THE MIND DE-CODER CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 2015

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MIND DE-CODER CHRISTMAS SHOW 2015

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. A bit like mind De-Coder.

                                                                           Norman Vincent Peale (-ish)

BUTCHER CLAWS     SILENT NIGHT I CAN’T GO ON

I thought I’d introduce the show with some hauntological goings on to reinforce the idea given to us by the Ghost of Christmas Past that Christmas was always better in the old days.

Butcher Claws is one of many pseudonyms created by James Kirby for his album THE V/VM CHRISTMAS PUDDING, released in 2000, in which he digitally mutilates crap Christmas records by the likes of Russ Abbott and Shakin’ Stevens and recycles them into something even more cruel and unusual than they were first time round. The album doesn’t make for an easy listen so while this track is playing like a ghostly gramophone record winding down in a haunted end-of-pier ballroom, I layer it with a number of festive samples and this…

THE WALL FAMILY     ANGELS FROM THE REALMS OF GLORY

The Museum of London were recently very excited to have discovered what are probably the oldest recordings of a family Christmas having a good old sing-song around the old Joanna, made by the Wall family some 115 years ago. The Wall family lived in New Southgate and recorded popular carols and hymns of the time onto wax cylinders which were made using a phonograph machine between 1902 and 1917. Cromwell Wall, who made the recordings, wheeled the phonograph along the streets in his children's pram in order to record the sound of Old Southgate Church bells pealing out New Year which is exactly the sort of thing I’d have done too. Angels From The Realms Of Glory was recorded on the 25th December by the whole family making it the most hauntological-est recording ever.

LILY’S     GOOD KING WENCELAS

Is this the same Lily’s that had a minor hit back in the 90’s with that song Nanny In Manhatten? You know the one, it accompanied that Levi’s commercial and sounded like a cross between the theme tune to Friends and The Banana Splits. No? Oh well, I don’t know either – if it is them they seem to have lost their definitive article along the way. Anyway, this track, a giddy rush of warped guitars, can be found on the compilation FESTIVUS 2, released by Highline Records in 2013 and finally gets the show going.

THE SMOKING TREES     THE PSYCHEDELIC LIGHTS OF CHRISTMAS

Yuletide bliss from The Smoking Trees and the b-side to their 2014 release Round Christmas Time.

MATRICARIANS     CHRISTMAS HUNTING SONG

The Matricarians are an experimental psychedelic folk band from Scotland (I think) who  create improvised musical pieces to which they later add traditional lyrics culled from the folksongs of North East Scotland – in other words, they’re exactly the sort of act who are going to make it onto any Christmas album released by the very fine Active Listener blogsite.

THE ROLLING STONES     COSMIC CHRISTMAS

Turns out the Rolling Stones toyed with the idea of calling THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST Cosmic Christmas. Mind you, in those days they were toying with a lot of things. Cosmic Christmas, all 40 seconds of it, can be found on the run-out of Side One of the album, an album I still find rather joyless despite the amount of drugs that must have gone into its creation.  Think I end up playing it twice to give Terrence McKenna something to talk over as he discusses the psychedelic origins of Christmas in that slightly irritating way he has.

JIMI HENDRIX     LITTLE DRUMMER BOY/SILENT NIGHT/AULD LANG SYNE

This little gem was recorded by Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys in late 1969 during some downtime while rehearsing for their highly anticipated appearances at the Fillmore East in New York. It’s by no means a polished studio recording but provides a glimpse of Hendrix simply having fun in the company of close friends.  It’s not dissimilar to his legendary take on The Star Spangled Banner, and it’s fair to say the kids aren’t enamoured with it (by kids I mean my kids, not the kids in general) but this is a proper slice of festive psychedelia and should not be overlooked – it was released on 10” vinyl in 1999 as MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

SONS OF HIPPIES     TIME OF THE SEASON

A cover of The Zombies’ classic Time Of The Season isn’t, perhaps, the first track that springs to mind when creating a Christmas playlist, but what could be more perfect? This cracking version by Sons Of Hippies can be found on the neo-psych compilation release PSYCH-OUT CHRISTMAS, released 2013, a wigged-out stocking filler that even includes Iggy Pop singing a suitably menacing version of White Christmas – not included in this show, sadly – you’ll have to source it yourselves.

TREES IN THE LAKE     SILENT NIGHT

This rather lovely version of Silent Night was released as a single from the Exmouth based Trees In The Lake in 2012, a band that sounds like a romantic kitchen sink drama played out on acoustic instruments.

SPROATLY SMITH     THE LEAVES OF LIFE

According to Percy Dearner, author of that trusty tome The Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford University press, 1928) we’ve come to see carols as celebratory hymns of a Christmas nature when, in fact, they’re actually songs with a religious impulse that are simple, hilarious, popular, and modern. They are generally spontaneous and direct in expression, rich in true folk-poetry, and their simplicity of form causes them sometimes to ramble on like a ballad so, as you can imagine, once Sproatly Smith put their own psychedelically bucolic twist on them you’re going to have an album you can play all year round. The Leaves Of Life is taken from their fairly wonderful 2012 release, CAROLS FROM HEREFORDSHIRE, a collection of folk tunes collected by Ella Mary Leather, an early folklorist and musicologist in the manner of John Lomax. In the early 20th century she was one of the first people to record these songs, passed down through generation of singers and sung by itinerant farm workers from around Weobley and the local workhouse. All of which is to say, the album has rustic authenticity to it that is truly enhanced by the band’s tripped-out acid-psych sensibility. One of my favourite Christmas albums.

