MIND DE-CODER 92

MIND DE-CODER 92

To listen to the show just tscroll to the bottom of the page

I will drop every tab in the land, just to assure you I am your man.

                                                                                                            Julian Cope

THE MOVE     FIRE BRIGADE

I seem to be enjoying a bit of a love-in with The Move at the moment – and long may it continue. The mighty Fire Brigade, released in 1968, saw the band at the very height of their imperial phase - it’s a killer single combining a compelling pop sensibility with an off-kilter psychedelic sense of playfulness, but what I like about it, what I really like about it, is that ‘ooh’, interjected by Carl Wayne,  that concludes the end of each chorus.  I find myself looking forward to it each time the needle hits the groove.

THE SYN     14 HOUR TECHNICOLOUR DREAM

This paean to the legendary 14 Hour Technicolour Dream - held in the Great Hall of the Alexandra Palace, London, on 29 April 1967 – is tucked away on the b-side of the band’s second single, Flowerman, released later that year. I suspect the band were in the audience that night– I can’t find a record of their performing at the event and, oh, my goodness, how I wish I could have been there. It’s what time machines will be invented for. Sometimes it makes me physically ill that I missed growing up in the 60s. The band themselves have something of a complicated history – they split later that year and half of its members at some point turned in Yes. They never released an album at the time but a version of the band seems to have reformed in 2004, and they appear to have some seven albums or so under their belt. Of a progressive nature, I understand.

SUMMER’S CHILDREN    MILK AND HONEY

Summer's Children were the duo of Curt Boettcher and Victoria Winston, who recorded their only single, the lovely Milk and Honey, in late 1965. Boettcher would go on to help pioneer California sunshine pop with a number of groups, his production skills creating jewels of pristine beauty. The sublime Milk And Honey is pop perfection – a teenage symphony to God. By some accounts, Boettcher set the bar for Brian Wilson to follow, although he remains largely unknown these days following his death at the unlikely age of 42. This track, and two more in the show, can be found on a new release, LOOKING FOR THE SUN, which showcases his unique talent.

PENNY WISE     LILY COME NEAR ME

Supercool Dutch freakbeat from Penny Wise, a band about which I know very little. Lily Come Near Me was their second single, released in 1968, and comes over like a cross between the Zombies and Koobas – a perfect psych-pop release.

BIT ‘A SWEET     IF I NEEDED SOMEONE

The regrettably monikered Bit ‘A Sweet were put together by producer Steve Duboff to satisfy some kind of psychedelic itch he had that clearly need scratching. The album, HYPNOTIC 1, released in 1968, is awash with psych-lite pop mixed with distinctive flourishes of experimentation (notably quite a bit of electric sitar, phasing, various studio effects and the early squelch of a synthesiser) but comes over as less of a genuine artefact and more of a studio cash-in on the psychedelic era. It sunk without a trace, but there’s no denying that their take of George Harrison’s If I Needed Someone, complete with entirely superfluous oscillator adornments, is a spacey, lysergic gem of a track that deserves to be included in any list of superior Beatles’ cover versions.

NATHAN HALL AND THE SINISTER LOCALS     THE WEDDING

The Wedding is a woozy, transcendent delight that, perhaps, hints at an enjoyable new direction for Nathan Hall’s Sinister Locals. It has no official release but appeared recently online and may be included on the band’s fourth album. It’s hardly there but floats, instead, on gossamer wings; a kaleidoscopic thing of spell-binding wonder; fragile yet absolutely in love with its own sound. Absolutely gorgeous.

THE MARMALADE     MAN IN A SHOP

The Marmalade were a group doomed never to be taken seriously, despite, or perhaps because of, their worldwide Number 1 hit with a cover of The Beatles’ Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da that seemed to cement their fate as a novelty bubblegum act when, in fact, they saw themselves more at home to American soul, folk-rock, and progressive rock. Their fourth single, Man In A Shop, released in 1968, is as an irresistible slice of psych-pop as you’re ever likely to hear, but, sadly, the record-buying public did, in fact, resist its charms. Luckily, for good or bad, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da awaited.

