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"The
function of government is to get everyone high and feeling good."
Timothy Leary
TIMOTHY
LEARY YOU CAN BE ANYONE THIS TIME
AROUND
This
is the title track to Leary’s 1970 album, released in a bid to raise funds for
his campaign against Ronald Reagan for the governorship of California. I’m
assuming he lost. Can you imagine how differently the world might be had he
won? It boggles the mind, which is pretty much the effect that he, or his
producer Alan Douglas, were aiming for, combining cut ‘n’paste technology with
entirely uncredited samples from such luminaries as The Beatles, Ravi Shankar
and The Rolling Stones over a stream of consciousness rap from Leary while Jimi
Hendrix, Stephen Stills and Buddy Miles jam in the background. Should have been
a revolutionary call to arms but everyone got high instead. A mind-expanding
eye-opener nevertheless.
PAULINE
OLIVEROS BEAUTIFUL SOOP (excerpt)
I’ve
been reading and very much enjoying Rob Chapman’s book PSYCHEDELIA AND OTHER COLOURS recently. In it he notes that avant-garde and psychedelic musicians
briefly crossed paths around 1966 but instead of joining creative forces in
order to blow people’s minds, they remained merely on nodding terms with each other and more or
less went their separate ways – a lost opportunity if there ever was one. So
I’ve been reading about musical pioneers in the avant-garde and came across
Pauline Oliveros, one of the more important figures and pioneers in the
electronic and contemporary music field. She was professor at the University at
San Diego for 14 years and is currently Distinguished Research Professor of
Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Darius Milhaud Composer in
Residence at Mills College. She produced Beautiful
Soop in 1966 and, like many psychedelic musicians of the day, shared a
fascination with childhood and Edwardian nursery tales - and Alice in Wonderland in
particular - which she incorporates into
the piece with the use of tape-delays, echoes and accumulative modulations,
mixed with surrealistic and often humorous electronic sounds - a style, it turns
out, she’s specifically known for. It remained unreleased until 1997 when it
was included on the album ALIEN BOG/BEAUTIFUL SOOP, a showcase of her work as director
of the Tape Music Centre at Mills College in the 60’s, in which also seems to have invented hauntology, or at the very least, the Moon Wiring Club, too (just listen to the Moon Wiring Club later on in the show to see what I mean). Rather than play the
whole piece I’ve dipped into it throughout the show, drifting in and out of consciousness like the memory of a lost childhood daydream.
KING
GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD WORK
THIS TIME
King
Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard may have got a lot better than they ever expected
to ever so quickly and may, at some point, start to regret the name. Or maybe
not. You never can tell, and I certainly can’t. Work This Time is from their 2014 release ODDMENTS, an album on
which they retreat from their earlier full-on fuzz wall of sound and begin to
realise that there are adventurous diversions to be found in exploring some of
the more soulful by-ways of the musical landscape, as it were. Work This Time is particularly lovely, I
think, and hints at the sort of sound they’re discovering on their most recent
release. Mind you, that being said, they manage to completely change direction
with every record they make – making them pretty much my favourite band around
at chez Mind De-Coder these days.
FRANK
ZAPPA HAD A DREAM ABOUT THAT
So
my own musical explorations into the avant garde made mention of Frank Zappa’s
final release CIVILIZATION PHAZE III, released just before his death in 1994. On it
Zappa returns to recordings made for earlier musique concrète recordings such
as 1968’s LUMPY GRAVY, in which he had studio visitors record snatches of
conversation with their heads inside a grand piano (with the sustain pedal
depressed, it apparently made quite a resonating sound). This sort of thing
happened quite a lot in the Zappa studios, I imagine, but having had a good
think about it for a good 30 years or so, he began to compile left-over
recordings into some kind of opera/pantomime narrative based upon the themes of
personal isolation and nationalism that finally saw release as a double album. The
two women discussing dreams in this piece sound like a couple from the groupie
supergroup the G.T.O.’s caught in an unguarded moment, as Zappa was wont to do
during the recording of their only album. I’ve never been sure about Zappa but
in the spirit of the avant-garde use tracks from the album throughout the show.
