MIND DE-CODER 74

MIND DE-CODER 74

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‘Mind – how you go’

                                                           Roger McGough (Poem for National LSD Week)

THE IDLE RACE     ON WITH THE SHOW

 The big thing about The Idle Race, of course, was that were formed by Jeff Lynne, who would later go on to find fame with The Move and ELO. His first album, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, released in 1968, was a quasi-concept album composed almost entirely by Lynne himself, and was critically lauded at the time but, rather unjustly, unembraced by the listening public, which is a pity because it has much to recommend it. It’s a cheerfully trippy affair and, given Lynne’s presence, the music enjoys a Beatles-like playfulness with many psychedelic flourishes. The original LP came in a gatefold sleeve, the first of its kind since the Beatles' SGT. PEPPER and the Rolling Stones' THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST albums, and included a mock birthday feast attended by many British celebrities, including most of the Radio 1 disc jockeys (you can clearly see a largely reluctant Jon Peel lurking in the corner, oh, and look, there’s Jimmy Saville – not lurking at all), the Beatles, the Duke of Windsor, actor Warren Mitchell in his role as Alf Garnett, and Lynne himself as an eight-year-old schoolboy. It was re-issued in 2014 for Record Store Day, in a limited edition on gold vinyl and was worth every penny.

THE CHEMISTRY SET     LEGEND OF A MIND

 While I was putting the show together I came across the sad news that Ray Thomas, flautist, vocalist and founding member of the Moody Blues, died recently at the age of 76 (so he had a good innings). Among many very fine tracks, he was also responsible for Legend of a Mind, recorded here by The Chemistry Set for a three-track 7" for the wonderful Fruitsde Mer record label called A LOVELY CUPPA TEA, released last year. It’s super cool, and do check out the video – it doesn’t disappoint.

NOEL GALLAGHER’S HIGH FLYING BIRDS     INTERLUDE (WEDNESDAY, PART 1)

What I’m choosing to call ‘the good one’ from last years WHO BUILT THE MOON, although in fairness this David Holmes produced album has a little more going for it than his normal coke-addled trad-dad updates of MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR. Interlude is all moody and cinematic; the sort of thing Paul Weller was doing with his Noonday Underground collaborator Simon Dine.

GRUMBLING FUR     MOLTEN FAMILIAR

Grumbling Fur's fourth album FUNFOUR, released 2016, is a recording rich in musical experimentation and sonic enquiry, that sounds pretty much like a world unto itself – there’s really not much of a precedent for this type of noise but somehow it still remains a pop album. In fact, it’s pretty much a masterclass in modern psychedelia, taking the exploratory spirit of 1967 as a starting point and not slavishly trying to recreate the noise in Syd Barrett’s head. Molten Familiar has a trippy psychedelic hip-hop rhythm that wouldn't feel out of place on a Madlib release, but overall but it distils a multitude of influences into a singular brand of musical mysticism.

KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD     THE CASTLE IN THE AIR

 This track is taken from the fourth of no less than five album releases by the ‘Gizzard’s’ last year, and the one which was made available for an entirely free download from their website. In fact, POLYGONDWANALAND came with a note encouraging fans to “Make tapes, make CD’s, make records…We do not own this record. You do. Go forth, share, enjoy”, which was very nice of them, I’m sure you’ll agree. As for releasing 5 albums in one year – I just wish more bands had this kind of boundless enthusiasm for making music instead of having us wait five years between releases while they release every track from the album as a single in a venal attempt to wrestle every last penny from their listening public. I mean, The Beatles released six albums between 1963 and 1965, as did the Stones between 1964 and 1967, so it’s not outside the realms of possibility, is it? Clearly, however, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are emitting, packing this album with intricate, overlapping grooves, unfamiliar time signatures, tranced-out flutes, blazing metal riffs, raga-drone organs, and ominous vintage-synth tones – at some point they even attempt Gregorian chants. They’ve probably released two more albums in the length of time it took me to write this.