THE KINKS     FANCY

The Kinks, of course, didn’t do psychedelia, but Fancy, a hypnotic Eastern-tinged rumination, is clearly playing with its nascent tropes even if Ray Davies was later to discard them for a more reflective type of song-craft. It appears on the band’s 1966 release, FACE TO FACE, a loose concept album on which Davies explores English class and social structures, and pretty much marks the beginning of their imperial phase.

 THE PEANUT BUTTER CONSPIRACY     TOO MANY DO

I don’t think the Peanut Butter Conspiracy were ever quite as good as their name suggested, but you can almost smell the patchouli emanating from the sublimely psychedelic Too Many Do, taken from their second album THE GREAT CONSPIRACY, released in 1968. I believe that this track became one of the first long cut recordings to be featured in extended radio play, as bands began to escape the tyranny of the three-minute pop single.

GOLDENROD     KARMIC DREAM SEQUENCE

With a title like this you’d expect something a bit special, and Karmic Dream Sequence doesn’t disappoint. Goldenrod were a studio project put together by the now semi-legendary Curt Boettcher, consisting of the "Our Productions" crew, a talented group of record producers and session men. Karmic Dream Sequence, from their only album GOLDENROD, released in 1969, is amazing – a sprawling, effects-laden, stoned acid-rock jam which features a ten-minute cymbals solo that can only ever have made sense as a fried decade drew to a close. Marvellous.

TREES     SALLY FREE AND EASY

This remarkable track, a cover of Cyril Tawney’s tale of heartbreak and woe, Sally Free And Easy, is taken from the band’s second album, ON THE SHORE, released in 1970. They were hardly known at the time, and even now they’re regarded, in some circles, as Fairport-lite, very much a second-tier act in your acid-folk circles, but I think this track is pretty close to astonishing. Recorded in one take, it blends strong elements of prog, psychedelia and folk with the charming voice of singer Celia Humphris (now, apparently the voice of the Northern Line, fact fans) sends shivers down the spine. The album cover invites as much comment as the contents within. Designed by Hipgnosis, the model in the photo was Katie Meehan, daughter of Tony Meehan from The Shadows.

CIRCUS     PLEASURES OF A LIFETIME

Well, this is just lovely: “How nice it is to have enjoyed the pleasures of a lifetime”, they sing, and sound as if they really mean it. Circus started life as a psych-pop outfit whose two singles were largely ignored by radio stations and the record-buying public alike, before turning into what can only be called a jazz-fusion band who mixed the heavier aspects of late 60s prog with the nuances of jazz modulations, folk, pop and psychedelia. The result was surprisingly successful, and their only album, CIRCUS, released in 1969 is a very mellow listen. Pleasures Of A Lifetime is a beautifully serene song which, admittedly, features a mid-section Jazz break which isn’t entirely necessary, but overall this is my favourite track on this evening’s show. Sweetly gorgeous.

THE ORACLE     DON’T SAY NO

The Oracle were one of those bands doomed to be a footnote to a footnote in your psychedelic circles – in this case the footnote once again belongs to Curt Boettcher. This is the b-side to the band’s only single, released in 1967, produced and co-written by Boettcher in which otherworldly vocals lurch into life with a swell of compressed cymbals and exotic instrumentation. I confess I’d never heard of Boettcher until last week, but I’m clearly quite taken with him.