IMAGENE PEISE     DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR

Imagene Peise, of course (he writes authoritatively), are The Flaming Lips, and ATLAS EETS CHRISTMAS, released in 2014, is their psych-jazz piano album that originally appeared in a very limited run under the pseudonym Imagene Peise during the 2007 holiday season. Billed as a lost album by a mysterious young Iraqi piano prodigy named Peise, who committed suicide in 1978, the album plays like the soundtrack to some sort of unearthed educational filmstrip where science meets Santa. The album is almost entirely instrumental and plays around with lovely piano arrangements of such classics as Winter Wonderland, White Christmas and this particularly splendid version of Do You Hear What I Hear?, complete with buzzing sitars, spacy electronic noises, distant synths, the band's hallmark Mellotron drones  and a fabricated faux-vinyl crackle. It sounds very fine indeed on a Christmas morning when you’ve enjoyed a couple of Irish coffees and you’re just readying yourself to get started on prepping Christmas dinner.

GALAXIE 500     LISTEN, THE SNOW IS FALLING

Galaxie 500 always did a very fine line in cover versions – Jonathon Richman’s Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste from 1988’s TODAY and New Order’s Ceremony from the BLUE THUNDER EP in 1990 spring to mind, not to mention George Harrison’s Isn’t It A Pity from 1989’s ON FIRE, and this marvellous rendition of Yoko Ono’s Listen, The Snow Is Falling from their third and final album proper, 1990’s THIS IS OUR MUSIC. Actually I was torn between playing this version and Ono’s original, which appears on the B-Side to Happy Xmas and is really quite lovely in its own right. Perhaps I’ll put that version on the show’s Facebook page. But this version, with bassist Naomi Yang on vocals, is an argument for her ought to having been allowed behind the microphone more often, because this is gorgeous.

ELEPHANT STONE     CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE AGAIN

A fantastic sitar-drenched cover of The Beatle’s Christmas Time Is Here Again from the rather irritatingly named Elephant Stone. You can find it on the PSYCH-OUT CHRISTMAS compilation album.

PIG CROSBY     WHITE CHRISTMAS

Pig Crosby is yet another pseudonym employed by V/VM, itself a pseudonym for experimental producer and sound collagist James Leland Kirby, who also releases superb hauntological works under the name of The Caretaker. His album THE V/VM CHRISTMAS PUDDING is actually quite torturous in a chin-rubbingly avant-garde sort of way and will quite possibly never get played again round these here parts, a theme I underline by playing that unfortunately hilarious scene from Gremlins wherein Phoebe Cates tells the tale of why she hates Christmas.

VIBRAVOID     CHRISTMAS ON EARTH

Vibravoid bring a typically wigged-out kaleidoscopic krautrock trip to the proceedings with the opening track from their aptly named DISTORTIONS LP, released in 2009. Not so much Christmas On Earth, this is what Christmas must sound like on the very edge of outer space with the hand brake off.

THE GOONS    THE INTERNATIONAL CHRISTMAS PUDDING

Were The Goons psychedelic in any meaningful sense of the word? Now that I’ve put it like that, then the answer is probably “yes - in any meaningful sense of the word”. They were irreverent, surreal and unlike anything heard before; they literally changed the way you heard the world, so do please enjoy Part 1 of The International Christmas Pudding, first broadcast in December 1955.

BEAULIEU PORCH     SIMON CHRISTMAS

Mind De-Coder favourite Beaulieu Porch is Simon Berry, who is also Tillsammans Records. In a better world, this would be the Christmas # 1. It shimmers and sparkles like a Christmas tree decoration December, where other songs have all the joy of dead Christmas tree in February.

THE GOONS     THE INTERNATIONAL CHRISTMAS PUDDING

Part 2. Parts 3-6 must sadly wait for another day, but it all ends well.

BEAULIEU PORCH     THE SECOND SIMON CHRISTMAS

Beaulieu Porch's Second Simon Christmas seems to have been created for a competition run by The Guardian for original Christmas songs. It’s an unreal and ghostly re-working of the first version as seen through a kaleidoscopic viewfinder wherein haunting recitals of 'God rest ye merry Gentlemen' are woozily fractured upon a coalescing carousel of hammer film scores and Victoriana tavern shanties. Marvellous, as you can imagine. I believe that at some point Berry released both versions as a single. Essential Christmas listening.

THE BLUES MAGOOS     JINGLE BELLS

This 1967 release saw the Blues Magoos reaching out to the public in a, some might say, optimistic attempt at commercial success. It failed dismally, after which the group returned to their garage-blues roots, but if you’ve ever wondered what a Christmas carol crossed with Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? might sound like then this is it.