BRIAN JONES     TRACK 8

Often painted as a drug-addled dilettante by 1967, Brian Jones actually enjoyed quite a prolific year, despite unwelcome attention from the press and their servants, the London constabulary. As well as providing THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST with much of its otherworldly vibe with his use of the mellotron and experimental sound effects, he also composed the soundtrack to the cult German film, ‘A Degree of Murder’, starring his then girlfriend Anita Pallenberg as a young woman who accidentally kills her ex-lover during a fight and she decides to conceal the body (comic capers ensue when she falls for both the men she hires to take it away). Bizarrely, no soundtrack has ever been released –an absurd state of affairs considering that it also featured the likes of Jimmy Page on guitar, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and Kenny Jones on drums. Its release would be considered something of a cultural artefact in and of itself, regardless of the fact that this would be the only time that Jones recorded outside of the Stones, which would also make it a fascinating insight into just what he could have brought to the table had Jagger and Richards not had the song-writing credits pretty much sewn up. In the meantime, the only way you can hear the soundtrack is to watch the movie, which is why this track has no title and sounds a little muffled. I thought perhaps you’d be interested, nevertheless.

MOON WIRING CLUB     SMUDGED CONFECTIONIERS

The first of several tracks taken from two new albums by Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring Club, although one is the disorientating limited edition vinyl version to the other. Smudged Confectioniers is taken from the album CATEARED CHOCOLATIERS, a thoroughly elusive sequence of eldritch sound, using the PS1’s FX to emulate melted shellac, gaggles of ghosts and the imagined environmental sounds of an eerie parallel dimension that lies just behind our own reality. It accompanies a the 2-CD release TANTALISING MEWS, released last year, more of which later.

AVEY TARE     CORAL LORDS

EUCAPLYPTUS, released last year by Avey Tare (Animal Collective’s Dave Portner), is an unsettling listen, sonically rich with a sound palette that disconnects and reconnects in playfully weird patterns. Odd noises haunt Coral Lords, a treatise on marine ecology (of course) about how the death of coral reefs are the first sign that “our ouroboros is almost complete.”; elsewhere the album’s woozy transcendental soundscapes make for a disorientating listen – acid-folk acoustic-ness, sonic weirdness and neo-psychedelic loveliness abound.

 SERPENT POWER     GOLDEN DAWN

 Serpent Power are the combined efforts of the Coral's Ian Skelly and Paul Molloy, who used to play guitar for the Zutons as well. Their second album, last year’s ELECTRIC LOONYLAND, is a swirling, whirling delight, that places them somewhere between Temples, early Tame Impala and current Mind De-Coder favourites King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard, bringing an infectious sound of overstuffed arrangements, snaking melodies and slick harmonies to the mix. The album is a joy to behold, despite the daft title, that puts one in mind of the psychedelic excesses of 1968, when music fused with cosmic awareness, and the resulting universe was just a fab place to exist. (n.b This album is the winner of the 'least promising' cover award)

(A bit of a hauntological happening I put together)

HERON OBLIVION     YOUR HOLLOWS

In 2016 Meg Baird, formerly of acid-folk collective Espers, teamed up noise rock band Comets On Fire to form Heron Oblivion, an often cosmic meeting of the two forms that manages to sound for all the world like Steeleye Span’s Maddy Prior fronting a doom metal band from the 1990s and is all the more astonishing for it. Their eponymously titled album combines the hushed and the pastoral with monolithic slabs of unhinged guitar driven catharsis that is mind-blowingly psychedelic whilst slipping seamlessly from the earthly into the supernatural.

SCAFFOLD     POEM FOR NATIONAL LSD WEEK

As Your Hollows fades away into a cloud of reverb, I include a 3 second poem from Roger McGough, recorded live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with Scaffold and released on the album of the same name in 1968.

ROLLING STONES     CITADEL

Having been bought a copy of the The Rolling Stones’ 50th Anniversary Edition of THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST to revel in, I thought the very least I could do was attempt a reassessment of an album I’d always considered to be a largely disappointing drug-addled dirge. Having done so, I’ve come to the conclusion that if you remove the virtually unlistenable Sing This All Together (See What Happens) and the second ‘experimental’ half of Gomper, and throw in We Love You and its b-side Dandelion in their place, you’ve got yourself a rather fine psychedelic album that, in She’s A Rainbow and 2,000 Thousand Light Years From Home, adds two classic songs to the psychedelic canon (as it were). Recent listens have also revealed Citadel’s previously hidden pleasures, notable for being one of the few songs on the album driven by a vintage Richards riff.

KALEIDOSCOPE     MUSIC

The English band Kaleidoscope were unjustly neglected by the 60s, and yet produced two great albums under that name which at the very least should be as well known as the likes of The Pretty Things SF SORROW and The Small Faces OGDEN’S NUT GONE FLAKE. This mind-blowing track - a psychedelic cacophony with the chorus fading in and out, and a quick choral burst of Hark the Herald Angels Sing - can be found on Kaleidoscope’s second album FAINTLY BLOWING, released in 1969.

