MIND DE-CODER CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 2021

MIND DE-CODER CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

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       Let the psychedelic lights of Christmas shine

 

JOSIE BRECHNER     INTRO/12 DAYS/SIMPLIFIED

What better way to kick off the show than with a rousing chorus of The 12 Days Of Christmas, severely truncated in this instance, by sound designer Josie Brechner on the 2012 release COAL: AN EXPERIMENTAL CHRISTMAS, an album which, as the title suggests, is full of arch experimentation. It’s free to download from Bandcamp, but it’s probably not the sort of thing you want playing while roasting chestnuts on an open fire, with Jack Frost nipping at your nose.

 

RAW THRILLS     IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS

A fuzzed-up, lysergic cover of Michael Bublé’s Christmas classic by Zak Mering, from his playfully kaleidoscopic album ALL GOOD WISHES: A PSYCHEDELIC CHRISTMAS, released under the nom de plume Raw Thrills in 2011. It’s one of those albums which appears in lists of obscure Christmas albums but about which very little is known - Mering is the sort of fellow who’s recorded under so many pseudonyms, and been in so many bands, this album seems to have got lost and can’t even be found in his voluminous discography.

 

GREEN SEAGULL    GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMEN

An authentically tripped-out organ-drenched interpretation of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by London-based psychedelicists Green Seagull, who bring their harmony-laden baroque/freakbeat sound to this traditional English carol (dated back to the 16th Century and perhaps earlier). This was released in 2018 by the Dutch label Snowflakes Christmas Singles, founded in 2013 to celebrate the Christmas 7" single. Every year, the label releases new Christmas singles (usually 3 or 4) by current artists, that feature an original song on side A and an interpretation of a classic or obscure Christmas song by this artist on side B. The singles are released on snow-white vinyl and are an eminently collectible addition to your Christmas stocking.

 

UNCLE CHARLIE     WHOSE BIRTHDAY?

It takes a special sort of Christian to ruin Christmas for everyone, and here's Uncle Charlie. This heart-warming tale of selflessness and delusion is to be found on the album A CHRISTMAS CAROUSEL, released in 1975 by the good folk behind The Children’s Bible Hour - a syndicated radio show presented by Uncle Charlie (who has since gone to meet his maker to explain himself). Amidst the music and fun, Uncle Charlie asks just what kind of birthday is it when the person whose birthday it is doesn't get any presents? Whose Birthday answers that question, and in doing so emphasizes to young and old alike the importance of "keeping Christ in Christmas", and furthermore provides an explanation, perhaps, for the growth in the number of people worshiping at the Church of Satan these days. Betty’s parents sound like they should be reported to the social services.

 

HE 5     JINGLE BELLS/IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA

Raw psychedelic sounds from Korea’s HE 5. I think MERRY CHRISTMAS PSYCHEDELIC SOUND, released in 1969, was actually their debut album, on which they unleashed fuzzed-up garage-style instrumental covers of Christmas classics to a bemused record-buying public. Their interpretation of Jingle Bells is astonishing, morphing into a ten-minute freak-out which not only covers Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida but also manages to take in The Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black before returning to Jingle Bells again. I enjoyed it so much I played around outrageously with the fade-out.

 

SATURDAYS CHILDREN     DECK FIVE

Is this the first mash-up? A quick Google search suggests that, yes, it might just be. Chicago’s Saturdays Children released this little Christmas cracker, singing the carol Deck The Halls with a tune suggested largely by Dave Brubeck’s jazz standard Take 5, back in 1966 on an eponymously titled EP that’s more at home to The Beatles than this groovy novelty track might suggest, but nevertheless, this is a cool addition to anyone’s Christmas list.