ROTARY CONNECTION       SILENT NIGHT CHANT

Rotary Connection’s PEACE is one of my favourite Christmas albums of all time. This is the sound of a band taking you just that little bit higher for Christmas, and Minnie Ripperton’s voice just soars.

JOY UNLIMITED     ALL EARTH AND ALL HEAVEN ARE SILENT

This stunning track, a mix of stoner folk and funky cosmic vibes, is taken from one of the rarer relics of the Krautrock heyday, namely a double album new and traditional Christmas songs from an album called HEAVY CHRISTMAS, released in 1971 on the classic Pilz record label before the semi-infamous Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser took over and transformed it into a cosmic folk label. None of the featured acts are among the upper tier of Krautrock acts – can you imagine what a Christmas album featuring the likes of Faust, Neu!, Amon Düül and Ash Ra Tempel would have sounded like? – but the little known Joy Unlimited’s contribution is fantastic.

BALDUIN     THROUGH THE SNOW

Playful psychedelia from Swiss multi-instrumentalist Balduin and a track from his debut album ALL IN A DREAM, released in 2014, in which he seems to be channelling the spirit of Syd Barrett, Kevin Ayres and a lot of acid.

YOKO ONO AND THE FLAMING LIPS     MERRY CHRISTMAS (WAR IS OVER)

Yoko Ono and The Flaming Lips come together for a suitably wigged-out rendition of Lennon’s Merry Christmas (War Is Over) for the Amazon Prime compilation ALL IS BRIGHT, a 40-song holiday playlist that came out recently. While Lennon and Ono's original is a simple holiday song with an affecting message bolstered by the beautiful children's choir singing in the background, the Flaming Lips turn the track into a striking psychedelic carol. Anchored by spiraling synth lines and frontman Wayne Coyne's blown-out vocals, Ono descends from the sky with an ethereal rendering of the song's refrain amidst classic Christmas song traits like par-rum-pa-pum-pum drumming and big, booming bells. Make of it what you will.

THE FAB FOUR     JINGLE BELLS

I had to finish the show with this track simply for the genius refrain: “It is snowing…it is snowing” which is pretty much worth the cost of the album A CHRISTMAS WITH THE FAB FOUR alone. The rest of the album admittedly grates somewhat after a while, Christmas song lyrics sung mash-up stylee against Beatle’s tunes, but every now and then The Fab Four, America’s premier Beatle’s tribute band, pull something magic out of the Christmas stocking.

PIZZICATO 5     SILENT NIGHT

But to really finish the show, here is a beautifully unadorned version of my favourite carol Silent Night by Pizzicato 5. Singer Nomiya Maki’s voice has such a heart-breakingly forlorn quality to it that it makes of the song something quite desolate, fragile and rare. It opens the otherwise splendidly up-beat Shibuya-kei 2002 compilation A JAPANESE CHRISTMAS MIX, a household favourite in these here parts, as you might imagine.

Merry Christmas.

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MIND DE-CODER 60

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MIND DE-CODER 60

Music that contains space for the listener to occupy as thinker, creator and dreamer; music that envelops, dislocates and bewilders; music which is trance inducing through repetition but essentially forward facing and unconcerned with historical accuracy, authenticity, fashion or tradition and music that rewards deep listening is still the root of the sonic psychedelic experience, and long may it remain so.

                                                           John Doran, Sept 2014,The Quietus

ALVIN LUCIER     I SITTING IN A ROOM

This extraordinary track, which is all over the show, was created in 1969 by Alvin Lucier, a composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. Much of his work is influenced by science, exploring the physical properties of sound itself: the resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media. It sounds mostly unlistenable to, I know, but, really, it fits the show like a velour glove. On this piece, I AM SITTING IN A ROOM, several sentences of recorded speech are simultaneously played back into a room and re-recorded there many times. Since all rooms have characteristic resonance or formant frequencies (e.g. different between a large hall and a small room), the effect is that certain frequencies are emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself. The space acts as a filter; the speech is transformed into pure sound. All the recorded segments are spliced together in the order in which they were made and constitute the work. He’s actually performed this piece numerous times, if perform is the right word, several of which have been recorded. This particular version was made on October 29th and 31st, 1980, in his own living room and consists of thirty-two generations of speech. It lasts 40 minutes and you’ll be pleased to know I don’t play it all, but it pops up throughout the show creating something of an ambiance, I’m sure you’ll agree.

KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD     LONELY STEEL SHEET FLYER

This is track four from the Gizzard’s (as I’m choosing to call them in this instance) marvellous QUARTERS! LP, which has rarely left the household phonogram since I came across it a few months back. Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer worms its way irresistibly into your head and hangs around long after its 10 minutes and 10 seconds have taken off into cosmos – this is gorgeous, warped psychedelia that unspools like a lazy summer afternoon. A bit like I do, really.

 ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY, DON CHERRY AND RONAL FRANGIPANE     RAINBOW ROOM

Rainbow Room is taken from the soundtrack to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s surreal, audacious and dazzling psychedelic masterpiece, THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, which caused something of a scandal at the 1973 Cannes Festival. Entirely financed by John and Yoko, the film is a kaleidoscopic dissertation on the nature of enlightenment that’s all but impossible to describe, given its emphasis on surreal visuals over narrative, but which might be usefully summed up as “trippy as nobody’s business”. The soundtrack itself is less so, but manages to take in psychedelic rock and esoteric folk music, subtle tone poems to grand-scale orchestral themes, vintage dance music and a little Tuvan throat singing along the way. For 40 odd years or so this was the holy grail for collectors of your psychedelic soundtracks, remaining unreleased following a dispute between Jodorowsky and the film’s producer Allan Klein (that Allan Klein who saw off The Beatles). This year, however, saw its release on both CD and a rather handsome vinyl edition – it should be an absolutely crucial addition any psychedelic going’s on you have going on.

KATIE GATELY     PIPES

This stunning piece is constructed entirely of Gately’s own snipped, processed and layered vocals (and effects), a process so complex that it took six painstaking months to assemble. Released as a cassette-only release in 2013, Pipes is seemingly influenced by the spirit of Arthur Russell and Gregorian chant but remains sonically unlike anything else I’ve ever heard. At times it can be unbelievably tense both in the varying moods and tones, but Gately’s mixture of ambient vocal pulsing and complex rhythmic textures are never less than mind-blowing. Apparently if you slow the track way down you’ll find a pop song in there somewhere.

THIGHPAULSANDRA     THE GOLDEN COMMUNION

This is the title track from THE GOLDEN COMMUNION, the latest transgressive release from former Julian Cope collaborator and sonic explorer, Thighpaulsandra (Tim Lewis to his mum, I hope). In a show not shy of sonic experimentation this is nevertheless an astonishing piece of music which, over its 24 minutes, takes the listener on a journey through orchestral and experimental soundscapes that trip dramatically through balletic chamber music, wayward electronic forces, synth slipstreams, dense drones and psychedelic soul. It’s a captivating listen and one which is sustained throughout the whole album which reveals and revels in the dizzying and often overwhelming psychedelic highs dancing hither and tither from its grooves.

 JULIA HOLTER     MY LOVE, MY LOVE

This spellbindingly gorgeous track is taken from the album REMEMBERING MOUNTAINS: UNHEARD SONGS BY KAREN DALTON, on which Holter is one of many contemporary female artists (Josephine Foster, Marissa Nadler and Isobell Campbell shine) given a sample of Dalton’s unrecorded song lyrics (verses, snippets, poems) to put to music. Dalton herself never recorded her own songs; her two albums, released in the late 60s early 70s and now generally lionized as lost folk classics, contained no original compositions, so chances are she never intended to record these songs at all – it is left to the artist to find their own way into the lyrics and channel Dalton’s broken heart through their own melodies. Holter’s sparse minimalist take on My Love, My Love perfectly captures her own avant-garde experimentation and gets it exactly right, honouring the spirit of Dalton’s own captivating aesthetic; full of memory, love and loss the song turns the pain of loneliness into something almost transcendentally lovely.  

MAX RICHTER     PATH 5 (DELTA)

And speaking of transcendental loveliness, Max Richter’s Path 5 (Delta) is almost indescribably sublime. Richter is known as an influential voice in your post-minimalist circles, commissioning and performing works by minimalist musicians such as Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Julia Wolfe, and Steve Reich, but I’ve always kept an eye on him because of his work with Amorphous Androgynous, Keli Ali and Vashti Bunyan. His latest release, SLEEP, is an 8 hour therapeutic project designed to reinforce and reflect, well, natural sleep patterns. In essence, the listener is required to press play as they ready themselves for bed, nod off to sleep somewhere between the patient piano chords of track 1 (Dream 1) and the vocal-and-organ ululations of track 4 (Path 3), and re-emerge after eight hours of music to a gentle crescendo of stretching strings, wordless harmonies, and long-tone bass near the close of its final track (Dream 0). In the meantime, Richter’s slow-motion electronics-and-chamber-ensemble hybrid shifts between and slowly recycles parts of the whole, unfolding like a mix between Arvő Part and the glacial slow-motion of Sigur Rós, say, that not only reflects but embodies the process of sleep’s half-remembered patterns. Given that nobody has the time to listen to the whole piece, Richter has also released an accompanying album, FROM SLEEP, which lasts a mere hour, from which this dream-like recording is taken.  

HARUMI     TWICE TOLD TALES OF THE POMEGRANATE FOREST

Harumi is one of the great lost psychedelic artists of the 1960s – a Japanese ex-pat (with a woman’s name, apparently) he managed to convince the legendary Tom Wilson (of the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Mothers of Invention, Sun Ra, Nico fame – you know the one) to produce his only album, simply called HARUMI, in 1968. In many ways it’s simply a product of its times, offering up a respectable mix of blue-eyed soul and psychedelic pop with all the attendant phasing, occasional baroque orchestration, Japanese folk stylings, vibraphone and wacked out instrumentation you could hope for. Sides three and four however take the listener somewhere completely different. You may never want to listen to it twice, but listened to under the right conditions, you could lose yourself in the strangely meditative, late-night, tripped-out stream-of-consciousness minimalism of Twice Told Tales Of The Pomegranate Forest, and you may need to leave a trail of psychedelic breadcrumbs in order to find your way back.  No one ever heard from Harumi again. He never made his way back.

