hardly representative of the scene’s harder guitar white-out’s, which the band were certainly capable of (they started out supporting Spacemen 3) it captures much of its prettiness, the combination of both being what attracted me to it in the first place.

MOON WIRING CLUB     SPIRITS CLUSTER

 More hauntological going’s on from TODAY BREAD, TOMORROW SECRETS, this time a track from the LP version.

RIDE     DREAMS BURN DOWN

 The definitive track on Ride’s definitive album, as far as I’m concerned. I was always a big fan of their effortless noise, bought the first three albums and all the early EPs but kind of gave up on them more or less the same time they gave up on themselves (that would be roundabout the time of their last album TARANTULA). Dreams Burn Down, originally found on their third EP, FALL, released earlier in 1990, however, opens side two of their debut album NOWHERE, and had everything that the short-lived shoegazing scene promised – whir, whoosh, haze and swirl all caught up in a storm of dense, hypnotic guitars and trippy as hell.

THE FLOWER PEOPLE     (LISTEN TO THE) FLOWER PEOPLE

 I know, what can I say? But I watched This Is Spinal Tap again the other night and was feeling a bit playful.

MOON WIRING CLUB     WOMBWOOD PATTERN

 Another unsettling track from the 2012 CD release TODAY BREAD, TOMORROW SECRETS.

COSMIC JOKERS     KINDER DES ALLES

Our second Krautrock track on the show, Kinder Des All ( or Children Of All) (possibly), takes up all of side 1 of their second release, GALACTIC SUPERMARKET, released in 1974. I say ‘their’ but the band, a kind of krautrock supergroup featuring members of Ash Ra Tempel, lesser-known act Wallenstein and producer Dieter Dierks were secretly recorded jamming at epic acid-fuelled sessions by the endearingly reprehensible Ralph-Ulrich Kaiser who then edited and mixed the sessions only to release them without the group's knowledge on his own Kosmiche Music label as The Cosmic Jokers. This is wildly cosmic spaced-out psychedelic rock that reaches far into the interstellar aether – sadly I had to edit it somewhat, otherwise it would have taken up the rest of the show, but given the way it was created in the first place, I can’t imagine anyone complaining, except the band of course.

THE BELBURY POLY     THE ABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE

 A hauntological piece from THE WILLOWS, the debut album by The Belbury Poly, released in 2004, and an album that pretty much set the Ghostbox record label, and, therefore, the hauntological agenda.  The Absolute Elsewhere, like the rest of the album, is a knowingly spooky piece and so it’s fitting that THE WILLOWS comes with a quotation from that great English writer of ghost stories, Algernon Blackwood: “It's the sound of their world, the humming in their region. The division here is so thin that it leaks through somehow. But, if you listen carefully, you'll find it's not above so much as around us. It's in the willows"

HOLISM GAEA     AH, SUNFLOWER

In your cosmic, psychedelic, hauntological, acid folk circles you can’t really go wrong with a track called Ah, Sunflower and Israeli duo, Holism Gaea, don’t disappoint. Ah, Sunflower is a surprisingly gentle and almost-melodic song, taken from their album BLAKESIAN WILLIAMNESS, released 2012, in which the poem by William Blake is made to shiver: “…where youth pined away with desire, and the pale virgin shrouded in snow, rise from their graves and aspire, where my sunflower wishes to go”.

ELLA FITZGERALD     SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME

Quite simply one of the most perfect recordings I’ve ever heard. I believe she covered this Gershwin classic a couple of times, and I don’t know on which album this version first appears, but you can find it on the 2007 Verve compilation, GOLD. While it’s playing, however, you can hear excerpts from electronic pioneer, Tod Dockstader’s piece Ariel Song, and sound designer Alan R. Splet’s Space Travel With Changing Choral Textures.

SLOWDIVE     SOUVLKI SPACE STATION

For many Slowdive were the quintessential Shoegaze group – they barely seemed to move on stage and yet quivering waves of sound just radiated from them. Souvlaki Space Station is from their second album, SOUVLAKI, released in 1993, in which they dropped the swathes of oceanic sound of their previous album and replaced it with a lighter, swirling sound in which the guitars stretch in slow motion layers and the vocals seem to call out desperately. This dubby affair is absolutely stunning – gorgeous.

MOON WIRING CLUB     MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

An LP track.

LUSH     SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

No one did shimmering guitars like Lush, and this track, released in 1990 as a 12” single, is almost transcendentally beautiful. There was a time back then, in fact, when I thought that this was most perfect single ever made and, in truth, I’ve not heard much since then that’s made me change my mind. There was something about their sound, and Miki Berenyi’s featherweight falsetto, that made each song, no matter how lovely, sound like the girl you loved most in the world letting you down gently – sweet, broken and fragile; and shimmering.

MOEBIUS AND PLANK     SOLAR PLEXUS

The second track from Moebius and Plank’s brilliant album, RASTAKRAUT PASTA, and this time a more traditional krautrock workout that pretty much takes you as far out, or indeed, as far in as you can go.

PEOPLE LIKE US     THE SOUND OF THE END OF MUSIC

 People Like Us is the name under which sound artist Vicki Bennett releases her surreal audio collages that take in, mix, manipulate and rework original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film, television and radio. The Sound Of The End Of Music is taken from her most recent album, WELCOME ABROAD, released in 2011, and I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s not a mash-up because this isn’t a case of taking the vocals from one track and laying them over the music of another – I think it is what it is – two tracks, The Doors’ The End, and Julie Andrews’ The Sound Of Music played at the same time. It shouldn’t work but it does and causes the peculiar experience of listening to one song or the other, but not both, at the same time, even though that’s exactly what you’re doing.

BASIL KIRCHIN     SPECIAL RELATIVITY (EXCERPT)

Another excerpt from QUANTUM, only this time from Side 2 and a track called Special Relativity, one long piece that fills up the whole side. The piece moves from simple, childlike melodies to sections where the strings and brass get into intense, free-form freakouts, while the voices can shift from calm and playful to frantic. The shifting emotional mood gives the piece a theatrical quality as it moves from one strange tangent to another but, sadly, I give you just the closing moments, although I’m really quite tempted to play the whole track in a later show. Hopefully the snippets I’ve offered will have aroused your curiosity and you’ll go out and find the whole thing. What I’ve used, however, closes the show very nicely.

Thank you for listening.