MIND
DE-CODER 93
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To listen to the show just scroll to the bottom of the page
Your elevation may require your isolation
CALICO
WALL I’M A LIVING SICKNESS
One
of only two songs on this evening’s show
that even remotely references the coronavirus – after all, this is a show
dedicated to avoiding the slings and arrows of outrageous reality – Calico
Wall’s 1967 release, I’m A Living Sickness, is a snarling, garage-psych
classic, complete with an ominous organ intro; lysergic, fuzz-drenched, tremolo
guitar; and intense lyrics full of self-pity, angst, disdain, annihilation, and
confusion. This was the Minnesotan band’s only single, but I’m not sure it was
even released at the time - it would just surface from time to time as a
bootleg before finally seeing an official release in 1995 on the Get Hip record
label. I’m no great fan of garage-psych – it’s too primitive for my delicate
sensibilities – but this is an absolute classic.
FENELLA THREE HEADS RISING/BRIGHT CURSE
Fenella
is the latest project for Mind De-Coder favourite Jane Weaver and her regular
collaborators Peter Philipson and Raw Ullah who, as part of Fire Records’
series of reimagined film scores, have been inspired to take on Marcell
Jankovics’ cult 1981 Hungarian animation masterpiece Fehérlófia (‘Son of the
White Mare’), a spell-binding tale based on the mythical tales of the ancient Scythans,
Huns and Avars (you know, that lot.) Given the mythic dreamstate the
narrative inhabits, FEHÉRLÓFIA’s ambient pop tunes
and brief textural pieces provide the perfect accompaniment
to Jankovics’ astonishing visual aesthetic; the trio’s blissful, swirling
synthscapes, ominous drones and processed guitar textures the aural equivalent
to both the images on the screen and the pictures in your head. A word about
the name – Weaver’s project is named after the late actress Fenella Fielding,
remembered for her campy glamour and vampy subversiveness. It’s a nice touch.
NO
STRANGE KILIKIA
Medieval
acid-folk from Italian psychedelicists No Strange, whose current album, MUTTER
DER ERDE is a mind-bending lysergic delight on which dreamlike psychedelic
atmospheres give way to trippy prog digressions, cosmic rock rides and
indo-raga diversions influenced by the likes of Popul Vuh and Amon Düül II – as,
perhaps, implied in the album’s title (which is German for Mother of Earth,
translation fans!). Whilst very much at home to the Werner Herzog’s soundtracks
of Popol Vuh, Kilikia is nothing less than a psychedelic hymn to Mother
Earth that’s both beautiful and devotional.
TINTERN ABBEY BEESIDE
The
semi-legendary Tintern Abbey – one of the quintessential psychedelic acts of the
London scene – only released one single, Beeside, but it was
fairly definitive and ought to have been one of the great psychedelic singles
of 1967. Sadly the record buying public thought otherwise and the band disappeared
from view. Over the years, of course, the single has taken on cult status and
is now recognized as, yes, one of the great psychedelic singles of 1967.
LEVITATION
ROOM HEADSPACE
The
title track to the latest release from the Los Angeles's psychedelic sunshine
garage rockers may have The Doors’ lawyers clearing their throats in a
harrumphing sort of fashion, but then HEADSPACE, released last year, is that
sort of album - a tribute to that particularly Californian vibe, combing West
Coast psychedelic rock with R&B, surf, eastern infused raga rock and
elements of Laurel Canyon-infused acid folk. Lovely.
SHOCKING
BLUE I LOVE VOODOO MUSIC
I
can’t figure this album out at all – there’s just too many musical styles going
on, seemingly without any underlying theme to hold them altogether – but,
SCORPIO’S DANCE, released in 1969, is not without one or two outstanding
tracks. I’m a big fan of I Love Voodoo Music, an acid folk interlude on
an album otherwise characterised by country music, Americana and rock – I think
they may have been Dutch - not least because it devolves into a little
unexpected Exotica workout featuring bongos and birdcalls. Their most famous
hit was Venus, covered by Bananarama, of course, although it is a little-known
fact that Nirvana covered their song Love Buzz as their debut single in
1988, and it also appeared on their 1989 album BLEACH. If there is anything
more to be known about the band then I don’t know what it is.