HARMONY GRASS     I’VE SEEN TO DREAM

Sunshine pop of the highest order by Harmony Grass – previously known as Tony Rivers and The Castaways, but, by the end of 1968, that sort of name was sounding old. As Harmony Grass, they troubled the charts with their first single release, so their record company allowed them to record an album, resulting in THIS IS US, released in 1969. In many ways it’s the epitome of British Sunshine Pop, showcasing the band's love of the Beach Boys while also displaying a penchant for the likes of The Turtles, The Association and Harper’s Bizarre. I’ve Seen To Dream, however, is all Brian Wilson and wouldn’t sound out of place on PET SOUNDS. The band split in 1970 but Tony Rivers went onto a career that included a stint promoting the theme tune to the wistful 1970s sitcom, ‘Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads’ in the highly made-up band, Highly Likely.

WEEPING BONG BAND     EGRESS AND NADIR

You can’t really go wrong with a name like this and the band don’t disappoint. A multi-sourced collaboration which, amongst a host of other names and bands I’ve never heard of, includes P.G. Six, whose abstract, experimental folk compositions have graced Mind De-Coder before. In fact, that reference is your gateway into the band’s second album, simply called II, from which this track is taken. The music stretches and explores, poised and restrained, allowing plenty of space for your thoughts to roam hither and tither while your brain melts like butter left too long in the sun.

TAME IMPALA     BREATHE DEEPER

To be honest, whilst quietly applauding Kevin Parker’s journey as a musician and producer these past few years, I didn’t think I was ready to join him for his current album, which, if the lead singles were anything to go by, was just a bit 10cc does Supertramp at some yacht-rock festival in Belgium, and not enough psychedelic abandon for me. And then I heard it under, what I'm coyly choosing to refer to as enhanced circumstances, and was suitably thrilled to discover that THE SLOW RUSH is as trippy as a pair of Persian slippers on the psychedelic stairway of destiny; an aural slowdive into a warm summer’s day. Breathe Deeper is a funky, blissed-out disco affair featuring a languorous groove, jumping drum beats, and bejewelled electric piano melodies tethered by lysergic playfulness. Quite, quite gorgeous.

B-MOVIE ORCHESTRA     BASS IN LOVE

Eagle-eared listeners will have noted that I lead into the exotica part of the show with one of Jerry Goldsmith’s musical interludes for the film ‘Our Man Flint’ (All I Have To Do Is Take A Bite Of Your Apple?, to be precise), which I blend seamlessly (if I do say so myself) into the B-Movie Orchestra’s flawlessly erotique cover of Guy Pedersen’s Bass In Love. B-Movie Orchestra are the musical brainchild of Matti Baz (the drummer of Junkie XL, if that’s any use) and Ellen ten Damme (Dutch actress and multi-instrumentalist) to allow them to indulge their passion for the groovy, psychedelic soundtracks that accompanied Italian police films, spaghetti westerns, soft erotica and 60s spy movies. Their debut album, THE ULTIMATE IN THRILLING, EROTIC AND RAUNCHY FILM MUSIC VOLUME 1, released in 2012, pretty much does what it says on the label.

KAVA KON     PACIFICA 66

The L.A. based duo Kava Kon are clearly worshippers of the likes of Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, and their second album, TIKI FOR THE ATOMIC AGE, released in 2009, channels the spirit of both with an evocative mix of exotica, electronica, soundtrack, dub, western, world beat, ambient, and lounge, suitably loaded with vintage organ sounds, exotic percussion, and gloriously cheesy approximations of Rumba and Bossa Nova. Many people still regard the exotica records in the mid-50s as camp novelties, but what you’re getting are mini-atmospheric masterpieces, notable for their use of non-musical sounds and unorthodox production techniques, which is where the attraction for me comes in. Pacifica 66 reverberates with three-note vibraphone structures and three layers of female vocals with occasionally added laser followed by an ambient intermission featuring relaxing ocean waves and a melody quietly plucked on a distant acoustic guitar. I’ve been a fan of this sort of thing for years – I can’t imagine why it’s taken so long to include an exotica element into the show.