THE DANDELION     HERE COMES LOVE

The Dandelion's debut album, THE STRANGE CASE OF THE DANDELION, released in 2013, contains 13 musical spells of folk, psychedelia and multi-dimensional channellings. The side project of Dolly Rocker Movement frontman Daniel Poulter, this album scratches a particular itch, one imagines, celebrating flower power and the first summer of love incorporating groovy patchouli-scented organ work, dexterous flute play, exotic eastern ripples and the occasional Bolan boogie style guitar riff that oozes with tripped out dreaminess.

BIBIO     IVY CHARCOAL

I essentially use this track as a bit of filler, but it’s a gorgeously haunted piece nevertheless. It’s taken from PHANTOM BRICKWORKS, released last year, an album of spectral ambient soundscapes which present the listener with less of an album of music and more of a series of spaces. Bibio himself (Stephen Wilkinson to his mum) notes that these pieces “have provided me with a mental portal into places and times - some real, some imaginary, some a combination of both.” The emotions created by these places are nostalgic, curious and intense. PHANTOM BRICKWORKS often sounds like a time lapse recording of the disintegration of these places over time.

BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS     AQUARIUS

Lisbon’s Beautify Junkyards have recently added Esper’s Helena Espvall to the band and set about recording an album for the Ghost Box record label, which should be enough to have everyone reaching for their piggy bank. Aquarius is the first track from the album, THE INVISIBLE WORLD OF BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS (to be released this coming March) and it’s a lush, lysergic slice of psych-pop loveliness with Espvall casting an entrancing spell over the recording. Gorgeous.

JULY SKIES     HOLIDAYS TO WALES (FEGLA FAWR VERSION)

"The Weather Clock is inspired by a lost post-war Mid-20thC Britain and a fixation with the design and architecture of the period," says Anthony Harding, which more or less puts him hauntological territory, with an emphasis on the cultural and emotional geography of post-war Britain, whose disappearing traces are woven into The Weather Clock's aural tapestry like an absent presence. Holiday To Wales (Fegla Fawr Version) can be found on the 2008 release THE WEATHER CLOCK EP, an eight track release that accompanies THE WEATHER CLOCK album proper. Both releases contain slow motion, atmospheric pieces that offer fading, blurry sound-postcards from a largely imagined past. These are sepia-tinted soundscapes featuring the wireless, static, dew, leaves, playing fields, paving stones, hopscotch, afternoon tea and things of that nature generally. Obviously, I’m a fan.

MOON WIRING CLUB     SMOKY JIGSAW/SEVENTEEN DREAMING STATUES

Two small pieces from the new double CD by the Moon Wiring Club who, on his new release TANTALISING MEWS, re-enters a world of sinister whimsy and oneiric eccentricity that unfolds as part of a snakes & ladders-like board game based on a dream by the artist involving decayed discount carpet shops and missed trains. The typically surreal sounds on the two discs are intended as a background musicke for the game, with 2hr 11mins of smeared ambient inference and twilight tones that directly correspond to the mysterious Mews of the title - “one of those streets or lanes that you pass every day… the architecture doesn’t quite fit in and it probably looks a bit too swanky for the postcode” - with track numberings designed as integral to the game, whilst also adding a lot of psychedelic complication.

I pretty much use the two tracks as filler for another hauntological happening I prepared, which features, amongst other morsels, an excerpt from the song All Through The Night by Barbara Lea and Bucky Pizzarelli, from the album YOU’RE THE TOP: COLE PORTER IN THE 1930s, a defiant record crackle, the talking clock, and the recording of Malaysian nightlife as I walked back to my hotel one recent Friday night in Kuala Lumpur, which in themselves fade away into Holidays To Wales in reverse.

LINDA PERHACS     YOU WASH MY SOUL IN SOUND

I’M A HARMONY is Linda Perhacs second album in 3 years and her third in 47 years, so at 74 years of age she appears to be on a bit of a roll. Belatedly lauded for her diaphanously lovely debut album PARALLELOGRAMS, Perhacs has found a new audience (well, in 1970 she didn’t have any sort of audience at all) and new collaborators, including avant garde performer Julia Holter and producer/remixer Mark Pritchard to expand her sound, whilst still creating music that can only be referred to as spectral and prismatic. You Wash My Soul In Sound is so exquisite it trembles like a petal in a shower, or something as equally tremulous and simile like.

