“You’re either on the bus, or off the bus”
Tom Wolfe
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN REGIONEN I UND II
I’m going to be honest here and say right off I’m not entirely sure whether what I’m playing in this instance has a title as such. This is the opening few moments from Stockhausen’s legendary electronic and musique concrète work HYMNEN, an avant garde piece created between 1967 and 1968 in which the composer integrates a wide variety of national anthems and transforms them electronically into a blistering collage of feed-back and radiophonic squalls. The four parts, or regions as Stockhausen calls them, play for over two hours, and is something of a demanding listen, so I’ve cherry-picked parts here and there and slipped them in throughout the show. Karlheinz Stockhausen, of course, was widely regarded as one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music, known for his pioneering work in electronic music, aleatory (controlled chance) in serial composition, and musical spatialization whose vision, despite being largely unlistenable (let’s face it) very much changed our view of musical time and form, influencing the likes of Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, Brian Eno, Pink Floyd, and The Beatles, of course (I’m thinking of A Day In The Life, Tomorrow Never Knows and Revolution 9 here, just for starters) who included him on the cover of Sgt Pepper’s.
TIMOTHY LEARY WHAT DO YOU TURN ON WHEN YOU TURN ON
A fairly mind-bending track this, on which Leary emulates the distorted, disorienting dissociative effects of LSD in a highly charged musical stylee. It was produced Alan Douglas (who later curated the Hendrix estate and controversially put Hendrix's studio jams over the top of other musicians to create albums after Jimi's death) for the album YOU CAN BE ANYONE THIS TIME AROUND, released in 1970, in an attempt to raise funds for Leary's political candidacy for Governor of California. On it you hear three "raps" by Leary backed with music provided by the likes of Hendrix and Stephen Stills who recorded the music for the album’s longest track, Live And Let Live during an all-night jam session in which the band spectacularly fail to gel and are actually surprisingly boring. This track, however, features samples of music by other artists, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Ravi Shankar and is one of the earliest known examples of sampling on a commercial record. It is an absolute trip unto itself and highly recommended for any plans you may have in that direction yourself.
KING GIZZARD AND THE WIZARD LIZARD I’M IN YOUR MIND/I’M NOT IN YOUR MIND/
CELLOPHANE/I’M IN YOUR MIND FUZZ
For the opener of their fifth album, I’M IN YOUR MIND FUZZ, released 2014, Melbourne’s King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard count to three and then they’re off, throwing together a deranged psych-rock odyssey of warped acid-soaked guitars and unrelenting garage rock bass lines all whooshing into each other in a joyous surge of phase-shifting exaggerated riffage, tape shifts and pounding many-armed percussion that warps into an irresistible head-rush carrying you through the first four songs of the record - I'm In Your Mind, I'm Not In Your Mind, leading single Cellophane, and I'm In Your Mind Fuzz - in the blink of a third eye. Loads of fun.
DR COSMO’S TAPE LAB (THEME FROM) COCONUT SUMMER
(Theme From) Coconut Summer is perhaps strangest track on an album that treats psychedelia as a lysergic toybox full of ukuleles, bongos, toy xylophones, steel guitars and Casiotone keyboards and SMiLE flavoured melodies. In fact, Dr Cosmo’s Tape Lab’s second album of 2015, COCONUT SUMMER DROP-IN 432, channels the spirit of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks creating exotica flavoured fun tunes from a home studio in rain-soaked Glasgow. Marvellous.
DAVE DEE, DOZY. BEAKY, MITCH AND TICH THE SUN GOES DOWN
I’d always assumed that Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mitch and Tich lived and died with the fairly wonderful Legend Of Xanadu but it turns out that between 1965 and 1969, the group spent more weeks in the UK Singles Chart than the Beatles, although I’d be hard-pressed to name another track by them. The very trippy The Sun Goes Down is the b-side to their 1967 release Zabadak! Which appears to have been a hit around the world. Perhaps it’s time to track down a ‘Best Of’ album.