PAUL
WELLER SHE MOVES WITH THE FAYRE
(VILLAGERS REMIX)
Paul
Weller had been on a bit of a roll with his albums since 2008’s sprawling but
revelatory 22 DREAMS, but 2017’s A KIND REVOLUTION eschews the avant-gard
experimentation that has come to characterize his work for something more
contemplative and meditative. She Moves With The Fayre is a
jazz-inflected reimagining of the traditional Irish folk song with added Herbie
Hancock groove, recorded in collaboration with Robert Wyatt who contributes
vocals and trumpets, and very nice it is too, but the 3-CD super deluxe edition
features this rather marvellous remix by Conor O’Brien, vocalist and songwriter
for Irish indie-folk band Villagers, which sprinkles lysergic pixie-dust over
the funky grooves.
THE
INSECTS SHE MOVES THROUGH THE FAIR
The
unpromisingly monikered Insects have possibly played a bigger part in your life
than you’d expect. The Bristol based duo are probably best known for their work
with Massive Attack on the PROTECTION album but they’ve also collaborated with the
likes of Tricky, Goldfrapp and various members of Portishead on a number of
projects. In 2016 they were commissioned to write the score for the series ‘The
Living and The Dead’, a BBC supernatural drama series set in the late 1800s in
the West Country. It’s a suitably gothic soundtrack, and for their spectral
version of She Moves Through The Fair, which appears in episode 1, they
managed to coax the Cocteau Twin’s Elizabeth Frazer out of retirement to add
her sublime vocals to this gorgeous track. It’s a spine-tingling affair, with
Frazer’s vocals augmented by various analogue synthesizers, a bowed double bass
and a bowed psaltery. Shimmeringly beautiful.
EX-DEBS LOMBARD 4:00 AM DUB
Ex-Debs
are two former punks from Oregon who grew tired of all the screaming and
yelling about shit and were looking for a way to make something melodic without
turning into a good-time party band. Their 2016 release VIEWER.PICTURE, a
cassette-only release but now available on Bandcamp, combines organ, drums and
singing with live dub effects thrown into the mix and sounds not dissimilar to
Tuxedo Moon had they been gigging around Bristol in 1979, say. Lo-fi tunes made
with a D.I.Y. post-punk sensibility, in fact. Lombard 4:00 am Dub is a
ghostly affair, haunted by the very space it inhabits.
LOTHAR
AND THE HAND PEOPLE PAUL, IN LOVE
The
fragile Paul, In Love is the closing track on the debut album by the now
largely forgotten Lothar And The Hand People, a band who, despite being a cult
act even at the time, nevertheless, paved the way for a number of groups who
were to follow. Lothar was the nickname for their Theremin, an instrument they
pioneered along with the Moog Modular synthesiser, thus paving the way for the
likes of the Silver Apples and The United States Of America. Their debut album
PRESENTING…LOTHAR AND THE HAND PEOPLE, released in 1968, is a curious
combination of primitive electronica, blue-eyed psychedelic soul, freak-out
Appalachian weirdness, Lovin’ Spoonful pop catchiness, folk, and tripped-out
beatnik comedy music. Despite coming from New York, they were too light-hearted
for the Velvet Underground crowd, and too weird for the folk clubs, so they
struggled to find an audience. Obscurity beckoned.
PINK
FLOYD CORPORAL CLEGG
I
understand that Corporal Clegg, from their 1968 release A SAUCERFUL OF
SECRETS, is widely regarded by their fan base as one of the worst songs Pink
Floyd ever wrote (at least until the 80s, but by this time I’d long lost
interest in the band), but I’ve always quite enjoyed it. I mean, it’s by no
means my favourite Pink Floyd song, but it has a jaunty playfulness to it,
offset by the psychedelic use of the kazoo and a marching band. It employs something
of a sneering tone, and seems rather dismissive of the sacrifices made by the
previous generation, who, let’s face it, fought a war on behalf of a bunch of
ungrateful, drug-addled hippies who would later feel moved to mock them in both
verse and song, but Roger Waters, who wrote it – the first in a long line of
songs that dealt with the war and his father’s death – has always referred to
it as an anti-war song written as a tribute to his father. It is also the only
song to feature Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright on lead vocals (Pink Floyd fact fans), the first, and only time, drummer Nick Mason sung a lead
vocal on any Pink Floyd album (except for his one line vocal in One Of These
Days, obvs.). I read somewhere that it’s possible that the main
character got his name after Thaddeus von Clegg, a German clockmaker, who
invented the kazoo in the 1840s, but, frankly, I think that’s pushing it a bit.