 

THE MONKEES     RIU CHIU

Michael Nesmith, the coolest Monkee, sadly passed away last week so in his memory here are The Monkees singing Riu Chiu, a Spanish villancico (a common poetic and musical form of the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America popular from the late 15th to 18th centuries, that has attained some contemporary fame as a Christmas carol, for those of you with an interest in this sort of thing) which appears to have evolved into a Christmas carol over the past few centuries. The Monkees performed the song live on a Christmas episode of their show in 1967, although this is the studio version which was released on subsequent compilation albums and on the 2018 album CHRISTMAS PARTY, which is where I came across it. The complex vocal harmonies are a quiet thing of wonder and ought to put paid to the idea that the group were little more than a prefab four (which was The Rutles, of course).

 

 YOKO ONO     LISTEN, THE SNOW IS FALLING

Now that Peter Jackson has shown once and for all that Yoko didn’t cause The Beatles split (if anything, there’s a good argument to be made for Michael Lindsay-Hogg taking on that particular role: "forget about George - do it in Tunisia") what better time to play her transcendentally fragile Listen, The Snow Is Falling? Originally recorded as the B-side to Lennon’s ubiquitous 1971 single Merry Christmas (War Is Over) this is the version that eventually re-appeared as a bonus track on the 2007 CD release of John and Yoko’s WEDDING ALBUM (it includes Yoko's soft, breathy vocal at the beginning and at the end of the song that was removed from the single release in hopes of achieving more radio airplay, which sadly had no influence on the amount of airplay it’s actually received over the years at all). Ethereal, simple, and poetic, the frailty of Yoko's vocals is exactly right in this context - it makes you wonder why she ever spent so much time caterwauling like a hungry vulture that's chanced upon the three-week-old carcass of a water buffalo rotting in the desert, really. That's performance art, that is.

 

 TINTERN ABBEY     SNOWMAN (MASTER 2)

 Formed in 1966/7, at the height of the Kings Road scene (it kills me that I was 2 at the time and not the Earl’s Court dandy I was so clearly always meant to be), Tintern Abbey were the quintessential psychedelic band who, I believe, split up before they even managed to play a gig. They released one single, the excellent Beeside/Vacuum Cleaner, and recorded an acetate for the fantastically tripped-out Snowman but it got lost in a line-up change and, before long, the group had disbanded, becoming little more than a footnote to London’s psychedelic scene. How I wish they had managed to record an album - Snowman is an astonishing slice of psychedelia, a disorientating mélange of sinister Mellotron, disembodied voices, and backward tapes that shows just how good they could have been. That being said, the very fine Cherry Red label, who specialize in this sort of thing, have just gathered everything they recorded between the summer of 1967 (when they spent a month in a Cornwall cottage, rehearsing and taping their performances prior to their London launch) and the end of 1968 and released it as a two-disc set called TINTERN ABBEY: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS.

 

TOMITA    SNOWFLAKES ARE DANCING

 Isao Tomita was a Japanese composer who specialized in electronic instrumentation to create spellbinding music. In 1974 he released SNOWFLAKES ARE DANCING, an album that consisted entirely of arrangements of Claude Debussy's "tone paintings", performed by Tomita on a Moog synthesizer and a Mellotron. On paper it seems a terrible idea - the sort of cheesy, classical/prog crossover experimentation favoured by the likes of Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but Tomita brings such an exquisite lightness of touch to Debussy’s fragile atmospheric compositions that the album became a worldwide success.  (Fans of Debussy will appreciate that the title track is more correctly titled The Snow Is Dancing - from his 1908 composition CHILDREN’S CORNER - but I think this is what happens when you translate from French to English to Japanese, and nobody but the most artless pedant really minds).

In 1965 Paul McCartney put together a mixtape for his fellow Beatles as a Christmas present. Of course, having access to Abbey Road, these were turned into three acetates which over the years have taken on the status of legendary totems. There are no new Beatles tunes or anything - it’s pretty much McCartney introducing his favourite tracks of the year in the style of a late-night dee-jay, and if you’re interested you can now find a recording on Youtube. What I have here is the opening few minutes, for your listening pleasure and all.