THE ORB     INTO THE FOURTH DIMENSION: ESSENES IN STARLIGHT

It’s easy to forget from a distance of, oh, 25 years or so, just how revelatory The Orb were back in 1989-90. Their debut album, ADVENTURES BEYOND THE ULTRA-WORLD, blew my mind and opened up whole new vistas of music to explore. Into The Fourth Dimension: Essenes In Starlight is taken from their second John Peel session, recorded October 13^th, 1989, and was released on vinyl a year later, simply as THE ORB: PEEL SESSIONS, a welcome relief to those of us who were wearing out their taped-from-the-radio copies from over-use (in these digital days it all seems so delightfully vintage, I know). The improvisational genius of the performances is boggling, with Alex Patterson and Thrash manipulating enormous blobs of tripped out samples, effects and hallucinatory mood changes to create what was to become ambient dub, I suppose - don't blame them if subsequent acts were unable to produce anything quite as good as this, I've never been entirely convinced that The Orb have either.

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MIND DE-CODER HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

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MIND DE-CODER HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

                                                                                    Aleister Crowley

(EPISODES FROM) THE FIELD BAZAAR     THE MUSGRAVE RITUAL

So the story goes that O Campo Bazar was a Portuguese Twilight Zone/Tales of the Unexpected style programme which should have disappeared without a trace along with the rest of the 70s had it not been for the release of (episodios de) O Campo Bazar, a promotional gimmick marketed as `a sampler of instrumental works created especially for the programme’ which has since become a semi-legendary curio, the likes of which the thesaurus defines as:  anything very rare or impossible to obtain is said to be like finding hen's teeth. Released in Portugal in 1973 by performers who to this day remain a mystery, the story continues that such was the cult status and mythos of the group/artist that 2012 saw the release of `The Bane Tree’ – a collection of recordings that enjoyed the feel of being demos and unused tracks from the original TV show. This time, however, the artist(s) responsible had a name that had been translated into English - The Field Bazaar - and the (episodes from) bit, which was a clear indication of its TV series roots, had also been translated and kept. The performers remain unknown.

The name `The Field Bazaar’ - which is what `O Campo Bazar’ is a translation of - probably comes from a short story from the pen of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The show was so unsuccessful on the small screen and so successfully buried afterwards that it is believed that no footage remains and no one will admit to working on it - although Alfred Molina is said to have appeared in the pilot episode. It is said that the voice of Vincent Price provided each episode’s introduction in such an insultingly bad attempt at Portuguese that his parts were re-recorded in an attempt to save the show.

Recently artwork for a previously unknown (episodes from) The Field Bazaar album, A TALE OF WITCHES, WOODLAND AND HALF-REMEMBERED MELODIES…, unreleased and assumed lost, was discovered in a box of old picture frames at a church jumble sale in Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire. A ¼ inch tape also surfaced in 2012 which is now believed to be tracks from the recording sessions for this lost album. So far a tweaked and updated tune, The Musgrave Ritual, is the only track to have materialised from this lost album. The title again references Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and includes a reading of the ancient ritual from the Sherlock Holmes story of the same name.

At least, that’s the story. After spending more time than I ought to researching (episodes from) The Field Bazaar, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a prank; a hauntological backstory passed off as myth by person or persons unknown in a playful attempt to ensure anonymity and fuel curiosity in equal measure. This makes me love it all the more, of course.

BOARDS OF CANADA     TELEPATH

In some circles Boards of Canada are considered the forefathers of hauntological music. Their earlier albums evoke the sounds and memories of a faded modernism arising from mid-twentieth-century television, science, public education and childhood – albeit a childhood not as lived but as we grown-ups remember it; the memories of which, as the band put it, represent a more terrible reality that blends paradoxically with our childhood dreams. Their most recent release, TOMORROW’S HARVEST, released in 2013, owes more to the soundtracks of John Carpenter, Mark Isham, and Wendy Carlos, all of whom constructed some of their most enduring scores in the late 1970s and early 80s, but Telepath reassuringly resonates with the crackly transmissions and washes of amniotic analogue sound that made those early albums a hauntological reference point.

