MIND DE-CODER 50
Timothy Leary
WHITE
NOISE & THE WELFARE STATE A SILENCE
IS REQUESTED IN THE ULTIMATE ABYSS
We
get things underway with a track taken from the 1969 release JOHN PEEL PRESENTS
TOP GEAR, an album of almost wilfully obscure acts that Peel was supporting at
the time through his radio show Top Gear. White Noise, in this case represented
by co-founder David Vorhaus, supplies the electronic treatment while backwards
vocals, hypnotic rhythms and psychedelic noise is supplied by art college freaks The Welfare State, a band, or possible hastily formed collective, about whom very
little is known, except that they may have come from Bradford, Yorkshire. Peel
himself adds on the sleeve notes that this mixture of "alchemists, an earth goddess, facts (?), monsters, perspex lutes,
poets and freaks is weird but interesting."
LES
BIG BYRD TINNITUS ÆTÉRNUM
Swedish
psych-rockers Les Big Byrd with the mostly unpronounceable but fairly wonderful
Tinnitus Ætérnum, taken from their debut album THEY WORSHIPPED CATS, released
earlier this year. It’s an album filled
with beautifully melancholic melodies, poems of time-space continuum read
through vocoders, cosmic clouds of filtered string machines, motorik krautrock rhythms,
12-string guitars, heavy trippy textures and wandering synths that cheer the
soul and take the mind for a spin.
MORGAN
DELT MAKE MY GREY BRAIN GREEN
Some
free-floating psychedelic vibes from Morgan Delt, who may be named after the
protagonist of an obscure 1966 film starring Vanessa Redgrave called Morgan—A Suitable Case of Treatment, or
he may actually simply be called Morgan Delt; it’s never made entirely clear.
This is the opening track from this year’s eponymous debut album and is a
pretty good indication of what a warped, tripped out affair it actually is –
this, of course, is as much a warning as it is a recommendation.
MATT
KIVEL TETRO
This
is the opening track from Matt Kivel’s debut album DOUBLE EXPOSURE, released in
2013, on which the singer creates the loveliest most fragile songs you’ll have
heard his year and seems to wrap them all around the subject of death. Happily,
this oughtn’t bum you out if you happen to be listening under enhanced
circumstances because what he does on Tetro is so clever and so quietly
beautiful with its looping guitar melody and almost celestial synths that you
too might dissolve in wonder at the gorgeousness of it – a bit like the bit in
the middle of this track. Marvellous.
CONNAN
MOCKASIN FOREVER DOLPHIN LOVE
Dreamy,
cosmic playful psychedelia from New Zealand’s Connan Mockasin’s (Tant Hosford
to his mum) whose debut album FOREVER DOLPHIN LOVE (originally released as
PLEASE TURN ME INTO THE SNAT in 2010) is an album brimming with the kind of weird
experimentation and pop sensibility that places it somewhere amidst the first
three albums by Pink Floyd – this is a recommendation. It was re-released as
FOREVER DOLPHIN LOVE in 2011 on Erol Alkan’s label – there’s a 13 minute Erol
Alkan remix of this track that I must play next week.
TOUCH DOWN AT CIRCE’S PLACE
The
big thing that everyone knows about Touch (if they know anything at all) is
that band leader Dan Gallucci co-wrote and played that organ riff on The
Kingsmen’s junk-classic Louie Louie, so even if he’d never recorded another
note in his life, his place in music history was secure. Their only album,
TOUCH, was released in 1969 and by all accounts the recording process was a
riot with the likes of Mick Jagger, Grace Slick and Jimi Hendrix regularly
dropping into the studio to catch some of studio’s party vibe. The album itself
is essentially one of America’s first prog albums, but Down At Circe’s is a
psychedelic classic with flanged vocals, a spaced out guitar solo, trippy sound
effects, and some far-out keyboard work. Obviously, the band sunk without a
trace but Gallucci went on to produce The Stooges’ FUNHOUSE (which wasn’t half
as much fun as this record) so managed to keep his finger in the semi-legendary
pie.
ENNIO
MORRICONE COLLAGE N2
This
little throw-away piece is from the soundtrack to the little known Italian
movie ESCALATION, set in London during 1968, in which the son of an Italian
businessman is swinging like a pendulum do amid the city’s flower children and
gurus until he is kidnapped by his father and brainwashed into becoming a ruthless
businessman (it ends badly for everyone). Ennio Morricone supplies a suitably
experimental and slightly bonkers psychedelic soundtrack that included ideas
and sounds never used in film before, such as overlaying sound effects produced
by the human mouth, throat and larynx.
It
works so well I have it drift off into the sound of an antique Pye valve radio
running up and down the dial which in itself becomes swallowed by a few minutes
from the cult film Berberian Sound Studio that Broadcast’s Trish Keenan was
working on when she died. It all adds up to a little hauntological moment.
