MIND DE-CODER 96

MIND DE-CODER 96

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The true voyage of discovery is not so much in seeking new landscapes as in having new eyes

                                  Marcel Proust

 

LA DÜSSELDORF     VÖGEL

Not so much a track as one minute and thirty seconds or so of relaxing birdsong from the album VIVA, released in 1978 by La Düsseldorf, Klaus Dinger’s relatively more successful post-Neu! outfit, on an essential album in your Krautrock circles otherwise characterised by washed-out synthesizers, swirling guitar work and Dinger's trademark motorik rhythms.   

THE KUNDALINI GENIE     MANTRA

The swirling, heavy vibes of the it’s-all-in-the-title Mantra is taken from the album 11:11, the fourth studio album from Glasgow’s experimental psych-rockers The Kundalini Genie, released earlier this year. The album features transcendental sitar, droning hypnotic fuzz rock, 60’s British Invasion inspired melodies, dreamy, spaced-out soundscapes and blissed-out melodies. It’s good – I like it.

THE LEFT BANKE     THERE’S GONNA BE A STORM

      

By the time American baroque-pop band The Left Banke released their second album, their seventeen-year-old wunderkind songwriter and pianist Michael Brown – responsible for the exquisite Pretty Ballerina - had long gone, and taken his producer and arranger dad with him. It turns out that the remaining trio had a few tricks of their own up their sleeve, though, and in 1968 released THE LEFT BANKE TOO, an adventurous and psychedelically informed album which included the intoxicating There’s Gonna Be A Storm. (Two songs on the album feature backing vocals from one Steve Tallarico, who several years later would tie a scarf to his mike stand, change his name to Steven Tyler, and become the lead singer with Aerosmith – fact fans.)

PAPER GARDEN     A DAY

Paper Garden were a New York outfit whose only album, the eponymously titled PAPER GARDEN, released in 1968, was very much influenced by The Beatles’ REVOLVER and The Zombies’ ODESSEY AND ORACLE, with just a touch of SGT PEPPERS’ thrown in for its more out-there embellishments – it is, then, a very fine psychedelic release in its own right, if not entirely original in its scope. The elaborately arranged and entirely tripped-out A Day demonstrates just how ambitious the band were but, despite some good reviews, the album failed to find a home and the band split in 1970.

THE WOLFGANG DAUNER QUINTET     A DAY IN THE LIFE

An absolute bonkers cover of The Beatles’ A Day In The Life (they even miss out Paul's bit) from the Wolfgang Dauner release, THE OIMELS. Wolfgang Dauner, of course, was that rarest of things, an internationally renowned German jazz musician, but he was also freewheelingly experimental and unafraid to branch out into psychedelia and nascent krautrock inventiveness. Alongside his free-jazz explorations, Dauner also composed music for films, radio and television broadcasts, as well as knocking out a children’s opera, but for fans of your psychedelia, it’s his 1969 release with the Wolfgang Dauner Quintet that should really invite your interest.

THE DREAM     THE DOTING KING

The Doting King positively ripples with waves of lysergic ambience. Released in 1968, this was just one of three singles released by The Dream. The little-known Dutch band were forever doomed to be the psychedelic bridesmaid - never the tripped-out bride - opening for the likes of Pink Floyd, The Kinks and even Steppenwolf, but somehow eluding a success of their own.

PINK FLOYD     JULIA DREAM

The almost diaphanously lovely Julia Dream, b-side to the much unloved It Would Be So Nice, released in 1968, and the first track to be sung by Syd’s replacement David Gilmour. It's a haunting song, airy and mysterious, augmented by Rick Wright’s ambient mellotron; but with Syd’s departure, the band had lost its way and was searching for a way forward. This track wasn’t particularly it, but it’s by far one of the loveliest they ever recorded.

THE AVANT-GARDE     YELLOW BEADS

Yellow Beads, released in 1967, was little more than a cynical cash-in on the whole flower children hippie-vibe (à la Scott Mc Kenzie’s rather more famous paean to San Francisco) by the duo Elkin Fowler – who would go onto work with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen – and Chuck Woolery – who would go on to find fame as a game-show host. Despite the fact that there’s nothing particularly avant-garde about their sound, and that the duo played little part in the counter-culture they professed to celebrate, the single has enough psychedelic embellishments to make you sit up and take notice, should it ever be playing on a transistor radio near you.

ZWEISTEIN     ORGAN DREAMS (A VERY SIMPLE SONG)

Whereas Zweistein were very much the real deal, and their 1969 album, TRIP, FLIP OUT, MEDITATION is pretty much the holy grail of Krautrock avant-garde releases. In fairness, you’d only ever want to listen to it once, consisting, as it does, of a series of soundscapes created out of collaged sounds, home-built instruments, manipulated noises and organic stylistic hypnotic episodes which essentially escape classification. Spread over a  triple album it’s something of a challenging listen that demonstrates just how far out the counter-culture was actually willing to go in the late 60s. Organ Dreams, which closes side two, is one of the more pleasant tracks on an album of astounding sonic experimentation.