BUTTHOLE SURFERS     SWEAT LOAF

The Butthole Surfers aren’t so much a band; more the aural equivalent of a nightmarish acid trip – but, crucially I didn’t know that at the time. “Listen to this”, a friend had casually said one dreary afternoon, and left me to it. That evening, relaxing on the sofa in a state of heightened awareness (as it were) I’d slipped into a dream world of blissful delirium following a pleasant experience with the Spacemen 3. I then placed this on the record player and as those first noted drifted from the speakers I got myself all nice and comfy on the sofa in anticipation of further dreamy reverie …”Daddy, what does regret mean?” Oh, this is going to be lovely, I thought, an enraptured smile already playing on the corners of my lips… and then I literally erupted from the sofa as if I’d had an electric cattle prod shoved up the psychic jacksie, running around the room in panic and confusion, convinced I was under attack and simply being unable to understand what was going on, just trying to find the off switch and being unable to find it anywhere, but knowing that only by being able to turn the stereo off would everything be all right again. And that was my first experience with the Butthole Surfers. Sweat Loaf utilises that warped riff from Black Sabbath’s Sweet Leaf but somehow makes it sound less celebratory and altogether more unhinged than anything magicked up by that band even in their most decadent glory days. It opens side 1 of LOCUST ABORTION TECHNICIAN, the Butthole Surfer’s heaviest, darkest and most disturbing album, released 1987 – an album that veers from heavy fucked-up psychedelia to grungy noise rock to progressive guitar and tape effects in one big, gloriously schizophrenic mess. In retrospect, the album cover should have been a bit of a giveaway; and the album's name; and their name, I suppose. Of course, I can laugh about it now. Not for the unwary, that’s all I’m saying.

ENGLISH HERETIC     THE SACRED GEOGRAPHY OF BRITISH CINEMA

EnglishHeretic is a project curated by Andy Sharp whose idiosyncratic musical vision is inspired and coloured by an abiding interest in the arcane and the occult, resulting in albums very much at home to all things paranormal, magic of the ceremonial kind and ever so far out goings on in Ye Olde Rural England. Sharpe’s 2005 release, THE SACRED GEOGRAPHY OF BRITISH CINEMA, is dedicated to the harrowing opening scene of Michael Reeves' 1968 horror movie, WITCHFINDER GENERAL, filmed in the medieval village of Kersey. It’s an unsettling listen, layered with creepy and creaky experimental folk electronics, Mansonesque psychedelia, Electronic Voice Phenomena type collages and field recordings culled from visits to the crematorium ground on which Reeves' ashes were scattered following his death shortly after the completion of the film. The CD is accompanied with a 16-page booklet which reflects on the genesis of the English Heretic project, as well as a survey of film locations, a poetic meditation on the Anglo-American ricochets of Suffolk's esoteric history and suggested walks around the area where it was filmed and sound experiments to be carried out if that be your wont.

ERIC ZANN     OUROBORINDRA

Eric Zann is: a) a character in a short story by horror writer H.P. Lovecraft in which a mute old man plays strange melodies and rhythms of sound of an almost otherworldly nature in an attempt to keep back unknown and unseen creatures from his window, which is said to look out into a black abyss - most likely another dimension if Lovecraft has anything to do with it, and, b) an alias for Jim Jupp, co-founder of the Ghost Box Music label, and the man behind Belbury Poly. Jupp uses Zann’s moniker to record music that’s somewhat darker and more Gothic than other Ghost Box artists, despite containing many key elements of the Ghostbox aesthetic, namely the influence of Hammer Horror soundtracks, ambient music and drones; in Jupp's words, it contains references to "crows, church bells, magic spells and other horror signifiers". OUROBORINDRA was released in 2005 and sees Zann manipulating ancient oscillators, radios and found sounds in an attempt to tune in to voices beyond the veil. An electroacoustic journey through stark, echoing soundscapes, haunted by half heard voices and weird amorphous entities whilst occasionally offering us fleeting glimpses of the light and beauty beyond.

H.P. LOVECRAFT     MOBIUS TRIP

Disoriented hippie euphoria from the band H. P. Lovecraft, whose second album, H.P. LOVECRAFT II, released in 1968, was legendarily the first major label release to have been recorded by musicians who were all under the influence of acid – which is pretty admirable given my inability to even put the kettle on under similar circumstances.

DELIA DERBYSHIRE AND BRIAN HODGSON     THE HOUSE SPEAKS

This is the bit of music that’s playing in the background whilst we’re given the meaning of Halloween to the Celtic calendar. It’s from the soundtrack to the 1973 horror film THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, in which a group of stout-hearted physicists and parapsychologists attempt to spend a week in a purportedly haunted English manor in which previous investigators were killed while doing research. Roddy McDowell is in it, just in case you were tempted to watch it. An album has never been officially released, but the score that does exist seems to have been ripped from a copy of the movie by Derbyshire obsessives, of which there are many, despite the majority of the soundtrack having actually been provided by Hodgson from his Electrophon studio. For the most part the majority of the tracks on this release feature a haunting minimalistic ambient-like atmosphere, with minor amounts of percussion and brass and sounds which are both organic and mechanical in nature. Hodgson's strange sound effects can be heard throughout each cue, and largely sound like spirits calling out from the beyond and letting out torturous moans, although what sounds like muffled sexual moans can be also heard in some places – I think this may have been Derbyshire's contribution to the album; she slipped them onto her debut album, an Electric Storm, too (not that I'm a Delia obsessive in any way).

SPINAL TAP     STONEHENGE

In ancient times...

Hundreds of years before the dawn of history

Lived a strange race of people... the Druids.

No one knows who they were or what they were doing

But their legacy remains

Hewn into the living rock... Of Stonehenge.

Genius. Couldn’t resist it. Just because it’s Halloween, that’s no excuse to get carried away.