 

THE TARA EXPERIMENT     EVERYWHERE IT’S CHRISTMAS

This is a deeply psychedelic track from The Tara Experiment, proponents of the sort of Radiophonic psychedelia which reprogrammes your mind with sound hypnosis - when put like that, they sound great, don’t they? Actually, not a lot is known about them because their trip is to remain quasi-anonymous, make Avant-Garde Electronic & Musique Concrete recordings, and live quietly beneath the blue suburban skies. This is the B-side to their single Christmas In The Observatory, recorded late Summer 2013 at the Office of Experimental Music and Film.

 

THE TRANSPERSONALS     HAPPY HOLIDAYS

 Sublimely lysergic vibes from The Transpersonals and the almost transcendentally lovely Happy Holidays, the opening track from their 2016 release SCHIZODELIA. This is the sound of a kaleidoscope of musical notes. I think of all the bands on this evening's show, I'd like to spend Christmas round their house most of all.

 

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN XMAS RECORD     THE ELVES REVOLT

 A prescient tale of global warming from 1978, although, in this case, it has less to do with COP 26-inspired prevarication than the elves involved in a labour dispute with Santa and threatening to melt the polar ice caps as a means of bringing St. Nick to the bargaining table. Yes, Santa, as we've always suspected, is an evil Capitalist whose treatment of his warehouse staff would give Jeff Bezos pause for thought, but, thankfully, Steve Austin is there to sort everything out in this heartwarming Christmas tale of employment contracts recorded especially for THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN XMAS RECORD - one of two Steve Austin related adventures on vinyl released between 1976 and 1978. Although none of the adventures used the voices, music, or even bionic sound effects of the television program, they all had full-casts, music, and voice-over narration, plus each LP came with a copy of the script in comic book form. “It’s Fun To Read As You Hear,” promised the cover. A proper Christmas treat.

 

DAVID SANTO     JINGLE DOWN A HILL 

David Santo was a folkie and songwriter from New York City in full-on Mark- Fry-gypsy-troubadour-DREAMING-WITH-ALICE-mode for this whimsical Christmas song which closes his 1967 album SILVER CURRENTS. The rest of the album is a bit fey, but I think this track enjoys an understated charm.

 

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE     SNOW QUEEN

 

The Byzantine Empire were a band formed by University of Michigan students in 1965, initially as The Five Bucks, who made guitar pop with delicious vocal harmonies—a style that became hugely popular in the 1960s thanks to the likes of the Beach Boys, the Mamas & the Papas, and the Left Banke—but they never made it as far as releasing an album, much less attracting the audience they deserved. Snow Queen, released in 1968, is a cover of a Carole King song that jingles along quite nicely but sadly flopped. Despite opening for the likes of The Animals, The Turtles, Iron Butterfly, and The Doors they were let down by a recording contract that saw them as a light and breezy sunshine act rather than the harder, fuzzier sound they produced on stage - after finishing at University the band split and no doubt went on to pursue rich and rewarding lives outside of the recording industry. I expect.

 

CRICKETBOWS     AMANITA HOLIDAY

 Cricketbows do a fine line in psychedelically tinged old-school rhythm-n-blues, gospel, blues, funk, and country, although the highly suggestive Amanita Holiday, taken from their 2011 release AMANITA HOLIDAY (CHRISTMASTIME SURE LOOKS WEIRD THIS YEAR) has the menacing vibe of a particularly messed-up garage band playing it as they see it.
 

KHRUANGBIN     CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE

 

Originally written for the 1965 television special ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’, Texas-native Thai-funk trio Khruangbin gives the Vince Guaraldi classic an ambling sweetness and a fresh, beat-driven groove all of their own. Released in 2018 as a limited-edition single on red vinyl, it sold out almost immediately, but you can find it now online in all the usual places, should that be your wish.