THE ROLLING STONES     SING THIS ALL TOGETHER

Over the years I’ve come to completely re-evaluate THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST and now find it enormously enjoyable. Yes, it’s the band playing at being The Beatles (although never quite reaching Pepperland), and yes, they’d lost their way somewhat, but in the spirit of 1967, and in spite of, or possibly because of, the band’s travails during that momentous year, it remains something of a statement – unfocussed, fey and experimental, but definitely a statement - and, anyway, I’ve always been a fan of psychedelic excess. Sing This All Together probably isn’t as half as playful as they no doubt thought it was, but it always puts a smile on my face. John and Paul sing along too. I suffer from profound anemoia when it comes to 1967 - I suppose it comes from being only two at the time and being brought up on a council estate in Essex where the sixties never happened.  

I follow it with Julius Fučík’s unintentional screamer march Entry Of The Gladiators taken from the soundtrack to the ROLLING STONES ROCK AND ROLL CIRCUS because I’m also a fan of Easter eggs, although I’m not entirely sure that it is an Easter egg if you have to point it out…

KEITH SEATMAN    ON THE PIER AND DOWN TO THE SEA

…but it does lend itself rather nicely to this track by Keith Seatman, whose music is an anachronistically repurposed assemblage of sounds, melodies and technologies plundered from different time zones. His most recent album, TIME TO DREAM BUT NEVER SEEN, released earlier this year, is an evocative sound collage, skillfully assembled to bring sounds from the past into the present, finding a new purpose for them as part of a historical narrative. The woozy, amusement arcade din of On The Pier And Down To The Sea is bad-trip psychedelia shot through with wistful and whimsical melodies, filtered through the crumbling, half-remembered memories of bank holiday day trips to Margate.

PAUL WELLER    FOURTH DIMENSION

Paul Weller is, I presume, rapidly, and, no doubt, reluctantly, turning into a national treasure. So be it. His current release, ON SUNSET, plays with a sonic palette which retains his passion for soulful balladry and pastoral vibes but finds space for disco, field recordings, electronic abstraction, G-Funk, and hauntological experimentation – in the case of Fourth Dimension, more or less all in the same track. Elsewhere, the psychedelic production takes in folk, music hall, baroque pop, and house beats in a way that ought to stir the heart of any fifty-five year- old Jam fan who’s still able to give The Style Council’s difficult fifth album the occasional airing. (That would be me, then.)

HELIOCENTRICS     PEOPLE WAKE UP!

There’s just a touch of the Cinematic Orchestra about this track, but its trip-hop beats are merely part of an epic odyssey that eventually takes in funk, jazz (but not jazz-funk, you’ll be relieved to hear), psychedelia, electronica, and avant-garde noodlings presented with the disorienting asymmetry of Sun Ra, the cinematic scope of Ennio Morricone, the sublime fusion of David Axelrod, Pierre Henry’s turned-on musique concrète, and Can’s beat-heavy Krautrock. Taken from their current release, THE INFINITY OF NOW, album closer People Wake Up! is psychedelia at its most psychedeliadelica-est.

THE BYRDS     MIND GARDEN

David Crosby’s Mind Garden, taken from The Byrds’ 1967 release, YOUNGER THAN YESTERDAY, was much unloved by the rest of the band (and fans alike) but I’ve always had a soft spot for it – it’s a truly psychedelic piece, lacking all rhyme and rhythm (McGuinn’s pet peeve with the piece, truth be told) but featuring, instead, backward guitars, an atonal raga rock ambience and, hey, Crosby’s message of openness in the face of life’s slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Some people think it betrays a certain drug-addled self-indulgence, but by any standard, and like it or not, this is The Byrds at their most questing and experimental and my love for the band remains unabashed.

FRANK HUNTER AND HIS ORCHESTRA     MIST OF GORONGOZA

An exotic indulgence of my own – the ravishing Mist Of Gorongoza, taken from big-band trombonist Frank Hunter’s only dip into the limpid pool of exotica, 1959’s WHITE GODDESS, is a sultry combination of enchanted jungle exotica and its weirdly attendant sub-genre, space-lounge music. Although never regarded as one of the giants of the genre, Hunter’s sole album, which incorporates the ondioline, wordless vocals, chromatic bongos, Chinese bells and the almost certainly made-up buzzimba, is highly regarded by fans of your exotica and a much-sought-after item by collectors of this sort of thing.