SCHIZO FUN ADDICT     THEME FROM SUSPIRIA

This is a 7” vinyl release from the fairly wonderful Fruits De Mer record label who specialize in this sort of thing – an off-kilter version of the Theme From Suspiria, the highly rated Mind De-Coder favourite 1977 Italian horror movie by Dario Argento with a seminal soundtrack by cult band Goblin. I could have gone with the Goblin soundtrack, of course, but thought I’d favour this version by Schizo Fun Addict when I read it had been recorded above a funeral home in New Jersey last year. The tubular bells are replaced with piano and then some sort of harpsichord synthesizer which carries that familiar refrain, then before you know it there are oscillators flying around all over the place, creepy la la la’s instead of whispering witches and then some funky breaks that wouldn’t have disgraced a vintage Deodato LP. There's even one point where it threatens to turn into the Doctor Who theme. Marvellous. If Goblin had been listening to Brian Hodgson rather than Mike Oldfield then their version could have potentially sounded like this.

JASON CREST     BLACK MASS

Jason Crest were psychedelic also-rans as the 1960s came to a close. They’d released 5 singles, none of which particularly sold well at the time despite much radio play, but have since garnered some cult status as they began to appear on various psychedelic compilations. I believe this track - where the blood-curdling vocal, monkish chanting, and occult-tinged lyrics can bring to mind a more psychedelic Black Sabbath (or perhaps an even a more psychedelic Spinal Tap) - was originally slated as an a-side but was relegated to the b-side of their final single A Place In The Sun, released 1969, following their label’s declaration that the song was unfit for public consumption. I read recently that there’s a 10 minute mix of this knocking around somewhere, created by an anonymous studio engineer from the original acetate during some downtime which I will try to get my hands on for next week.

VANILLA FUDGE     SEASON OF THE WITCH

Like Iron Butterfly, the Vanilla Fudge occupied that point where heavy psychedelia was just one step away from nascent heavy metal – I think I read somewhere that Deep Purple were inspired by the Vanilla Fudge sound, but there is a prog-rock element to their sound that equally leads to Uriah Heap. Nathan Hall, of the Soft Hearted Scientists, has said recently he considers this to have been a spectacular wrong turn and wonders how music would have turned out if bands had continued to explore the psychedelic path instead of the heavy metal path. Me too. Despite that, I'm still a fan of this particularly strung out version of Donovan’s Season Of The Witch, which can be found on the band’s third album, RENAISSANCE, released in 1968. It’s a much darker version than the original, brooding and fuzzy, and it reaches something of a grim conclusion – but I still don’t know why you have to pick up every stitch just because it’s the season of the witch. Demonic knitting, anyone?

LOUISE HEUBNER     ORGIES – A TOOL OF WITCHCRAFT

A spoken word recording of spells and charms of seduction and sexual power from Louise Huebner, the Official Witch of Los Angeles, a practicing third-generation witch and author of several books on witchcraft. Coming from roughly the same era that produced occult celebs like Anton LaVey and Sybil Leek, Huebner was media savvy enough to follow her government-issued designation for "Official Witch Of Los Angeles County" with the release of this LP SEDUCTION THROUGH WITCHCRAFT in 1969. It’s a reverb-heavy collection of incantations centred around "charms of seduction and sexual power", delivered in a voice on the point of orgasm, swishy Moog sounds and plenty of stereo manipulation. As they say, if you only buy one pre-Witch House/Spoken Word LP of seductive enchantments this year, make it this one.

THE CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN     PRELUDE/ NIGHTMARE

Forever defined by Fire, I thought I’d play the opening track from the band’s only album THE CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN, released in 1968, an album that manages to be just about proto-everything that followed in the next couple of years, and certainly gave Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan a thing or two to think about in terms of deranged shamanic delivery. For all that, it’s a surprisingly melodic affair with a mixture of everything, taking in R & B, jazz, blues, psychedelia and experimental rock which, in this instant, includes narration, poetry, gongs, screams, symphonic passages, wild horns, flutes and wigged out organ solos from fellow cohort Vince Crane, whose Hammond is at the heart of the album. Despite being a classic single in its own right, Fire really makes sense in the context of this album, coming as part of a suite of songs that suggest that Brown was aiming for a dark rock opera about Hell. Sadly that album never saw the light of day, the result of producer/manager Kit Lambert’s desire that the album actually sold. Despite this, it remains a classic of that all too rare proto-prog-rock-symphonic-metal psychedelic scene.

CHRIS MORRIS     UNFLUSTERED PARENTS

Whilst by no means the spookiest track on this evening’s show, Unflustered Parents is certainly the most horrifying. This track is taken from the CD release that accompanied Chris Morris’s brilliantly subversive BLUE JAM, an ambient radio anti-comedy programme, described once as a perverse sound garden, which aired on BBC Radio 1 in the wee hours of the morning from 1997 to 1999, the likes of which you don’t hear too much off of these days. It came with a brilliant soundtrack with music by the likes of Brian Eno, Portished and The Aphex Twin supplying surreal background noise. I think it was recently available on Radio 4 Extra, and it's well worth checking out.