BALDUIN PRISMA COLORA
A
lovely instrumental piece from effervescent Swiss multi-instrumentalist Balduin
who channels the spirit of HORIZONTAL-period Bee Gees albums, Kevin Ayers, Syd Barrett
and the Rainbow Ffolly onto his debut album ALL IN A DREAM, released in 2014.
SADDAR
BAZAAR TONES AND WAVES
The
spirit of the Spacemen 3 is strong in this one, which comes as something of a
surprise because, otherwise, Bristol-based Eastern-psychedelic quartet Saddar
Bazaar do a very fine line in your traditional Arabesque music where your more
familiar Eastern instruments such as your sitars and tablas sit comfortably
alongside the less well-known dholaks, kubings, agouls, and duffs and tablas, which
Saddar Bazaar combine with conventional Western instruments to produce a
haunting hybrid of transcendental ragas and psyched-out slide guitar. And
drones, I guess. Tones and Waves is
taken from the group’s 2nd album PATH OF THE ROSE, released in 1999. While
that’s playing I include a couple of extra spoken word tracks from Frank Zappa
– namely Oh-Umm and Waffenspiel.
SKIP
SPENCE WAR IN PEACE
I’m
something of a late-comer to Skip Spence’s only album OAR – I had a friend who
tried to introduce me to it some 15 or so years ago (Hi, Phil!) but I didn’t get it at all. Recently, however, I’ve been
returning to it more and more. Skip Spence, of course, was Jefferson Airplane’s
first drummer before moving onto his own band, Moby Grape. His only solo
release in 1969 has an understated ethereal acid folk vibe to it, often
beautiful in parts, but most often heralded as a soundtrack to schizophrenia
and/or a visionary solo effort. Often described as "one of the most harrowing documents of pain and confusion ever made",
the album was recorded after Spence had spent six months in Bellevue Hospital
following a delusion-driven attempt to attack Moby Grape bandmates Don
Stevenson and Jerry Miller with a fire axe. Now, Moby Grape, there’s a band I
still stubbornly refuse to get.
PAULINE
OLIVEROS BEAUTIFUL SOOP (excerpt)
THE THIRD BARDO RAINBOW LIFE
The Third Bardo existed
just long enough to enjoy only the one recording session, which yielded six
tracks in all, including one killer single, I’m Five Years Ahead Of My Time,
released in 1967, which, with its use of Eastern melody and distorted guitars,
bridged the transitional moment between garage rock and psychedelia, and it’s
b-side, the swirling Rainbow Life, which took the group even further down the
rabbit hole. Those two tracks and the
remaining four were finally released as an EP in 2000 and that was their lot.
THE BEE GEES EVERY CHRISTIAN LION HEARTED MAN WILL SHOW
YOU
Baroque-pop splendour
from The Bee Gees, featuring a Gregorian chant backed by a mellotron that
places the record somewhere between Strawberry Fields and almost anything The
Moody Blues were up to at the same time. This marvellously switched on oddity
appears on their 1967 album THE BEE GEES’ 1st, which was, in fact,
their third album, but the first to be recorded and released in England.
THE ROLLING
STONES DANDELION
This is the b-side to
1967’S We Love You and shows the Stones tip-toeing around the groovy
psychedelic goings on that would become THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST. Like
We Love You, it features John and Paul on backing vocals and was one of their
few tracks that really flirted with that whole summer of love vibe so prevalent
in 1967 (which they more or less missed, what with Mick and Keith being in
prison and all). I understand that Keith Richard named his first daughter after
the song – although she's since decided to go by her middle name, Angela, instead.
THE JIMI HENDRIX
EXPERIENCE BURNING OF THE MIDNIGHT
LAMP
Paisley-coloured pop
from Jimi Hendrix who even tries his hand at the harpsichord for this one.
Recorded and released in 1967 this was the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s fourth
single and the first that includes his use of the wah-wah pedal. I think this
was added to ELECTRIC LADYLAND, which came out the following year, but as a
single this is the perfect psychedelic pop statement.
THE
TELESCOPES YOU SET MY SOUL
I
was always a fan of The Telescopes slightly delirious take on psychedelia so I
was delighted when the wonderful Cherry Red label scooped up all the band’s
Creation EPs and released them with a handful of bonus tracks and their only
Creation album #UNTITLED SECOND (or, THE TELESCOPES if you bought it first time
round in 1992) on a double CD compilation called SPLASHDOWN released last year.
