MIND DE-CODER 59

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MIND DE-CODER 59

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is; infinite.”

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-92

GHOST     KISICHUKAN NITE

I played a track last week by Japanese multi-instrumentalist Masaki Botah’s new project The Silence whilst making mention of his previous band, Ghost, who between 1986 and 2007 released no less than 10 albums of a largely experimental, exploratory nature that combined a beautiful mix of ethereal improvisation, blasted guitar of the Led Zep variety with heady prog and gorgeous slow-motion acid folk stylings. This ambient affair, Kisichukan Nite, is taken from their seventh album HYPNOTIC UNDERWORLD, released in 2004, an album of spaces filled with tiny trills, subtle noise accents, repetitions, and rock flourishes. 

Whilst this is going I introduce a lecture by Dr. Walt Miner who presents a 1967 U.S. navy training film on the dangers of LSD. He appears throughout the show, presenting a point of view that is pretty much what you’d expect from authorities at the time.  Obviously I tend to accentuate the positive side of his lecture, whilst leaving the more negative side of LSD use among U.S. navy recruits for another day – “Is that voice in your head, or is it the bulkhead talking to you?”

FUNKADELIC     FREE YOUR MIND AND YOUR ASS WILL FOLLOW

I love Funkadelic – in a world of polite psych-rock, Funkadelic are the band I turn to when I need some of that heavy funky-assed psychedelic shit (as it were). FREE YOUR MIND… AND YOUR ASS WILL FOLLOW, released in 1970, delivers all that and throws in some stoned and zoned, low and dirty groove rumbles for good measure. The title track is all heavy guitar distortion and feedback, ecstatic chanting,  generous amounts of echo, reverb, tape speed manipulations, haphazard stereo panning and a freaky guitar solo that almost literally overwhelms the listener – and this is just the opening track. Apparently the whole album was recorded in one day while the band were tripping on acid. Just as you think that this is about as far out as you can get, I follow it with…

THE GRATEFUL DEAD     THAT’S IT FOR THE OTHER ONE

A band more or less synonymous with tripping balls (as our American cousins might have it), the Grateful Dead’s second album, ANTHEM OF THE SUN, released in 1968, is a magical mix of studio-as-instrument and live jams segued into one another to create an album of expansive, uninhibited beauty. That’s It For The Other One actually comprises a suite of tracks:  Cryptical Envelopment, Quadlibet For Tenderfeet and The Faster We Go The Rounder We Get, apparently conceived to enlarge the band’s royalties, featuring sub-harmonic bass chording, double organ, double drumming and Garcia at his transcendental best . Different performances of the same song, recorded on different nights, were melded together, then merged with studio takes, like one big acid-laced sugar-cubed puzzle using musical jump cuts, mixes and cross-fades that incorporated many of the techniques of cinema. Pretty much an album made on acid for people on acid to enjoy, this is the Grateful Dead at their weirdest – an absolute psychedelic masterpiece.

HIATUS KAIYOTE     CREATIONS PT. 2

It’s possible that I do the band an injustice by only playing this seemingly simple 2 minute long throwaway track, but I needed something for the good Dr. Miner to hold forth over. Hiatus Kaiyote’s second album, CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON, released earlier this year, is actually a mind-expanding mix of modern jazz, polyrhythmic time structures, labyrinthine explorations of 1970s funk, scat-singing, samba, West African soul, pastoral prog rock, sprawling electric fusion and elemental rhythms capable of whisking you away to a mesmerising, psychedelic wonderland all of its own. Still, next week, eh?

JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE     ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

Neither time nor familiarity has dulled this album’s ability to blow my mind and otherwise mess with my head. ARE YOU EXPERIENCED is quite simply one of the greatest psychedelic records of all time. Even the cover makes it a thing of wonder, suggesting all manner of forbidden delights awaiting within. Can you imagine how this must have sounded in 1967? There would have been no reference points for it – it represented an untethered point in time, exploring new kaleidoscopically sonic territories in feedback, distortion, and sheer volume. The title track itself, with its backwards tape flanging sculpted tones that were previously unheard of, largely helped establish the transcendent promise of psychedelia. It’s that good, still.

MANFRIED HUBLER AND SEIGFRIED SCHWAB     THE PEOPLE’S PLAYGROUND (PT. 1)

Another largely throwaway track, but none the less lovely for all that, this time taken from the fairly groovy soundtrack to an obscure West German-Spanish softcore ‘horrotica’ movie from 1969, the enticingly entitled VAMPYROS LESBOS. The score itself isn’t as quite as good as you’d hope – acid-jazz pop, fuzzy mod guitar, big echoey horn parts, spacey sitar, strange, a cheesy organ and yelping, wordless vocals combine to make the kind of sounds you’d expect to hear blaring through the walls from a neighbour's swinging go-go party if you’d grown up on a semi-posh estate in Basildon in 1972, say - but grew to fame when it was included on a compilation album called VAMPYROS LESBOS: SEXADELIC DANCE PARTY which, as you might imagine, I felt compelled to buy.