THE YARDBIRDS FAREWELL
A seemingly slight little ditty but none the less pleasant for all that. This track closes side 1 of their only UK album ROGER THE ENGINEER, released in 1966 (strictly speaking the album was simply called YARDBIRDS but has forever been known by the more colourful title following band member Chris Dreja’s cartoon rendition of the album’s studio technician Roger Cameron). It’s an interesting album but not a great album, partly because the band’s reluctance to leave their blues roots behind them meant that it couldn’t quite make up its mind what it was supposed to be. As a document of just how fast swinging London was changing in 1966 it could be considered a classic, despite not being quite as psychedelic or quite as swinging as many other albums released during that period. What it shows, though, is a band in transition, desperate to keep up with and forge a way ahead in those giddy times, alongside Jeff beck unleashing the full fuzz terror of his proto-metal, pre-Hendrix stylings alongside Gregorian chants, middle-eastern inspired melodies, lumpen blues-rock work-outs (it must be said) and some lovely ethereal psychedelia, of which Farewell is a perfect example.
EIRE APPARENT YES I NEED SOMEONE
Poor old Eire Apparent – forever doomed to be a footnote in the career of Jimi Hendrix, who produced and played on the band’s only album SUNRISE in 1969. For those of us who’ve actually heard the album, though, this is quite an assured debut, mixing a heavy psych-rock vibe, which was the group’s forte, with a softer more pop-oriented psychedelic influence that Hendrix was keen to explore outside of his own going’s on. Despite this, the group were unable to produce a hit single and the album was largely unknown in the UK and so after three years the group split leaving behind this one largely unheard artefact – expect to hear more tracks in later shows.
DENIS COULDRY AND SMILE TEA AND TOAST, MR WATSON
Playful toy town psychedelia of Ye Sweet Floral Albion/Olde Toffee Shoppe /I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives variety from Denis Couldry and Smile, a band who made so little impact on the scene I’ve been able to find out next to nothing about them. Tea and Toast, Mr Watson is the b-side to their only single Penny For The Wind, released in 1968. They only ever played one gig, but that was at the legendary Isle of Wight festival that year. If there’s more to know about them then I don’t know what it is, except, of course, that Denis Couldry had previously been in a band called Felius Andromeda and another band called The Next Collection, but everyone knows that.
MOON WIRING CLUB CATWALK EDWARDIAN
Ian Hodgson released two albums last year - the rather fine WHY DOES MY HOUSE MAKE CREAKING NOISES, released on vinyl and consisting of a selection of 120 bpm Jacobean theatre electronic muzak pieces, and PLAYCLOTHES FROM FARAWAY PLACES, a CD release to accompany the former which appears to be a collection of supernatural fashion show themes and is quite possibly the best Jacobean Acid Afterparty Album you’ll ever hear. The mistily serene Catwalk Edwardian is taken from the latter.
DONOVAN THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER
An absolute bonkers rendition of Lewis Carroll’s poem The Walrus and the Carpenter which suggests that Donovan attained the very heights of whimsical hippie excess by the time he came to record his 9th album H.M.S. DONOVAN, released in 1971. However, the album was recorded as a gift for his first-born child and features some of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies he ever recorded. It was however entirely of step with the times, the drugged-out hippie era that had spawned trippy folk-based albums was now over (suffice to say it still lives on in these here parts), it failed to chart and sadly marked the end of his psychedelic fairy tales and fanciful folk songs forever.
TELEVISION PERSONALITIES I KNOW WHERE SYD BARRETT LIVES
I know Where Syd Barrett Lives is taken from the album …AND DON’T THE KIDS JUST LOVE IT, the debut album by Dan Treacy’s Television Personalities in 1981. It’s a charmingly lo-fi affair that seems to predict or possibly inspire the enthusiastic amateurism of the C-86 aesthetic that was still some time down the road. It set the template for their subsequent career: neo-psychedelia, an obsession with youth culture of the 1960s, a fey, slightly camp lyrical attitude, and the occasional classic pop song. It turns out they really did know where Syd Barrett lives – they got thrown off a tour supporting Dave Gilmour in 1984 for sharing his address with the audience.
HIDDEN MASTERS LIKE CANDY
This track is an absolute ear-worm of a record – once heard you’ll be humming this the post office queue of your mind while you fall quietly in love with the girl from the flower shop who’s just popped in for some change (I believe her name is Phoebe). By no means the most psychedelic track on their debut album OF THIS AND OTHER WORLDS (2013) – an album otherwise characterised by off-kilter time signatures, abrupt tempo shifts, jangly guitar-pop with ominous down-tempo prog interludes, heavily harmonized and reverbed vocals, combined with cleverly constructed psychedelic musical escapades and a song that sounds suspiciously like it borrowed a little something from The Ace Of Spades – but it is the catchiest thing you’ll hear all year.