BJORK     PARADISE

You wouldn’t normally expect to find Bjork on a Mind De-Coder, but her new album, UTOPIA, is filled with choral vocals, flutes and birdsong and a captivating lush otherworldliness. The birdsong comes from original field recordings by Björk herself but were also sampled from David Toop's 1980 album, HEKURA; its orchestration is carried by a small flute ensemble, the all-female Icelandic Hamrahlid Choir, and  both give way to bright splashes of electronics, beatific-sounding harp chords and cascading beats. It really sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before. I understand that she plans to re-release the album later this year with added flutes.

CARAVAN     WITH AN EAR TO THE GROUND/YOU CAN MAKE IT

This tremendous track, known as the Ear To The Ground Suite, is taken from the band’s second album, the enticingly entitled IF I COULD DO IT AGAIN, I’D DO IT ALL OVER YOU, released in 1970 during that period in which underground psychedelia was morphing into prog. As part of the Canterbury scene Caravan were already ahead of the game in this regard with extended instrumental passages weaving in and out of each other, creating a hypnotic and otherwise psychedelic soundscape that would become a trademark of the Canterbury sound. It’s highly melodic, easy to listen, but also very ambitious and highly progressive, featuring several extended pieces which never sound bloated or unnecessary but instead dedicate themselves to a beautiful celebration of youth and innocence.

KEVIN AYERS     GIRL ON A SWING

Kevin Ayers' debut album, JOY OF A TOY, released in 1969 following his departure from fellow Canterbury scenesters Soft Machine, offers a clear indication of how Soft Machine might have progressed under Ayers' tenure, especially as he’s accompanied on much of the LP by the group itself. It’s a delightfully whimsical affair featuring Ayer’s lazy charm, avant-garde song construction, an affection for bizarre instrumentation and songs that seemingly belong to a long-gone era featuring girls on swings, cannibal cakes, castles and careening trains. Everyone mentions Syd Barrett when they talk about Julian Cope’s early solo material, but I think there’s more than a touch of Kevin Ayers there too.

TAGES     OLD MAN WAFWER

I have no idea who or what a wafwer is. Is it a name? Is it a Swedish name? Is it even Swedish? Who knows? Tages are Swedish, however, and in 1967 released the marvellously freaky STUDIO, an album both indebted to SGT. PEPPER’S and traditional Swedish folk music. The resulting sound finds it sitting rather closer to ODYSSEY & ORACLE than SGT. PEPPER’S, and because of their innovative use of tape cuts, orchestration, harmonies, and studio tricks, it even sounds like they got their hands on a copy of Brian Wilson’s unreleased SMILE tapes.

STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK     STRAWBERRIES MEAN LOVE

You can almost smell the joss-sticks and the musky scent of patchoulli drenched paisley pillows on this one. The blissful Strawberries Mean Love can be found on INCENSE AND PEPPERMINTS, the debut album by Strawberry Alarm Clock, a band whose image practically defined both the musical as well as peripheral aspects of the psychedelic counterculture. Released in towards the end of 1967, this was an album aimed straight at the Flower Children who lapped it up, but over time Strawberry Alarm Clock have become generally regarded as one hit wonders, never being able to match the gorgeously trippy title track, a song that which today is virtually the tonal equivalent of a Summer of Love flashback.

 THE CITRADELS     MILK AND HONEY

The Citradels are an anti-psych industrial wimp rock band from Melbourne. Their new album, GOD BLESS, their eighth, was self-released earlier this year and explores, in an abstract fashion, explores themes of influence, religion and morality through characters from a small town gradually falling out of touch with its surrounds.  It does this in a fashion that takes in doo-wop to dream pop, krautrock to country and Gregorian chant to shoegaze circulated through layers of shimmering reverb. The term psych-pop harmonies may have been invented for it.

KEVIN AYERS     JOY OF A TOY CONTINUED

And to conclude, a return to Kevin Ayer’s evocatively indolent JOY OF A TOY, because I enjoy it so much.

FORTYONE     WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED?

Cut-n-paste derring-do from Fortyone, a man who clearly needs to get out more. This is from the album A PACKAGE FROM WAYNE BUTANE, released in 2006, but in truth all his albums sound like this. It’s like listening to cartoons on the radio. Check out his entire back catalogue and download it all for free.

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