 

CAN     LITTLE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

 Can’s DELAY 1968 is an archival compilation album of the band’s work with singer Malcolm Mooney comprising previously unissued early recordings of their rejected debut album, PREPARED TO MEET THY PNOOM. When no record company would release that record (which I suspect had as much to do with its title as much as anything else), Can set out to make a somewhat more accessible album, which became their 1969 debut MONSTER MOVIE, although PNOOM finally got issued in 1981. Throughout, Malcolm Mooney sounds mildly psychotic, and the band struggles to find anything as pleasant as a melody, say, and you would be hard-pressed to call Little Star of Bethlehem a Christmas song in any meaningful sense of the word, but is worth it alone for the lyrics: Froggie and Toadie carried off the tangerine seeds one by one and came back for the popcorn after dinner asking: Do you want some? Asking: Do you want water lilies in your bathtub? That’s psychedelia, that is (or mild psychosis -whichever comes first).

 

PARENTHETICAL GIRLS     CAROL OF THE SEASON

 The lysergically-charged Carol Of The Season, by experimental pop group The Parenthetical Girls, is available from their digital album CHRISTMAS, a ‘quirky’ (read: unwieldy and oft-times ugly) collection of the group’s biennial Christmas recordings, taking in their early home-recording experiments to the more fully-realized affairs they achieved before breaking up in 2013. It’s available from Bandcamp should you be interested but be warned - there is much beauty to be found here, but it can be beyond irritating, too.

 

SHANE MORRIS     THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS FUTURE

 Shane Morris is a multi-instrumentalist who appears to favour the dark tribal ambient side of things, creating the sort of music which, at its best, opens a path to your inner pre-Dawn-of-Man self. You can find The Ghost Of Christmas Future on the 2012 BFW CHRISTMAS ALBUM, available as a free download from Bandcamp 

 

THE MOOG MACHINE     CAROL OF THE BELLS

 Originally released in 1969, CHRISTMAS BECOMES ELECTRIC by The Moog Machine is the Christmas album for Moog-heads, should such a thing be said to exist. It was produced by Norman Dolph, a marketing executive for Columbia records (he financed and helped engineer THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO, festive fact fans) following the success of his previous album, SWITCHED-ON ROCK, which comprised of instrumental covers of popular songs from the 1960s, performed on Moog synthesizer, which, in itself, was one of a spate of albums capitalizing on the success of SWITCHED-ON BACH, released a year earlier, an album of Bach pieces performed on Moog by Wendy Carlos. Clearly, then, there was a market for this most unwieldy of musical instruments, although, arguably, if not somewhat harshly, this is an album best put on when you need to clear the room. Fortunately, most of the tracks come in under two minutes. I remain a fan.

 

SHAWN LEE’S PING PONG ORCHESTRA     LITTLE DRUMMER BOY

 

Downtempo trip-hop beats and groovy low-key grooves permeate electronica artist Shawn Lee’s A VERY PING PONG CHRISTMAS: FUNKY TREATS FROM SANTA’S BAG, released in 2007. Featuring mostly trippy instrumentals, this is, in fact, one of the funkiest Christmas albums ever - a sitar-laden Little Drummer Boy, in particular, has been scratched-up and funked-out to rule the yule (as, I’ve no doubt, some people might say) although this is, in effect, a joyous, category-defying sound. Pour the eggnog and enjoy.

 

GERALDO CHIMERA     INTERMISSION: SIX MINUTES, FIVE GOLDEN RINGS

 

As the title suggests, it goes on like this for six minutes - I think I allow just the two. This closing track is also taken from the 2012 release COAL: AN EXPERIMENTAL CHRISTMAS. Geraldo Chimera, if he or she can truly be said to exist at all, must remain part of the essential mystery of Christmas.

 

And that was the Mind De-Coder 2021 Christmas Special. Please enjoy a happy new year.

 

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A TOUCH OF THE GEORGE HARRISONS

Mind De-Closer is drawing to a close. Earlier this year I found myself drawn to Transcendental Meditation, and, like George Harrison, have found it increasingly difficult to combine the discipline of regular meditation with what amounts to a cheerfully dissolute lifestyle.