THE
DUKES OF STRATOSPHEAR YOU’RE A GOOD
MAN ARTHUR BROWN
(CURSE YOU RED BARRELL)
I
love the Dukes Of Stratosphear (Swindon’s art-rock chameleons XTC, for those of
you not in the know). I now own four copies of their classic 1985 debut
release, 25 O’CLOCK, and two copies of its 1987 follow up, PSONIC PSUNSPOTS,
both of which come together on the newly released PSURROUNDABOUT RIDE, which
features, amongst other psonic goodies, a sparkling brand new 5.1 surround mix
of both albums helmed by XTC's Andy Partridge and super fan producer, The
Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson (now sit back and imagine how good that must be
– to make the task a little easier, this version of You’re A Good Man Arthur
Brown, is from that mix, so if you listen to the show on headphones you’ll
know what I’m talking about). Of the two, I’ve always preferred 25 O’CLOCK, a
joyous, lovingly created homage to the music they loved as kids, whereas PSONIC
PSUNSPOTS, released two years later, always felt more of a pastiche of a number
of bands of that golden 1967 period of British Psychedelia – The Hollies, The
Move, Tomorrow, The Kinks. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and recently
I’ve returned to the album only to find I’m enjoying it enormously. It fails in
comparison to 25 O’CLOCK only because every psychedelic album fails in
comparison to 25 O’CLOCK. I would be misleading the reader and doing them a
disservice if I didn’t contend that 25 O’CLOCK is the greatest psychedelic
album never released in 1967. You’re A Good Man Arthur Brown (Curse You Red
Barrell) has all the lysergic playfulness of Pink Floyd attempting a music
hall knees up in the style of The Kinks doing The Small Faces. Marvellous.
TOMMY
JAMES AND THE SHONDELLS I AM A
TANGERINE
Top
marks for the best psychedelic song title of all time must surely go to Tommy
James And The Shondells, who recorded this remarkably tripped-out oddity for
their 1968 album CRIMSON AND CLOVER. Hard to believe that this is the same
group who earlier that year had a world-wide hit with Mony Mony, isn’t
it?
ARTHUR LYMAN SEA BREEZE
Continuing
this show’s commitment to including a much-needed element of Exotica into the
goings-on, may I present Sea Breeze by Arthur Lyman from his 1965
release HAWAIIAN SUNSETS VOLUME 2, a must-have collection of Polynesian vibes
to sate the most jaded of tastes. Arthur Lyman, of course, can be rightly
considered to be at the very top of the Exotica pantheon, having started as a
vibes player in Martin Denny's combo, and can be heard on Denny's legendary
first album, EXOTICA. Lyman's style was softer than Denny's, but he went much
further in his use of exotic environmental sounds. The combination of macaw
shrieks and gentle vibes was a vein Lyman mined consistently for over 30
albums. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
DANTALIAN’S
CHARIOT SOMA PT. 2
I
undertook a bit of research to see if Exotica and psychedelia ever crossed
paths in any meaningful sense and was reminded that Dantalian’s Chariot, a band
which rose from the ashes of Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band and featured a young
Andy Somers on guitar, sitar and vocals, recorded a track called This Island
which wouldn’t have been out of place on an Arthur Lyman album (Check out Mind
De-Coder 73). They only got to release one single, the classic 1967 release Madman
Running Through The Fields, but had recorded enough material for an album
had their record label been enthusiastic enough to release it. Unfortunately,
the label wasn’t particularly supportive of the band’s new psychedelic
direction and the group fell apart shortly after. Most of their recorded
material was gathered and released in 1995 on the album CHARIOT RISING.. At the
time, their live act was said to be more out there than even Pink Floyd, who
used to borrow their light-show, but the album is no PIPER AT THE GATES OF
DAWN. It does include a number of gems, however, and it does make you wonder
what they could have accomplished with some record company support. Soma Pt.