PAUL WELLER     IN ANOTHER ROOM

The title track from Paul Weller’s uncanny little release on Ghostbox records on which the modfather explores his interest in experimental tape music and early electronics. The whole EP comes in at less than 8 minutes but in that time, you get tape manipulation, field recordings and instrumental passages artfully arranged to create a genuinely curious and psychedelic atmosphere.

DON RANDI TRIO     SLEEPY LAGOON

Is this the theme music to Radio 4’s flagship Desert Island Discs? I believe it is. Presented here by the Don Randy Trio (featuring Curtis Amy and The Exotic Strings) from the 1966 release, JUNGLE ADVENTURES IN MUSIC AND SOUND, it provides a suitably relaxing end to the show, allowing the mind to drift untethered into far reaches of infinity (and perhaps, just perhaps, beyond). The rest of the album is notable for using every sound in the exotica effects library and is gloriously overwhelming.

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MIND DE-CODER 91

MIND DE-CODER 91
To listen to the show just scroll to the bottom of the page

Reality gives people what they think they want; LSD gives them what they need.

THE BEATLES     BECAUSE

Because was John Lennon’s parting gift to The Beatles, a three-part vocal harmony (overdubbed twice making nine voices in all) inspired by hearing Yoko play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, if Ian MacDonald is to be believed. The last song recorded for ABBEY ROAD, and therefore the last song they ever recorded together, Because captures The Beatles singing together, standing around the microphone one final time, harmonizing beautifully – a psychedelic ballad for what, in 1969, were effectively post-psychedelic times. Lennon never wrote a song like this again – in truth, no one has ever written a song like this again. This version is taken from the recent Giles Martin re-master I was lucky enough to get for Christmas, in which everything, the harpsichord, the bass, the harmonies are just all turned up to ‘more’.

PINK FLOYD     LET’S ROLL ANOTHER ONE

Recorded in 1967, this is the early, infamous version of the song which would become Candy And A Currant Bun, rejected by the record company for containing the lyric: “I’m high – don’t try to spoil my fun”. Never released, what few recordings there were only existed on acetate. It has a stripped-back urgency to it; more tense, less playful and more in tune, I suspect, with their live show than the version that would eventually find its way to the B-side of their debut single, Arnold Layne – but its very discordance is what gives it such an electrifying edge. Syd was forced to rewrite the lyrics but got his own back with some sly obfuscation by also replacing the lines: “Oh, don’t talk to me – please just walk with me” in this version, to :”Oh, don’t talk to me – please just fuck with me” in the version that somehow slipped by the censors and onto vinyl.

CIRCUS    DO YOU DREAM

As lovely a piece of whimsical psych-pop as you’re ever likely to hear, Do You Dream, was the debut single from Circus, a short-lived group who, following a brief flirtation with psychedelia, developed into a sort of jazz-prog fusion group not dissimilar to The Nice, or The Soft Machine, say, but without either of those two bands’ level of success. Produced by Manfred Mann’s Mike d’Abo, this 1968 release, sadly sunk without a trace.

JONNA GAULT AND HER SYMPHONOPOP SCENE     WONDER WHY, I GUESS

The splendidly quirky Wonder Why, I Guess is taken from the only album by the marvelously monikered Jonna Gault And Her Symphonopop Scene. In her short time in the music business, Gault had performed under a number of different names to little or no response from the record-buying public before escaping meddling record company interference to become, at 21, pop’s first self-styled sincompreneer (a combination of singer, composer, performer and engineer) which formed the basis of her symphonopop vision - guitarless pop with unusual combinations of orchestral instruments, which largely eschews the strings that characterized the era. Alas, WATCH ME, released in 1968, was greeted with the same indifference as her previous iterations, and Gault retreated back to her real name – Roberta Mae Silvanoff - and was never heard of again (more or less). In truth, this is the best thing on an album that tried and failed to bridge the generation gap by bringing a flower child sensibility to squaresville MOR but I quite like to play it: it always goes down well at dinner parties, that’s all I’m saying.