DEATH AND VANILLA     TIME TRAVEL

I fear I might have been a bit harsh on this band on my last show, suggesting that their name sounded as if it might have been mistranslated or something and wasn’t as good a name as Stereolab or Broadcast, say, when that was clearly where they were coming from. Turns out that Death and Vanilla were the name of two cats owned by singer Marleen Nilsson so that’s that then, I suppose. Anyway, this track, Time Travel, taken from their album TO WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, is simply gorgeous.

TREMBLING BELLS     KILLING TIME IN LONDON FIELDS

This track is taken from the most recent album from Glasgow’s Trembling Bells, THE SOVEREIGN SELF. The album tumbles out of the speakers in a giddy rush of references and influences, as evidenced in the triumphant Killing Time In London Fields – singer Lavinia Blackwell’s blindingly incandescent voice soars rustically over the sort of retro-space-rock vibe usually provided by the  B-52s (albeit a B-52’s that stays up all night grooving to the Incredible String band and who recorded Rock Lobster on open moorland) pausing briefly for a quick ciggy and an unexpected yet welcome hauntological interlude. Marvellous.

BALDUIN     PRETTY SIZE

Gorgeous psych-pop vibes from Swiss multi-instrumentalist Balduin, whose 2014 release ALL IN A DREAM channels the spirit of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, Mystery Tour Beatles, Incredible String band and Procul Harum. Mellotrons, harpsichords, sitars and flutes abound, creating a beautiful swirling movement of flowing sounds and mind-blowing pop-style psychedelia. It really is that lovely.

THE CHIMPS     5th CLASS MAIL

The Chimps are a band who left tantalizingly little trace of their ever being here at all. 5th Class Mail appears on what I understand is their second album, MONKEY A-GO-GO, released in 1967 as a cheap cash-in on The Monkees’ fame. I think The Chimps were essentially a studio band with some down-time to play around with – an inspection of the album cover reveals that they were never even called The Chimps at all, but what else are you going to call a band that has a track called The Chimps Theme and has a picture of a chimpanzee on the album’s cover? That being said, 5th Class Mail rocks with a clued-in, wigged-out garage band psych-rock abandon that includes an extended tambourine/kazoo freakout and a freeform feedback guitar solo, making it worth the price of the album alone. I don’t think I’m betraying any confidences when I say that the rest of the album is a bit rubbish by comparison.

IRON BUTTERFLY     IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA

Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, released as a single in 1968, although I'm playing the epic 17 minute version which takes up all of side 2 of their debut album of the same name, is generally regarded as the bridge between indulgent heavy psychedelia and what was to become heavy metal music. I think at some point is was voted 24th greatest rock song of all time, and it owes a little something to Cream’s Sunshine Of Your Love, but all I hear when I play it is The Doors at their most truculent Back Door Man-stylee period. None of his is to damn it any way; In A-Gadda-Da-Vida includes an Eastern style flourish, the sort of massive wah-wah drenched guitar freak-out that Julian Cope is such a fan of, a wigged-out gothic organ that at the very least channels the spirit of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and a proper, good old fashioned drum solo with added percussion extravaganza like what they just don’t do anymore. Marvellous.

KING GIZZARD AND THE WIZARD LIZARD     THE RIVER

Now this was a pleasant surprise – I think I may have been expecting something altogether different on the basis of the band’s name; and by all accounts, if I’d have come to them through an earlier album I might have got it, but this album, QUARTERS!, the band’s sixth, feels like what it presumably is: the end result of a long drug-fuelled jam session to soundtrack the astral meanderings of the mind. Each of the album's four tracks last exactly 10 minutes and 10 seconds, each combining a medley of melodies, from a wild-west-inspired harmonica appearance to a variety of gentle string solos, Pentangle-style medieval folk meanderings, jazz chords and groovy rhythms. It looks like there’s a bit of a psychedelic scene emanating from Australia, but for that to really be the case I think the bands have to live in the same street, or at least share a postcode – not live thousands or miles apart from each other. Whatever the actual case, I’m all for it.

MANFRIED HUBLER AND SEIGFRIED SCHWAB     THE PEOPLE’S PLAYGROUND PT. 2

Hubler and Schwab recorded together under the name Vampires' Sound Incorporation. Their two albums, Psychedelic Dance Party and Sexadelic, were used to soundtrack three films from cult sexploitation director Jess Franco; namely, Vampyros Lesbos, She Killed in Ecstasy and The Devil Came From Akasava, all made in 1970 and starring the doomed Spanish seductress Soledad Miranda who died in a car crash in 1971. The two albums, long out of print, were released as VAMPYROS LESBOS: SEXADELIC DANCE PARTY in 1996, and they are verily a kitschy bachelor pad trip unto themselves. As the saying goes: If you buy only one lesbian vampire movie soundtrack this year, make sure that it's this one.

