MIND DE-CODER 93

MIND DE-CODER 93
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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.

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