JULIAN COPE     IMMORTAL

A marvelous track from SELF CIVIL WAR, the newest release by the prolific arch-drude, Immortal celebrates the ambition of a love-struck suitor who aims to considerably up the ante on his drug-taking in order to impress the object of his devotion. It really is quite lovely; Cope at his most playful on an album that brims with sound FX, enormous orchestral arrangements, timeless uprisings of Ur-folk and hefty near-Krautrock anthems. I understand it’s the first release in a new ‘Our Troubled Times’ series, so there’s plenty to look forward to this year from a man who appears to be emitting again.

THE MOVE     CHERRY BLOSSOM CLINIC (REMIX)/CHERRY BLOSSOM CLINIC REVISITED

This is the altogether better, more expansive version of the track Cherry Blossom Clinic that you can find as a bonus track on the 1998 reissue of the 1967 debut album. Originally conceived as a single, the idea was withdrawn when some members in the band considered that the subject material, mental health, might be in bad taste – and, what with them being in trouble at the time with the Prime Minister Harold Wilson, they thought it best to just quietly drop the idea and released the brilliant Fire Brigade instead. The band hadn’t finished with the song, however, and returned to it in 1970 on their second album SHAZAM, in which they extend the track a further five minutes or so and somehow manage to include Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Tchaikovsky's Thé (the Chinese dance) from THE NUTCRACKER. Marvelous.

BIT’A SWEET     A SECOND TIME

A terrible, terrible name for a band, formerly called The Satisfactions, sadly foisted upon them by producer-arranger Steve Duboff who signed them up as a vehicle for his songs in early 1968. Their sole album, HYPNOTIC 1, was released later that year, but despite featuring beautifully arranged instrumentation, exotic flourishes and small dollops of experimentation - notably quite a bit of electric sitar, occasional oscillators, phasing, various studio effects and the gasps and gurgles of an early synthesizer – the album failed to provoke any interest at all and the band split shortly after. A Second Time is very typical of the album (if you enjoy switched-on, hippie philosophizing of a whimsical nature, then this is the album for you), but nothing can prepare you for just how good their cover of The Beatles’ If I Needed Someone is – I’ll play it next time.

PAUL WELLER    SUBMERGED

Well, this is very fine – Submerged is taken from Weller’s debut release on Ghostbox, a four-track EP rather fittingly entitled IN ANOTHER ROOM. Fans of Weller’s more experimental leanings, a direction he’s been pursuing since 2008’s 22 DREAMS, won’t be surprised to learn that he’s been a fan of Ghostbox’s hauntological explorations for some time, but it was his 2017 score for Thomas Q Snapper’s film ‘Jawbone’, and in particular the opening 21-minute track, Jimmy/Blackout - in which treated pianos, ambient drones, music concrète found sounds, cellos and guitar feedback combine to paint mindscapes that led Weller to Ghostbox’s doors, the perfect home to explore his interest in experimental tape music and early electronics. The four tracks here, though, are more than just experiments; tape manipulation, field recordings, and instrumental passages are artfully arranged to create a gently uncanny and psychedelic atmosphere. I’ve also included the trailer for the EP that I found online as a taster for the whole.

BRAVE NEW WORLD     LENINA

Obscure krautrock, even by the standards of the genre, from Brave New World, whose debut album, IMPRESSSIONS ON READING ALDOUS HUXLEY, was released in 1972 to little or no fanfare and immediately became something of a rarity, if not entirely a lost gem. This is not an album you’ll find in Copey’s ‘Krautrocksampler’, or even any other books that mine the increasingly exhausted seams of krautrock, but it’s still a frequently trippy affair, peppered with weird incantations and deeply hallucinogenic effects. The album, supposedly inspired by Huxley’s mystical writings, owes more to prog than the truly kosmiche explorations of your Ash Ra Temple’s or your Tangerine Dream’s, say, but it nevertheless enjoys a spacey, flute-driven vibe. Lenina is simply gorgeous - an enigmatic, fragile, celestial song for the flute, with moody bass lines and a beautiful air.