THE AVENGERS     EVERYONE’S GONNA WONDER

The Avengers were a Wellington-based psych-pop band who didn’t really make any waves outside of New Zealand. Nevertheless, their debut single, Everyone’s Gonna Wonder, released in 1967, was regarded as the best single ever to have been recorded in New Zealand at the time and was just one of a number of hits that took them to the top of the NZ charts; sadly, just not anywhere else, like the more lucrative Australian charts, say. They split in 1969 leaving 5 top 10 singles behind them and a live LP, THE AVENGER'S LIVE AT ALI-BABA'S (the first live album in the annals of Kiwi rock, pop trivia fans!).

THE BEACH BOYS     DIAMOND HEAD/BE STILL

Bit of a cheat, this, because I only use the first part of Diamond Head, taken from their little known 14th LP, FRIENDS, released in 1968 amidst the fall-out surrounding the aborted SMILE album. The irony at this point in the band’s career was that SMILE had collapsed, in part, because some of the band felt that Wilson's increasingly avant-garde leanings would lose their pop audience (step forward Mike Love); yet by the time of FRIENDS, the Beach Boys had done a pretty good job of losing most of their audience by retreating to a less experimental, more group-based approach. I’ve more or less have no interest in the new group based stuff myself, but retain a soft spot for this album, which seems to find the band tripped out on some Transcendental Meditation vibe (what with Mike Love having just returned from hobnobbing with The Beatles and all in India at the Maharishi Wossname's meditational retreat). It is, in its own idiosyncratic way, the Beach Boys’ THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST, inasmuch that many of the tracks feel half-formed and often lacking substance at their heart – which is more or less what happens with Diamond Head, so just before it grows irritating, I segue into the rather beautiful Be Still from the same album, a song that’s almost transcendental in its loveliness.  

JIM NOIR     HONOUR AND MOOGSWINGS

Jim Noir inhabits this strange dimension where, despite releasing no less than 13 EPs in 2011 alone, he still remains a figure largely unknown to the charts, apart from that Fatboy Slim remix of his debut single Eanie-Meany back in 2004, and two or three tracks that made it to the giddy heights of inclusion into an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or two. By rights he ought to be releasing records in a universe where The Beatles continued ploughing that Sgt Peppers vibe long after YELLOW SUBMARINE and The Beach Boys managed to release SMILE in 1967 to universal acclaim and change the course of musical history forever. Of course, according to a quantum understanding of the multi-verse, he actually is; sadly, it’s not this one. Honour And Moogswings is taken from his fifth album release proper, 2014’s FINNISH LINE, an album that comes with a backstory but is otherwise very much at home to a mid-Strawberry Fields-esque vibe and George Martin production values, but this isn’t a criticism, only a reference point. I think I’d be more at home in that universe where his albums regularly hit the #1 spot, is all.

EARTHLING SOCIETY     PARAMECHANICAL WORLD

2012 saw the 40th anniversary of the launch of the legendary krautrock Brain label, which inspired the semi-legendary Fruits De Mer record label to release a double album of classic seventies kraut rock, motorik rhythms, acid jams and kosmische sounds, including covers of classic tracks by Can, Neu!, Amon Düül and Kraftwerk. It’s called HEAD MUSIC and is pretty much as far out as you can imagine (and how far out is that, exactly?) and made all the more irresistible by being limited to 850 copies – mine comes with one yellow vinyl, and the other purple, and extensive liner notes by Ulrich Klatte, author of the definitive krautrock collectors' tome, Cosmic Price Guide – a quality bit of kit, I’m sure you’ll agree. Earthling Society always had a touch of Amon Düül about them, so it’s no surprise that their version of that band’s Paramechanical World is even more tripped out than the original.

TAME IMPALA     BE ABOVE IT (EROL ALKAN RE-WORK)

I know that Tame Impala’s new album is out and, at the very least I ought to be playing Let It Happen (and I’ve heard there’s a Soulwax remix of that particular track I’m very keen to hear), but I came across this the other day and I had to play it on this evening’s show – a mind-bending remix of the opening track from Tame Impala’s second album LONERISM from Erol Alkan who takes it to a whole trance-inducing different level.

GWENNO     SISIAL Y MÔR

Gwenno Saunders’ snappily titled new album, Y DYDD OLAF, takes its name from Welsh writer Owain Owain’s 1976 semi-legendary sci-fi novel about globalisation, in which brain-invading robots overpower humanity – save for Welsh speakers, whose thoughts they can’t penetrate. It’s sung almost entirely in Welsh, of course, except the closing track, which interprets a poem in Cornish by Gwenno’s poet dad Tim Saunders. Sisial Y Môr, which my trusty Google translator tells me means Offshore Whisper, has a touch of Moon Safari period Air about it, with Gwenno’s voice drifting in and out, lending it a celestial grace. Never has an album that confronts media manipulation, patriarchy and the decline of minority languages sounded so lovely.

THE ORANGE DROP     GET INTO HEAVEN

The Orange Drop seem to be a band somewhat enthralled with Spacemen 3, which works for me because I often find myself in the same position. Get Into Heaven is taken from their 2014 release, the fittingly titled DRONE POP EP, where lysergic beats entwine with fluid psychedelic soundscapes to create a numbed-out descent into narcotic bliss.

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