The show will bow out with a Christmas Special and, on occasions, I may add the odd specialist show ( I have a hankering to see if I can put together a psychedelic Country and Western show) but for all intents and purposes there will be no more new Mind De-Coders.

For listeners on Waiheke Island the entire run will play out one more time on Thursdays at 9PM on Waiheke Radio (waihekeradio.org.nz) - elsewhere, all the shows are available to listen to here and Mixcloud. All in all, there are 109 shows to choose from, including six Halloween Specials and two Christmas shows.

I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoyed making them.

Thank you for joining me on this trip.

Jai Guru Deva Om, and so on.

MIND DE-CODER HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2021

MIND DE-CODER HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2021

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The devil has all the best tunes

                                                                                                             Anon.                                                                                                                                                                    

                                                     

  GOBLIN     L’ALBA DEI MORTI VIVENTO (ALTERNATE TAKE)

This recording is taken from the 1998 CD release of the classic Goblin soundtrack, originally released in 1978 to accompany possibly the greatest horror film of all time, George A. Romero’s ‘Zombi - Dawn of The Dead’. This film had quite the effect on me as a youngster. It was the first X-rated movie I ever sneaked into, and found myself alone, as an impressionable 15-year-old, in an empty, cavernous, rat-infested cinema, the seats still bearing the scars of being torn apart by teddy boys in the 1950s, and cigarette butts littering the floor amongst other discarded jetsam of a night at the cinema in 1980, wherein my senses were assaulted by visceral scenes of blood-drenched apocalyptic terror. To say I was emotionally scarred doesn’t go far enough, not when words like traumatized exist to describe the walk home that night. I had nightmares for years afterwards, which only left me when a hypnotherapist taught me a neat little trick to deal with the repeated horror shows which passed for my dreams back then. These days, of course, it seems quite tame, especially when compared to the zombie flicks and TV shows which have followed in its wake. Perversely, at least to my horrified 15-year-old self, I’ve become quite the fan of the genre. Still – back to the music. I chose this version because, if anything, it sounds even creepier than the version that opens the original album release, a soundtrack characterized by Goblin’s proggy penchant for chilling atmospheres, scary synths and bombastic drums.

GLORIA     SABBAT MATTERS

By contrast, French band Gloria present a joyous psychedelic choral-pop maelstrom on their sophomore album, the deliriously enjoyable SABBAT MATTERS, released earlier this year. Sounding for all the world like the psychedelic soundtrack to a late-'60s film about sexy vampires, or a ‘Hair’-style rock musical focused on the dark arts, the album is an imaginary pagan festival for your ears, a celebration of minor chords, ominous keyboards, and bewitching harmonies, where debauchery, pop and primitive pleasures are celebrated as gods to fend off the evils of the plague and contemporary puritans. This is Coven’s seminal 1969 release, WITCHCRAFT DESTROYS MINDS AND REAPS SOULS, reimagined as captivating psych-pop. Absolutely marvellous and quite possibly my album of the year.

MAPS OF THE LOST     MERRILY DOWN THE STREAM

The first of three spooky tales from the Maps Of The Lost podcast - an audio guidebook, written by Iain Rowan, to the lost places and the secret histories. Its entries show you what hides in the shadows, what stalks the moors, what is coming from under the ground, and why you should beware the last carriage in the last underground train because you may never get off. Be cautious, though - if you follow these maps, you may become lost yourself. Check them out for yourself here 

MOONRITE     HOUSE OF GLASS

Another Gallic band, Moonrite is a psychedelic garage-rock duo formed in 2014 by two brothers from Grenoble, France. Leaning towards a mix of gothic psychedelic pop, they play music of a dark and groovy nature which sounds like the soundtrack to a lost 1970’s horror movie, featuring satanic goings-on on a remote Mediterranean island.