THE CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN     GIVE HIM A FLOWER

Comic hippie satire or flower-power anthem? Give Him A Flower was the B-side to The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown’s debut single, Devil’s Grip, released in 1967, and whilst Brown was drawn to the more esoteric side of the counter culture, this track was always a favourite with the freaks who would all sing along with the chorus. The recorded version only had the three verses but onstage it could go on for 20 minutes or so with extra verses improvised on the spot. One gets the impression, though, that the first verse, in which sixty policemen burst in through the door whilst poor Arthur Brown was enjoying a quiet bath, probably has some basis in truth about it.

FIRE     REASON FOR EVERYTHING

Fire, or possibly The Fire (the definitive article appears to have dropped at some point), released a couple of psych-pop singles of the whimsical toytown variety before public indifference led to a retreat to the Home Counties where song-writer Dave Lambert (later of The Strawbs) spent a year licking his wounds, writing and demo-ing the songs for what would become the band’s only LP, a concept album based around a whimsical children’s bedtime story called THE MAGIC SHOEMAKER, released in 1970, in which a shoemaker cobbles together a pair of shoes that unexpectedly allow the wearer to fly. These are loaned to a king whose country is threatened with war by a neighbouring state; when the king confronts his opposite number from the sky the latter’s army are spooked and a peace treaty is forthcoming. The album’s principle conceit has Lambert telling the story to a group of kids on a coach trip (real kids’ voices, overdubbed travel noises) in short pieces of the narrative which occur between and within the songs whose lyrics broadly parallel episodes in the tale, some closely, others in more abstract fashion. TOMMY it isn’t, and, at best it sounds like a cross between OGDEN’S NUT GONE FLAKE and the few avuncular spoken word vignettes on The End’s INTROSPECTION. The record buying public weren’t buying it, possibly because it was too late for psych and too lightweight for prog, and that was that, but these days, of course, it’s considered a lost classic, and is not without a tripped-out thrill or two. I particularly care for Reason For Everything which burns with a fierce intensity (no pun intended, but now that I’ve noticed it, I’m quite pleased with it).

THE HOLLIES     MAKER

The Hollies could never really be doing with psychedelia, what with being beer drinking Mancunians an’ all, but Graham Nash was feeling the call – the lovely Maker, written by him, was probably as overtly psychedelic the band ever got and appears on their 1967 release BUTTERFLY, the album on which they flirted, briefly, with a few psychedelic tropes. It was never a direction they were happy with and shortly hereafter Nash was off to America, stardom and a wholehearted embrace of hippie culture. Fact fans will be thrilled to note that the sitar played on this track was ‘borrowed’ from George Harrison, who had left it lying around the studio after the SGT. PEPPER sessions.

LIAM GALLAGHER     MEADOW

Gallagher Jnr manifests his inner Beatles (again) in this fairly gorgeous track from last years’ WHY ME? WHY NOT.

MOON WIRING CLUB     MAGPIE TAKES ENCHANTER’S HAT

For his most recent release, CAVITY SLABS, released last year, Moon Wiring Club’s Ian Hodgson has doubled down on his Northern Edwardian-Neo-Elizabethan Psychedelic Hallucinatory Occult Landscape Breakbeat chops in a nod to classic, darkbeat, rave music. I usually enjoy his more hypnagogic ambient excursions but these propulsive, cackling spectres of sound are exceptionally ideal for traversing ancient moorland, rounded hills, plateaus, valleys, burial mounds, gritstone escarpments and potentially edifying home-ritual requirements.