2, in which Somers’ is enjoying something of a good strum on his sitar, has
an evocative touch of the exotique about it. 10 years later he would change his
name to Summers, join The Police and become one of the most famous pop stars on
the planet. Weird.
SCOTT
HIRSCH PINK MOMENT
Cosmic
Americana from multi-instrumentalist Scott Hirsch’s 2018 release, LOST TIME
BEHIND THE MOON, a genre-defying album which takes in country, blues, folk-rock
and psychedelia. The album is in love with the sounds of the West, but the soulful
Pink Moment, in which delay and reverb filtered slide guitars cascade
over acoustic guitars to create an ethereal soundscape, clearly has its sights
set way beyond the moon.
MOOON NATURE’S PLAY/ENTERING THE ANIMAL
KINGDOM/ES UNO JUNTO
Not
this moon, however. I’m including three tracks from SAFARI, the second album by
Dutch psych-heads Mooon, because it seems to work best when listened to in one
sitting. Released last year, it’s a brilliant concept album on leaving city
life behind and getting back to the wilderness, a dreamlike trip to the country
under the bright light of the moo(o)n complemented by folk-psyche pastoral chants
and lysergic pop explosions. Utterly recommended, but try looking up
Mooon-Safari online and see what happens.
GILES,
GILES AND FRIPP THURSDAY MORNING
This
lovely little track is taken from the album THE CHEERFUL INSANITY OF GILES,
GILES AND FRIPP, the only album from a pre-King Crimson line-up, recorded in
1968. By any standards this is one of the more eclectic albums to have been
issued during the psychedelic rock movement of the late '60s, featuring a
proto-prog melange of sounds which drew upon folk, classical, pop and sacred
music. Thursday Morning completes a suite of songs that take up side one
of the album under the title The Saga Of Rodney Toad, the tale of a fat
and ugly boy of fat and ugly parents who advise him to find a fat and ugly girl
to marry. A genuinely weird curio, even for the times, it sits somewhere
between The Goons and The Small Faces’ tale of Happiness Stan on side two of
OGDEN”S NUT GONE FLAKE, although that comparison hardly does it any justice at
all. Fascinating and very much of its time, they don’t make them like this
anymore.
SLEEPY ROSIE CAN’T FLY
Sleepy
were one of those bands who came and went, leaving nary a ripple upon the
surface of the limpid pool of psychedelia, but with their single, Rosie Cant
Fly, released in 1968, just one of two singles released by the band before
disappearing beneath the surface of that very same pool, the band appear to
have got everything just about right.
URI
GELLER I CANNOT ANSWER YOU
From
the sublime to the ridiculous, this is the show’s WTF moment. Uri Geller’s
eponymous album was released in 1975, pretty much at the height of his
spoon-bending fame, in collaboration with famous concert pianist Byron Janis
who, himself, was no stranger to paranormal goings-on – I think at some point
he believed himself to be a channel for Frédéric Chopin to extend his reach into
the twentieth century. A match made in heaven, then, and what you get for your
money is a selection of Geller’s poetry - “a tiny drop of tear that
has fallen off the eye of a molecule”, if you will - produced by orchestral
arranger Del Newman and occasionally sung by soul singer Maxine Nightingale,
whilst Janis tinkles the ivories. Cult-like, but compellingly weird,
doesn’t begin to cover it.
ISOBEL
CAMPBELL THE NATIONAL BIRD OF INDIA
Well,
this is really quite lovely. It’s been 14 years since we last heard from former
Belle And Sebastian songstress and cellist, Isobel Campbell, and what an
absolute delight it is. I’m a fan of her 2006 MILKWHITE SHEETS, but her work as
Gentle Waves was so timid as to hardly be there, and I could never be doing
with those albums she recorded with gravel-voiced grunger Mark Lanegan, so I approached
the prospect of a new solo release with something approaching mild trepidation
mixed with just a soupçon of indifference (or perhaps the other way round).