NOLAN POTTER’S NIGHTMARE BAND     SINGING A SINGLE SONG OF SATAN

This Austen-based eight-piece sound like an army of bewitching pixies – their debut album, NIGHTMARE FOREVER, released in 2019, is a wild lysergic prog-trip through the wildest reaches of the psych, an absolute triumph of tuned percussion, whimsical melody, analog synths, wandering flutes and surreal, blissed-out psychedelia, the likes of which they just don’t make any more. This is a magical release, highly psychedelic, visionary, cathartic, taking you to lost realms of the imagination and altered states of consciousness, a phantasmagorical LSD-dosed trip through Trump’s America re-written as a medieval allegory where elves and wizards inhabit a breezy expansive landscape evoking the spirit of Middle Earth. Mind-bending, to say the least.

THE VAMPIRE SOUND INCORPORATION     NECRONOMANIA

Necronomania is a groovy little track taken from the soundtrack to 1971 erotic horror film ‘Vampyros Lesbos’, a melange of B-Grade horror and twisted erotica, dubbed horrotica by director Jess Franco, which starred doomed Spanish seductress Soledad Miranda, who died in a car crash shortly after the film’s release. The Vampire Sound Incorporation is the nom de plume by which German soundtrack composer Manfred Hubler and krautrock guitarist Siegfried ‘Siggi’ Schwab, of Embryo, fame produced kitsch switched-on go-go soundtracks for Franco’s freaked-out artistic vision. The soundtrack to ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ was released as VAMPYROS LESBOS: SEXADELIC DANCE PARTY in 1995 and consists of film music for three Franco films: ‘Vampyros Lesbos’, ‘She Killed in Ecstasy’, and ‘The Devil Came From Akasava’ - it was a surprise hit in the mid-90s when it got taken up by the short-lived lounge and space-age pop revival of which, I, for one, was a fan.

ROKUROKUBI     DEATH & THE MAIDEN

Brighton-based psychedelic folk duo Rokurokubi (Rose and Edmund Io) offer up a patchouli-soaked masterclass in dark, siren-sung acid-folk on their second album IRIS, FLOWER OF VIOLENCE, released earlier this year. Featuring lysergic, hypnagogic tales of revenge, fairy-tale wyrdness and catharsis, the album is a truly gorgeous mix of nursery-rhyme vocals and baroque chamber folk arrangements, sometimes embellished with truly thrilling blasts of wild distortion. Death & The Maiden is recognisably folk rock, more at home to Fairport Convention than the twisted nursery-rhyme stylings of Comus or Mr. Fox, say, but is, nevertheless, an understated marvel.

TRAFFIC    JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE

...as is this take on the folk traditional John Barleycorn by Traffic, who recorded the song for their 1970 album JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE. Whilst the rest of the album leaned towards a certain jazz-rock progressiveness, the title track, an ode to barley-based libations adapted by Steve Winwood from the old British folk song (versions of which date back to 16th century Scotland) kept its roots intact while brewing its own concoction of folk-rock similar to that of Fairport Convention. Its main character was “cut off at the knee” with scythes, pricked in the heart with pitchforks and “ground between two stones.” But before anybody thinks this is an act of brutal murder, “John Barleycorn” is an anthropomorphized version of barley, and therefore he was being “killed” to make whiskey and beer. As Julian Cope once said: "John Barleycorn died for somebody's sins but not mine." 

MAPS OF THE LOST     AVOIDING WOE IN WISTMAN’S WOOD

If you go looking for these eerie tales of Facebook, you can have them sent directly to your phone. Here’s the link

GRYPHON    THE UNQUIET GRAVE

Gryphon were one of the more unusual of the folk-rock prog groups to come out of England in the 1970s, mostly because they were able to pull off the trick of blending traditional Medieval folk, Baroque instrumentation and Renaissance classicism into their sound. The Unquiet Grave, an English folk song thought to date from 1400, in which a young man mourns his dead love too hard and prevents her from obtaining peace, is taken from their eponymously titled debut album, released in 1974, when people could get away with that sort of thing a lot more than they can nowadays. Not to everyone’s taste, but the world is better for it.