MAPPE OF     ESTUARY II

A lovely, tremulous, acoustic interlude courtesy of Canadian avant-folk artist Tom Meikle, who creates a fever dream of orchestral pop, electronica, and pastoral folk under the moniker of Mappes Of. On his second album, THE ISLE OF AILYNN, he sets out to document a fantasy world that draws parallels between a mythological space and everyday conflicts, concerns and struggles within our lives. It sounds like it a bloated prog-opus but, in fact it evokes Radiohead’s more ethereal noodling’s.

OPEL     WICKER HYMNS

Wicker Hymns' is a new collaboration between Future Wizards Records and Opel, who were originally active as an acid-folk rock band active in the mid to late '90s. Dubbing their music 'Wicker Rock' in homage to the 1973 cult horror movie classic 'The Wicker Man', and incorporating a blend of acid-folk, jazz and late '60's US West Coast rock sounds, they disbanded in 1999 to work on other projects, but now appear to have reformed as a duo. Their music remains very much inspired by British Folk Horror films of the late '60s/early '70s and Wicker Hymns is something of an acid folk epic taking in three parts. I’ve included parts 1 and 2 – Dance Of The Fire-Blower and The Witch, but the whole piece appears to be something of a taster for a forthcoming album to be released later this year.

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE AND THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O.     PINK LADY LEMONADE

We’re already a month into 2020 and the mighty Acid Mothers don’t appear to have released anything this year yet – they must be on some sort of hiatus. Usually by now I’d have expected two or three mind-bending lysergic excursions in the nether regions of the psychedelic void, so to tied us over, here is the original recording of the much-loved Pink Lady Lemonade, from their eponymous debut album released back in 1997. It’s a track that they’ve returned to (literally) countless times in their astral career, and it’s certainly my favourite recording – endlessly mesmerising and almost overwhelmingly intoxicating in its narcotic allure.

ELEPHANT STONE     WE CRY FOR HARMONIA

The irritatingly named Elephant Stone’s most recent release is a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi concept album which takes place immediately after mankind’s catastrophic destruction of the Earth and explores what happens when the same elite responsible for the first world-destroying climate disaster touch down on New Earth, a recently-discovered planet sold with the same life of prosperity as the one they’ve just destroyed. The frankly gorgeous We Cry For Harmonia, far from being a repine for the krautrock supergroup, is actually a lament for the spaceship which brought them to New Earth in this dystopian odyssey. To find out more you’ll just have to listen to the album, but Montreal’s sitar-powered space cadets are a lysergic, expansive treat.

PREMIATA FORNERIA MARCONI     APPENA UN PO

Fantastic prog loveliness from Milan’s Premiata Forneria Marconi, which I believe translates as Award-Winning Marconi Bakery, although I might be wrong, and the opening track from their 1972 release PER UN AMICO (‘For A Friend’, Google Translate fans). Appena Un Po (at this point, I suggest looking it up yourself) is something of a pastoral tapestry, emerging from a cloud of celestial mellotron, before a delicate guitar arpeggio takes over, soon to be joined by a flute and a harpsichord, before the group intervenes in what can only be described as a fairly muscular fashion. This album is generally considered a defining masterpiece in Italian prog history, and one which propelled them onto the world stage, albeit a world stage defined by people who like King Crimson, Jethro Tull and early Genesis.

MATTHEW HERBERT     A DEVOTION UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS

As I write these very words England has just left Europe and enters a post-truth world where the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are inexplicably free to inflict their bad trip on everyone. Former crowd-pleasing DJ Matthew Herbert’s most recent release, THE STATE BETWEEN US, released last year is something of a Brexit counter-narrative, made in collaboration with over a thousand musicians and singers from across the EU. Two minutes into album opener, A Devotion Upon Emergent Occasions, a medieval chant gets ambushed by a roaring motor and mighty crash: the sound of a 180-year-old German pine tree being felled with a chainsaw during Brexit. He’s also recorded a companion album documenting every second of the tree’s final week, reasoning he’d rather listen to a tree than Boris Johnson. Amen to that.

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