If the EPs effectively demonstrate exactly how psychedelic music sounds while
listened to on LSD and just a soupçon of DMT (listening to All A Dreams from the CELESTE
EP, for example, you can almost see the notes shimmer, come apart and
disintegrate into a lysergic cluster of sound particles drifting away) then the
album starts out as an abstract obsession with warmth and gets stranger from
there, introducing a jazz-like, free flowing, incense smudged psychedelia to
the mix that, for the most part, enjoys an altogether more reflective feel to
it than suggested by the EPs (although they wig out too). Anyway, it’s marvellous, despite the fact that
that version of the band split up before the record even reached the shelves. Cherry Red are surely making a name for themselves as
one of the finest record labels around with some excellently curated
re-releases. Their DUST ON THE NETTLES: AJOURNEY THROUGH THE BRITISH FOLK
UNDERGROUND SCENE 1968-1972, was one of my prized Christmas presents from a
family that clearly knows what daddy likes.
PAULINE
OLIVEROS BEAUTIFUL SOOP (excerpt)
MOON
WIRING CLUB WARDROBE FOR ALL
SEASONS/MUNGO AND SHODDY/
SARTORIAL RE-ANIMATION/CHIFFON
AND SINGED HAIR/
HAYWIRE ASSISTANTS
You
can see how far ahead of the game Pauline Oliveros was when you realise you
can’t tell when her excerpt ends and the Moon Wiring Club begins. That being
said, I’m so taken by PLAYCLOTHES FROM FARAWAY PLACES, the most recent release
from Moon Wiring Club I pieced together five tracks in order to recreate the
sounds I hear in my head as I nod off to sleep. This is the sound from which
dreams are made, especially if you’d happened to have dozed off at a Jacobean
catwalk fashion show.
BEAUTIFY
JUNKYARDS PES NA AREIA NA TERRA DO
SOL
Acid-folk
loveliness from Lisbon’s Beautify Junkyards, who bring a distinctly hauntological
feel to the mix. In fact, this track is absolutely spell-binding – an ethereal,
magical and transcendent experience that combines the shimmering quirkiness of
Os Mutantes with the beautifully bucolic and dreamily spaced out noise-fields
made by Broadcast. It’s taken from their 2015 release THE BEAST SHOUTED LOVE. Exquisite.
IN
GOWAN RING JULIA WILLOW
You
know where you are in your acid folk circles when you come across a track
called Julia Willow – it will
doubtless be a sublime thing of pastoral beauty, adorned with reflective,
gentle rustic moments and otherwise shimmer with all the tremulous beauty of a
misty woodland glade discovered at dawn. And that’s pretty much what you get
with this track, taken from album THE SERPENT AND THE DOVE, the first released
under the In Gowan Ring banner in 13 years. In Gowan Ring is the name under
which the psychedelic troubadour B’ee, better known as B’eirth (or indeed,
Bobin John Michael Eirth to his mum), creates his bucolic psych folk releases,
and THE SERPENT AND THE DOVE, released last year, is the perfect marriage of
psychedelic folk with a sensibility firmly placed in the middle ages.
This
is what B’ee himself has to say about it:
The Serpent
and the Dove recounts an alchemical journey through a luminous garden around
the Living Tree; there is a serpent… and a dove. A candle flame flickers in the
night, illuminating the face of a wandering sage sitting by a stream. He sings
a story about a cosmic dancer which he’d heard whispered through the reeds: her
rainbow eyes, her bowl of tea, and a field of dreams out of which grew the
universe and all that we can see… There are willows; there are masks of leaves;
there are thousands of bees.
Which pretty much tells
you all you need to know, really.
EPIC45 WEATHERING (excerpt)
Epic45 are two childhood
school friends who make hazy electro-acoustic evocations of the English
pastoral in the manner of Mogwai trying to sound like The Durutti Column by way
of Talk Talk, if you know what I mean. Weathering
is the title track of their 2011 release, their fifth together, and focuses on
the decline of real village life in their region, as former rural communities
become dormitories for commuters and struggle to maintain their unique
identities. There is a sense of loss and nostalgia throughout the album that has
the sepia-tinted wash of hauntology about it with the use of some cleverly
applied cassette tape noises managing to make music that sounds like memories.