HONEY LTD.     LOVE, THE DEVIL

Honey Ltd were a short-lived girl-band who were briefly signed to Lee Hazelwood’s LHI record label. However, despite the psychedelic cowboy’s success with Nancy Sinatra and more, being on Lee Hazlewood Industries was no fast-track to success. Their sound, which blended social commentary with harmony-drenched, psych-soul pop should have won hearts and minds, yet they disappeared after releasing just the one album in 1968, a vinyl rarity that now, as is so often the case, regularly fetches upwards of $2,000. In 2013 THE COMPLETE LHI RECORDINGS was released, collecting everything they recorded during this period, which, in fairness, only amounts to 13 tracks, including this lovely little instrumental piece Love, The Devil. They never really had the time to grow, so we’ll never know how good they could have become, but think of The Mamas and Papas without the Papas, and that might give you some idea.

CAPTAIN HOOK AND HIS CREW     PHONE CALL

One of those inexplicably weird train-crash Christian recordings of which I’m so fond, or, at least, morbidly fascinated by, mostly because there is nothing stranger than this stuff. Captain Hook - Von R. Staum to his mother - lost an arm and a leg in a motorcycle accident at the age of 17 in 1960 and this somehow led him to God and a Christian Pirate ministry aimed at kids. It also means that he really had a hook! He seems to have recorded two LPs with his crew, and he even had his own kiddie TV show, assisted by not one but two pirate pals (Fish Hook and Seaweed Sam), a ventriloquist doll called Sharkey, and Mrs. Hook, who reminds us that “God is not a child abuser.” ANCHORS AWAY! appears to have been recorded in 1970 - they don’t maketh them like this anymore, for which we can be truly thankful, I guess. Amen.

SCREAMING LORD SUTCH     JACK THE RIPPER

Not psychedelic as such, but it was something of a mainstay at the now semi-mythical Alice In Wonderland club of a Monday evening, and that’s good enough for me. Recorded in 1963, and produced by the legendary Joe Meek, Jack The Ripper was actually banned by the BBC at the time of its release, but it remains something of a British garage-rock classic.

THE MOVE     NIGHT OF FEAR

Night Of Fear, the debut single by The Move, is essentially a litany of supernatural occurrences, such as moving shadows in a hallway, shifting pictures in a bedroom and chills along the spine - although it may simply be describing a bad trip. Despite this, it reached #2 in the British charts when released in 1966. Eagle-eared listeners will have recognised a touch of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture in the main riff.

MANDY MORTON AND SPRIGUNS     WITCHFINDER

Formed as an acoustic duo at their own folk club in Cambridge in 1972, Spriguns Of Tolgus were something of a cult act when compared to fellow travellers such as Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span or even Trees. As other members joined they took on a fuller folk-rock sound but, unable to find the same level of success as their peers, they disbanded in 1978 following the release of their final album, MAGIC LADY, released as Mandy Morton and Spriguns. This was very much their best album with Morton more than living up to her new top billing with a beautifully crafted set of songs that focussed on black magic and death - Witchfinder sets the tone quite nicely. Following the band’s demise, Morton continued her career in Scandinavia well into the 80s. I think these days she appears to be the author of the 'No. 2 Feline Detective Agency' series of novels about which I know nothing. A quick Google search suggests that witchcraft doesn't feature in any of them.

FREDDIE JONES     THE RED ROOM

An eerie little tale as told by the superb Freddie Jones on Spinechillers, a supernatural and unabashedly spooky version of the children’s classic television show, Jackanory, which broadcast on the BBC in 1980. The Red Room, written by H.G. Wells in 1894, tells the simple tale of a sceptical narrator who agrees to experience a terrifying vigil at Lorraine Castle’s famous scarlet haunted room. Expect a chill up the spine. And possibly down it too.