ME AND MY KITES MY DREAM, MY ADVENTURE
Absolutely gorgeous psych-folk from something of a Swedish collective of seemingly psychedelically inspired musicians who, in 2013, were invited to record in a faraway cottage near Brottby, north of Stockholm. In all over 20 musicians contributed to this wonderful album, aptly titled LIKE A DREAM BACK THEN. The songs are mostly acoustic-based, with flutes, mellotrons and piano contributing lovely melodies to an album that is a love letter to the late 1960s acid folk tradition. If you think of a mix between Julia Dreams period Pink Floyd and the Soft Hearted Scientists then you won’t be far wrong.
SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS DIVING BELL
Speaking of the Soft Hearted Scientists, this year saw the 10th anniversary of their sublime debut release UNCANNY TALES FROM THE EVERYDAY UNDERGROWTH, an album of magical, pastoral psychedelic loveliness comprised of their first three EPs, which has now been lovingly re-released with a bonus CD of demo recordings mastered and sequenced in the same order as the studio album. (For those of us with a bit of extra pocket money to spend there also exists an exclusive edition version limited to 100 copies that also includes a signed copy of their MIDNIGHT MUTINIES EP, a signed A2 poster for Uncanny Tales, 2 postcards, an A4 wallet with Uncanny Tales sticker and a signed lyric sheet for Mount Palomar from the first EP – I have no. 43). Diving Bell, from their WENDIGO EP, is a musing toe-tapper that includes a spoken word segment describing a dream, part of which is about Billy Ray Cyrus sitting in Satan’s waiting room and being forced to play Achy Breaky Heart for eternity surrounded by demons with flaming mullets. Uncanny Tales is probably my favourite album release of the last 30 years or so, if that’s any recommendation.
BOARDS OF CANADA THE COLOR OF THE FIRE
With their debut album, MUSIC HAS THE RIGHT TO CHILDREN, released 1998, Boards Of Canada more or less invented the template for the hauntological movement that was to follow some years later – a nostalgic investigation of childhood memories refracted through the broken rose-tinted lens of adulthood. The warbly pitch and warped voices of The Color Of Fire pretty much set the template for early works by The Focus group, The Advisory Circle and The Moon Wiring Club. An essential release.
MOON WIRING CLUB HOW DO YOU DO
…and speaking of the Moon Wiring Club, here’s another track from PLAYCLOTHES FROM FARAWAY PLACES - perfect music for cracking out the dressing up box and acting the mandy dandy.
GWENNO CHWYLDRO
(PLANET L’S ‘ALIWCH YMLAEN! MAE POB MAE’N EI WNEUD YN
CAEL EI GLYNU DAU REMIXES ARALL AT EI GILYDD A’I ALW’N EI BEN EI HUN!’ MIX)
Gwenno Saunder’s Welsh language album Y DYDD OLAF was possibly my favourite release from last year, combining a gentle pastoral psychedelia with gorgeous electronic washes. I loved the single Chwyldro so much (it means ‘revolution’, by the way) that I made my own extended mix of with the Andrew Weatherall and R. Seiliog remixes that came with the bonus disc that accompanied the album. I believe you’re allowed to do this sort of thing when you have your own radio show. She used to be a Pipette, you know, a band I loved unconditionally, but try as I might, I’ve never been able to fit them into a Mind De-Coder.
C DUNCAN SILENCE AND AIR
Christopher Duncan’s debut album ARCHITECT is also a gorgeous affair, and another contender for last year’s album of the year round these here parts. The 25-year-old is a classically trained composer who studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and his work is imbued with some complex choral aesthetics that skirt around the edges of psychedelia before merging with the sounds of a certain pastoral English dream-pop infused folkiness that wouldn’t be out of place on the 4 AD label. It really is quite lovely.