PAULINE OLIVEROS BEAUTIFUL SOOP (excerpt)
CAVERN OF ANTI-MATTER PULSING RIVER VELVET PHASE
Since the demise, or
possible hiatus, of his previous group Stereolab, Tim Gane has moved Berlin to
focus his attention on Cavern Of Anti-Matter alongside the splendidly named Holger Zapf and former
Stereolab drummer Joe Dilworth. Between them they explore the possibilities of
aerial ambiance and your motorik kosmiche trajectories. Gane describes the band as
confirmed spectrum addicts, setting up tiny rhythmic cells and expanding on
them in certain ways, splitting the melody and stretching out time. Pulsing River Velvet Phase, a
beautifully evolving melodic piece for guitar and synths, is one of two tracks
they recorded especially for Ghost Box record
label’s OTHER VOICES series of limited 7 " vinyl releases last year. It’s not
actually unlike an early Stereolab single, minus Laetitia Sadier’s understated Gallic vocals, but this is a five minute epic
that blossoms organically as it joyfully shifts mood and time signatures.
COUNTRY JOE AND THE
FISH JANIS
It’s a lovely track this,
written by Country Joe McDonald to his ex-girlfriend, Janis Joplin. It’s by no
means the psychedelic stand-out on their 1967 release FEELS LIKE I’M FIXIN’ TO
DIE, but it is the sweetest. Being’s as this is a place I often go to when
kaleidoscopically engaged, as it were, I thought it would be nice to include it...
FUSCHIA ME AND MY KITE
…especially as any
conflicting emotions it brings up are resolved so pleasantly in this gorgeously
reassuring little track from the short-lived Fuschia. Me And My Kite is taken from the band’s eponymously titled album,
released in 1971. At the time nobody quite knew what to make of the folk-prog-pop-ish
songs whose progressions were unconventional enough that you never quite knew where
they were going. They were let down by advertising (one ad in the Melody Maker)
and a manager who failed to organize a tour, so their only album was also their
last, but, as is often the case, the album took on a life of its own until
finally band leader Andy Durant, now living in Australia, learned of the
popularity of the album among collectors of your lost acid folk artefacts, not to mention the number the unlicensed re-pressings of his record that had been made in the meantime.
Using his original master tapes he digitally remastered the album which was
re-released in 2005 to the sort of reviews that regularly made use of the terms
“lost masterpiece of art-rock-folk
stylings” in the write-up. I understand that there’s a Fuschia II featuring
Andy Durant, still based in Australia, who recently released an album called
FROM PSYCHEDELIA…TO A DISTANT PLACE in 2013.
COSMIC NEIGHBOURHOOD ELF DOOR
Now this is interesting - Cosmic
Neighbourhood is the brainchild of Bristol-based illustrator and musician Adam
Higton. Elf Door is the opening track
from his debut album COLLAGES 1, where each song acts as a response to his
fanciful scissor and paper abstractions. Released last year, the album arranges
fluttery modular synths, petered drum machine beats, flutes, bells and bizarre
samples which document the daily goings-on of 'the forest folk within the realm of the Cosmic Neighbourhood.' Sonically
speaking, of course, we’re in hauntological territory, the sounds conjuring up
lost images of childhood, before colouring them all with the amber glow of some
forgotten, psychedelic kids' TV programme. Higton's benign toots and echoing
jingles bring to mind Daphne Oram's early delay experiments or the meandering
playfulness of Tom Cameron. Radiophonic and time-worn, it still somehow sounds
like the future.
ME AND MY KITES COMMON LIFE
Sweden’s Me and My Kites
are such fans of Fuschia’s album they named themselves after its most whimsical
track. On last year’s album IS IT REAL OR IS IT MADE, however, they strip back
much of the psychedelia of their debut in favour of a more progressive,
indefinable sound which owes more to the prog-folk harmonies of Mellow Candle or
the Canterbury sound. There is a recording between the band and Andy Durant on
the Fruits De Mer record label that I’m in the process of tracking down,
but I really do feel that I’ve found a new favourite band here. Closer, Common Life, is absolutely superb, a wistful
10 minute trip that conjures up pictures of pristine landscapes, church
graveyards, water meadows in the mist before dawn and somewhere astral, just on
the other side of the Aurora Borealis, perhaps. Marvellous.