However, THERE IS NO OTHER, released earlier this year, is a tremendous leap
forward in creativity, taking in everything from synthesizer sleaze, dreamy
Laurel Canyon psychedelia to gospel-infused soul. The National Bird Of India
is a sunny, light-hearted song augmented by laid-back bongo rhythms and
lush, string-soaked melodies. Gorgeous.
JAMES
MCARTHUR AND THE HEAD GARDENERS HEAVY
SLEEPER
Formerly
Paul Weller’s touring drummer, Welsh-born James McArthur has teamed up with at
least two members of psych-prog Mind De-Coder favourites Syd Arthur to produce
INTERGALACTIC SAILOR, an album of ravishing ambient folk, recorded at East
Wickham Farm, the childhood home of Kate Bush. Released last year, this is an
album of soft, hushed vocals and plucked guitar, accompanied by violin and
pedal steel guitar, making for a gentle, intimate and pastoral affair
reflecting his connection with the natural world. Heavy Sleeper, all
circling guitars and a little brass, is redolent of leafy English country lanes
and the feel of awakening to the sun in summer fields.
DEBUSSY PAGODES
Continuing
the Exotica theme, I thought I’d include a bit of Debussy, considered by many
to be the Godfather of the movement, what with his impressionistic themes evoking
the atmosphere of far-off lands and all. Pagodes is the first movement
from a composition for solo piano called ESTAMPES (or ‘Prints’, if you will,
translation fans), completed in 1903, inspired by images of East Asia at the Paris
World Conference Exhibition of 1889. This particular interpretation, played by
a gentleman called Stanislav Bunin, a Russian concert pianist of some renown,
is taken from the album SUITE BERGAMASQUE; POUR LE PIANO; ESTAMPIE, recorded in
1987. It’s best if I don’t pretend to know any more than this.
LOUIS
AND BEBE BARRON A SHANGRI-LA IN THE
DESERT/GARDEN WITH A CUDDLY TIGER
In
which the title is actually longer than the piece of music, this track is taken
from the soundtrack to the 1956 sci-fi classic FORBIDDEN PLANET, the world’s
first entirely electronic score for a film, composed by Louis and Bebe Barron,
two American pioneers in the field of electronic music. This is the sort of
couple who would create electric circuits and valve-driven oscillators modelled
on cybernetic organisms for a hobby, so they were the go-to couple for
providing a suitably intergalactic soundtrack of eerie gulps and gurgles for
this cult movie.
ROBYN
HITCOCK AND ANDY PARTRIDGE PLANET
ENGLAND
This
is the title track from an all-too-brief collaboration between two of England’s
national treasures, Robyn Hitchcock and XTC’s Andy Partridge, released last
year. Despite the title, the four-track EP is no comment on the darkness at the
heart of post-Brexit England, rather, and as you’d expect from these titans of
eccentric English song-writing, a spot-on slice of neo-psychedelia and a Ray
Davies-style ironic but affectionate tribute to the homeland. The EP’s cover
features Spitfires, Double Deckers, clinking pints and the words “Sorry,
love…we’re closed”, so you kind of know what to expect.
QUENTIN
SMIRHES AND BELBURY POLY TOILET PAPER
Quentin
Smirhes appears to be the nom de plume of Sean Reynard, a writer,
film-maker and performer who seems to have cultivated a cottage industry out of
creating short, viral films, all spoofing the dustiest corners of the 1970s
regional TV archive, where puppet choirboys are taught the rudiments of
medieval instrumentation, disembodied fingers poke from Heath Robinson
birdboxes to the wistful, wobbly strains of Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1, and where the whispering, be-permed “Gentle Jeff” phones Facebook to softly
request a “like” on “Samantha Wright’s photo of a baby eating a lemon.” Toilet
Paper is a short film inspired by “the current situation” which I recently
found on Facebook. Ghostbox’s Belbury Poly helpfully supplies the track The Willows from his 2009 release of the same name.
I
couldn’t resist finishing the show with it. Apologies. Keep safe, everyone.