MARK FRY ROSES FOR COLOMBUS
Not only is Mark Fry’s semi-legendary debut album DREAMING WITH ALICE the quintessential acid folk album, it’s also one of the trippiest albums I’ve ever had the pleasure of losing myself in. Recorded in Italy in 1971, where Fry was living as an artist, it manages to tick every psych-folk box - flanged vocals; acoustic finger pickings; trimmings of flute, sitar and bongos; extended jams pushing a couple of songs past the 6 and 8 minute mark; dubby reverb effects; backward tapes; abrupt editing; and of course there is the Lewis Carroll connotation of the title - a touchstone of all English psychedelia of a particular sort. Roses for Columbus is built on a beautiful descending chord sequence with a pretty acoustic melody, subtle flute and stoned voices hum along with the chord changes. In fact, I understand that Fry was reportedly so stoned during the recording sessions that he can no longer remember just who the accompanying session musicians were, but I vaguely remember once reading an interview with Ian McCreadle, guitarist with Middle Of The Road (responsible for the classic Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, of course), who claimed that his band, who were touring Italy at the time, were brought in to play on the album. I don’t believe I’ve entirely made that up, but, on the other hand, try as I might, I can’t seem to find confirmation of it anywhere, either. Perhaps I dreamt it.
BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS RITES OF PASSAGE
For an album produced by a Portuguese band, THE BEAST SHOUTED LOVE, released last year, has a surprisingly British autumnal feel to it that puts one in mind of the delicate acid-folk whimsicality of Heron. Like them, psychedelic-folk ensemble Beautify Junkyards chose to record their most recent release outdoors in various field locations, absorbing a pastoral atmosphere that gives the music an idyllic bucolic quality. If this was all they did then, as you might imagine, that would be enough to pique my interest. However, Beautify Junkyards add a kaleidoscopic hauntological element to their sound, layering vocals and waves of delicious vintage synthesizers, omnichord and xylophones to the mix that shimmer with the beauty of a cartwheel in the mist and more or less guarantees them a play on the show. Do, do check them out.
MAGIC BUS EIGHT MILES HIGH
This track comes to you courtesy of the fairly wonderful Fruits De Mer record label – purveyors of all things of a psychedelic, acid folk and krautrock-ish nature – for whom this Devon-based band recorded a single last year and stuck this on the b-side. Magic Bus pretty much pick up where Caravan left off in 1975 and then put their own spin on the classic Canterbury sound, embracing hurdy gurdy sitar drones, Gregorian chanting, some psychedelic flute action and Mike Ratledge inspired keyboard solo flourishes that make you wonder what The Byrds may have sounded like had they come from that fabled university town in Kent.
FRIENDS MYTHOLOGICAL SUNDAY
Friends was a pseudonym for The Flowerpot Men, themselves a bunch of session musicians put together to promote the single Let’s Go To San Francisco beings as the song’s writers, John Carter and Ken Lewis, previously of The Ivy League, had no interest in touring. Given that Let’s Go To San Francisco was quite the hit, Carter and Lewis were encouraged to write, record and produce most of the band's subsequent recordings over the next three years all of which failed to chart. At this point their record company decided that the band’s name, The Flowerpot Men, was chart poison so the next single, Piccolo Man, was released under the name Friends in 1968. It too failed to chart and although the band stumbled on for a couple of more years their time had gone. The b-side to Piccolo Man, though, was a pleasant enough piece of Mellotron-dipped pop which I thought you might enjoy, so I included it in the show simply because someone, somewhere ought to have heard it and that person is YOU.
OBERON MINAS TIRITH
Oberon were students at Radley College boarding school in Oxfordshire who recorded their only album in a couple of classrooms at the start of the school’s 1971 summer holiday. The result was the now semi-legendary A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM (a mix up at the pressing plant meant the album was mis-titled) limited in number to a private pressing of 99 copies to avoid paying tax. As you might imagine, it’s no great lost acid-folk classic but it is big on all the usual ingredients - killer flute, guitar, violin, haunting vocals and medieval atmosphere – that combine quite nicely to produce and rustic and atmospheric recording, and at one time its very rarity meant it was a much sought after item by collectors of your acid folk, commanding huge sums at auction. It is not without the odd brilliant track, however, making it worth tracking down (it’s now available as a CD). Minas Tirith, for example, is an eerie and sinister extended psych-folk excursion which suddenly explodes into a bizarre and metallic drum solo that pretty much makes it worth the price of admission alone.
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN REGIONEN I UND II
…and to conclude, this week’s show’s get-out-of-gaol-free card Karlheinz Stockhausen, ladies and gentleman, with the closing moments of Regionen II from HYMNEN.
