Tuesday 30 September 2014

MIND DE-CODER 50

MIND DE-CODER 50

“To use your head, you have to go out of your mind”
                                                                             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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