WHITE NOISE     BLACK MASS – AN ELECTRIC STORM IN HELL

Eagle-eared listeners will recognise this from Dracula A.D. 1972, where that scheming Johnny Alucard tricks a gang of switched-on teenagers looking for kicks into holding a black mass in an abandoned church, so I thought I’d include a bit of that here. The track was made by White Noise, the experimental electronic group formed by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop and David Vorhaus, a classical bass player with a background in physics and electronic engineering, and was included on their debut album, AN ELECTRIC STORM, released in 1969. I’m surprised to find myself playing it all, given that I’m sure it would cause even the most experienced and engagingly optimistic Head to have the sort of bad trip normally brought on by dropping some brown acid and coming up in the toilet stalls at Glastonbury festival. To heighten the vibe of rising dread, what with it being Halloween and all, I have the following play over it…

DOLLY DOLLY     THE RAVEN

Dolly Dolly (sometimes known as Dolly) is David Yates, a Berkshire-based spoken-word artist, poet, events curator, radio playwright and something of a British surrealist working in the hauntological tradition.  His work makes use of cut-ups, automatic writing, and dream diaries channelling the skewed atmospherics of such luminaries as David Gascoyne and Roland Penrose should their ghosts have appeared in an abandoned garden shed. This particular piece, however, is simply what it says on the label – Yates reading Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic masterpiece of mournful and never-ending remembrance, THE RAVEN. White Noise’s track runs out about halfway through, so I provide further spooky ambience from…

WOODBINES AND SPIDERS     ROTTEN DRUID

WOODBINES AND SPIDERS is the result of a collaboration between the Moon Wiring Club’s Ian Hodgson and Jon Brooks of The Advisory Circle, released in 2014. The concept seems to be real estate meets ruin porn - with W&S as estate agents specialising in houses with perturbing atmospheres and sitting tenants from other planes. Disembodied voices ring through modulated tones and a host of laudanum lidded moments scratching at your darker consciousness. The background is filled with an eerie tone like old heavy dusty drapes.  As the advertising blurb suggests: “Let the future of your surroundings and the landscape of memory seep together inside one authentic purchase”.

MICK JAGGER     INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER

See, it says that this from the soundtrack to Kenneth Anger’s 11-minute film, INVOCATION TO MY DEMON BROTHER, released in 1969, for which he got Mick Jagger to provide the musical score, such as it is, on a newly received Moog. But this isn’t the piece of music that accompanies that film, which in any case sounds as Jagger was still struggling to come to terms with the on button. The piece I’m playing I found on an album called VARIOUS ARTISTS – SOLO MUSIC WORKS 1961-2011, which, as the title suggests, features Jagger’s various solo outings over the years. On this album, this track is catalogued as belonging to an unreleased copy of the film’s soundtrack. The film itself was assembled from various out-takes of Anger’s earlier film Scorpio Rising, so perhaps the soundtrack contains bits and bobs of discarded musical pieces. I like this track though, it sounds like he actually managed to get the Moog out of the box and managed to plug it in properly.

And then we slip into the dreadful ending of The Wickerman, in which the redoubtable Sergeant Howie learns the shocking truth about goings on in Summerilse and the island’s residents burst into spirited rendition of that 13^th century classic, Summer Is Icumen In. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I play another version of it, this time by…

PRUFROCK     SUMMER IS A-COMING IN

Prufrock is a collaboration between multi-instrumentalist Steve Christie and Dolly Dolly. After playing on Dolly Dolly’s debut album Antimacassar the pair decided to work together on the short series of tracks included on this EP. Dolly recorded sounds from his garden bird table, a grandfather clock, a 91 year old lady who recited a poem from memory, but sadly died two weeks after the recording was made, a group of adults with learning difficulties and a walk though Old Town Hastings towards the sea. Steve used an old school Steinway Grand Piano, a Lowrey DSO-1 Heritage Deluxe organ, a 19th Century Pipe organ, a cello, a violin, a recorder, and a bit of computer, and mastered it on an ex-BBC Pebble Mill Studer B67 tape machine, a nice touch I’m sure you’ll agree. It has hauntology writ large all over it.

PROCOL HARUM     REPENT WALPURGIS

As all proper witches know, Halloween is a yearly celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It initiates the three-day observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints ( the hallows in question), martyrs, and all the faithful departed believers. It doesn’t really have anything to do with witches at all; they just got kind of roped into it as a hangover from those days when Christians persecuted wise women, old crones, young maidens, widows and, well, were pretty much suspicious of all women really, and in doing so turned them into a tidy caricature of all that’s supposed to be evil and fearful. Your real witch actually celebrates Walpurgis Night, or Walpurgisnacht, to give it its correct German title, a Sabbath held on the night of 30 April, the eve of May 1^st, when witches meet for a bit of a chat and a knees up. All of which is my way of putting the track Repent Walpurgis, from the band’s 1967 debut release, PROCOL HARUM, in some kind of context. That being said, this track has a touch of Julian Cope's Safesurfer about it, don't you think? It kind of makes up for me not using him anywhere in the show. He knows a thing or two about paganism, what with being an Odinist and all. I had a track lined up and everything. Oh, well, maybe next year.

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