Things begin to get messed up here as I attempt to create a sort of sonic melange of sounds that takes in a number of tracks by several artists associated with your avant-garde circles. These include…

CLAUDIO ROCCHI    IL RAMI E GLI ARMONICE

Quite. You can find Il Rami E Gli Armonice (or The Branches And The Harmonics, Italian translation fans) on the aptly titled 1976 release SUONI DI FRONTIERA (or FRONTIER SOUNDS) by Italian avant-garde composer Claudio Rocchi. It sounds like the sound-track to a psychedelic dream sequence - a collection of electronic sound sketches comprised of pulsing, rhythmic tones, sheets of pure abstraction, fragments of voice and environmental sound, captured and spun wild by tape loops and space-age sounds. Not for the mildly curious, I suspect.

JUSTIN HOPPER     INTERMISSION ANNOUNCEMENT

Anglophile Justin Hopper is an American writer whose work explores the intersection of landscape, memory, and myth through non-fiction, poetry, site-specific writing and audio pieces. He most recently tops and tails the Ghost Box release, INTERMISSION, a digital compilation of entirely new work from regular members of the label’s roster and some special guests. It’s a gentle flow of nostalgic ambient and twee-tronic gestures, comprised of preview tracks from forthcoming releases and material especially recorded for the compilation during the global lockdown. Ghost Box releases never have much to say about quotidian reality but these responses to the situation have seeped through from the universe next door. Hopper’s narration, which appears throughout the album’s tracks, encourages us to string together the gaps or pauses in collective cultural memory and tie them into a meditative narrative for downtimes like the lockdown.

While that was playing I included a few more moments from Zweistein and Claudio Rocchi, as well as Grace Slick’s isolated vocals for Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit because it seemed like such a good idea at the time (and still does), and then…

A.R. LUCIANI   BOMBARDMENT

Bombardment is taken from the album ELETTROENCEFALOGRAMMA by obscure Italian composer A.R. Luciani, an artist who operated and, I believe, continues to operate, on the extreme outer limits of musical endeavor. Drawn from original tapes recorded during the 1970s, the album, released last year, spans the heyday of Luciani’s work in which he embraced the possibilities of new music at the dawn of an unprecedented sonic epoch, as it were. It’s something of an acquired taste, then, and not, it turns out, one you’d wish to play at a dinner party, say, unless you were keen to get rid of your guests before the dessert arrives.  

P-FUNK ALL-STARS     LOST DOG (MIX 1)

Outrageously funky and tripped-out vibes from George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic/P-Funk All-Stars which, in this instance, features a collaboration with GIVE OUT BUT DON’T GIVE UP-era Primal Scream - it features the sadly late Denise Johnson on vocals. Lost Dog (Mix 1) is taken from the POLICE DOGGY EP, released 1995, but was only ever made available in Japan. I came across it for the first time last week and can’t keep from playing it. Marvellous.

THE ORB     ITAL ORB (TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED MIX)

The Orb’s most recent release, ABOLITION OF THE ROYAL FAMILIA, sees Alex Paterson et al. pay tribute to the golden age of ambient house whilst taking a dig at the royal family’s historical endorsement of the East India Company’s role in the opium trade. It sounds like it shouldn’t work but, as always, their playful use of samples combined with the sort of reggae-influenced ambient-house influences that they more or less invented manages to celebrate the last 30 years of electronic music and remain relevant. Ital Orb (Too Blessed To Be Stressed Mix) begins with a news item about the effect of “killer dope” on a baby squirrel before taking a voyage off into inner space.

P-FUNK ALL-STARS     LOST DOG (MIX 2)

I couldn’t decide which version I liked most, so decided to include both. This version enjoys a dubbed-up quality that sits rather nicely with The Orb.

THE ORB     AFROS, AFGHANS AND ANGELS IN DUB (HOODIE WOOD MIX)

This track is taken from the deluxe version of the album which takes the original mixes and dubs them up even further. Afros, Afghans And Angels In Dub (Hoodie Wood Mix) glides off into the inner realms, a beautiful ambient piece that comes across as equal parts Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Eno’s An Ending (Ascent).

SONORA CASINO     ASTRONAUTAS Y MERCURIO

Released in 1972, Sonora Casino's TROMPETEROS was essentially just the sort of South American easy listening album that traded in the classic tropical sounds of cha cha cha, bolero, guaracha and, on occasions, boogaloo before finding its way to a charity shop near you, but something must have been in the water for the album’s closing track, because the almost magical Astronautas Y Mercurio is a cosmic descarga full of electronic effects, filtered voices, and fierce guitars with wah-wah and raw distortion turned up to 11 that’s closer to the true sound of psychedelia than anything the band had ever attempted before. There’s certainly nothing else like it on the album – in truth, there’s nothing else like it anywhere. Truly mind-blowing.

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