EUROS
CHILDS TRICK OF THE MIND
This
is really quite lovely – the haunting Trick Of The Mind, all 14 or so minutes
of it, is the closing track on last year’s SITUATION COMEDY, Childs’ 9th
solo album following the demise of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. It’s a hypnotic,
almost vocal-free drone, but one that offers a truly epic odyssey of building
pianos and ominous chords before sailing away in a harmonious cloud of Welsh
psychedelia. Superb.
SYD
ARTHUR PARADISE LOST
A
bit of overt psychedelic indulgence from Canterbury’s Syd Arthur whose
particular brand of jazz-tinged folk-funk is part homage to their Canterbury
forebears Caravan and the Soft Machine whilst at the same time the take-off
point for some truly far out explorations of their own. Paradise Lost is the
closing track of their 2012 debut album ON AND ON (not that there’s anything
wrong with a bit of overt psychedelic indulgence).
BILL
FAY SOME GOOD ADVICE
Little
known (let’s face it) Fay’s first single, Some Good Advice, released in 1967,
was a charming slice of acid folk whimsy that barely touched the outer reaches
of the charts. Later songs were of a more cosmically bucolic bent as Fay
explored the meaning of life and nature of consciousness, deciding that a
simple garden shed was a useful metaphor for the search for spiritual meaning,
but I think this track is quietly wonderful.
THE
TEMPTATIONS PAPA WAS A ROLLIN’ STONE
Some
psychedelic soul left over from last week’s show, Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone was
originally recorded by The Undisputed Truth, a band put together to record
producer Norman Whitfield’s more recherché psychedelic experiments. He recorded
it again in 1972 with The Temptations who, it must be said, initially hated it,
resenting the fact that Whitfield was spending more time on the music than
their vocals. Then it became a number 1 single and the last great recording they
ever produced, so it sort of grew on them after that. I think that it's sublime.
SPROATLY
SMITH HORNSEA COVE
Weirdlore
freak-out from the enchanting Sproatly Smith. Hornsea Cove is the tripped-out
experimental one on the sublimely lovely PIXIELED, released in 2009, and
currently the album that’s rarely off the turntable these days.
MOON
WIRING CLUB FACT MIX 310 (excerpt)
Hauntological
musings from Ian Hodgson and 10 minutes or so from the Moon Wiring Clubs mix
for FACT magazine (the on-line’s premier music magazine, FACT fans) a few years
back. You’ll hear the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, David Toop, Julia Holter,
Siouxsie & The Banshees, Autechre and Stanley Holloway in this 10 minutes
alone, in a mix that otherwise takes in the likes of Warren G, Snoop and Dr Dre
fraternising with Ian ‘Lovejoy’ McShane; Wiley and
Terror Danjah sharing war stories with Scott Walker and Tangerine Dream; H.G.
Wells, Carl Craig and Timbaland and Nurse With Wound; all in just over an hour.
As you can Imagine, I was tempted to play the lot. Check it out here.
JULIAN
COPE WODEN (excerpt)
A
10-minute excerpt from Julian Cope’s WODEN, otherwise a vast and atmospheric 72-minute
ambulant meditation upon Waden Hill and Avebury, recorded in 1998 and released
in 2012. The first 35-minutes or so is mainly a field recording taken around
Silbury, and very fine it is too; many is the time I’ve sat myself down there
and pondered upon the nature of this and that. Then what sounds like a
kettle goes off, it starts to rain, the Yatesbury bell-ringers join in and the
mellotron picks up the pace a little and the piece turns into one enormous
meteorological cloud of music. You get the bit in the middle where the kettle
boils. As Copey himself says, WODEN is a highly useful meditative aid, but it’s
even better for gaining access to the Underworld, the vast weather formations
of sound guaranteeing that Hel’s doorway remains open for 72 minutes at a time
(or, in this case, 10-minutes).
SCARFOLK COUNCIL THE CHILDREN OF SCARFOLK PRIMARY SCHOOL WITH THE
MUSIC WINDOW OPEN MAY 13TH 1975
Like all good hauntologists,
writer and designer Richard Littler has given himself a whole town to play
with. Belbury Poly’s Jim Jupp has Belbury, the Moon Wiring Club’s Ian Hodgson
has Clinkskell, and now there’s another location on the hauntological map to
explore; welcome to Scarfolk:
Scarfolk
is a town in North West England that did not progress beyond 1979. Instead, the
entire decade of the 1970s loops ad infinitum. Here in Scarfolk, pagan rituals
blend seamlessly with science; hauntology is a compulsory subject at school,
and everyone must be in bed by 8pm because they are perpetually running a
slight fever. "Visit Scarfolk today. Our number one priority is keeping
rabies at bay."
(From the Scarfolk Council
website)
Back in 1975 the children of
Scarfolk primary school released their own 45rpm record to commemorate their
music teacher Mrs Payne who disappeared in 1972, but whose body was found
encased inside one of the thirteen ancient standing stones just outside
Scarfolk. Proceeds from the sale of the single went toward the building of a new coven
and affiliated gift shop.
I’m off to explore. Thank you
for listening.
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