MOON WIRING CLUB     CATWALK OF THE PHANTOM BAROQUE

Catwalk Of The Phantom Baroque is taken from THE ONLY CAT LEFT IN TOWN, quite possibly the sister album to last years’ feline-inspired THE MOST UNUSUAL CAT IN THE VILLAGE. It features four long-form multi-temporal compositions that elongate accepted components into a psychedelic baroque gothic sludge-rock sunken-techno rolling ebb tide of eternal grey-green mist. Cronky, shonky and beautifully confusing, if you’ve ever attempted to summon up an immaculate ancestor to facilitate a phantom baroque catwalk in the dead centre of town whilst malevolent entities gaze on from the other side of the mirror, then Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring Club and his wyrd attendant beats are just the thing.

JOHN SCOTT     SYMPTOMS

A trifling little piece, but nonetheless delightful for all that. This was composed by film composer and conductor John Scott for ‘Symptoms’, a British exploitation horror film released in 1974, which follows the tribulations of a woman who goes to stay with a friend at her family remote English manor where ‘all is not as it seems’. I don’t believe the soundtrack was ever released, and the film itself languished on a poorly produced VHS edition for years before finally receiving a Blu-Ray release in 2016, but I found this on a bootleg album of rare U.K. horror and sci-fi themes called HERITAGE OF BLOOD which doesn’t appear to actually exist.

TRACY     STRANGE LOVE

The mysterious Tracy was a UK teen singer from Wembley who may have found fame of sorts as Anna Hamilton, a young contestant on that stalwart of British talent shows Opportunity Knocks in 1969 (clog dancing is mentioned at this point, but the provenance is unclear). If this is indeed she, Tracy, real name Andrea Gerome, went on to record three singles for Columbia UK record producer Bob Barratt, none of which appear to have struck a chord with the listening public. In 1971 she was approached to sing Strange Love, featured in the Hammer Horror ‘Lust For A Vampire’, which starred the tragic Yutte Stensgaard (tragic inasmuch as, following the failure of her film career, and a six-month stint hosting a game show with British king of comedy, Bob Monkhouse, she emigrated to the USA in the mid-seventies and took up a job selling air time for a Christian radio station in Oregon). The version of Strange Love that appears in the film, which I’ve featured here, is a superior mix taken directly from the film’s music and effects tape - she re-recorded an up-tempo pop version for the b-side to her 1971 release, a cover of Freda Payne’s Rock me In The Cradle (Of Your Lovin’ Arms), which failed to set the charts ablaze. After this Tracy, or Anne, or Andrea, returned to obscurity, a footnote in the history of Hammer Films. I wonder what became of her? The internet has very little to say on the subject. It took me over two hours of research to piece together what little is known and tie it all together in this paragraph. A mystery, then.

MAPS OF THE LOST     MERIDIAN

HOLY TRINITY     INFERNO 2

HOLY TRINITY is an album so at home to the likes of Coven, Sabbath Assembly and the authentic spirit of occult 1960s acid folk that the band claims this album was recorded in 1969. In fact, it was recorded last year, and the band, Holy Trinity are from Russia, but clearly operating in some sort of timewarp wherein the West Coast sounds of the Doors and Jefferson Airplane were relocated to a suburb of Moscow under the aegis of a pre-perestroika Kimski Fowleski. Recorded on vintage equipment from the USSR and beyond, the album is full of folk overtures, eerie blues scales, psychedelic motives, hard rock notes and the spirit of Ray Manzarek weaving haunted, trippy keyboard motifs throughout. Inferno 2 is the sound of the heavy-psych 60s passed through a filter of religion, love and Russian folk tales. Marvellous.

 

ANTON LAVEY     BOOK OF SATAN - VERSE FOUR

Don’t get me wrong - I’d much rather live next door to a Satanist than a Christian - but when you sit down to listen to Anton LeVay’s reading from his own text, ‘The Satanic Bible’, you realise how much of it sounds like the ideology adopted by the Nazi party. This is because much of it was cribbed from Ragnar Redbeard’s (made up name) 1896 book ‘Might Is Right’, a Social Darwinist treatise that posits a hatred of weakness, and that only the strength of physical might can establish moral right, a position adopted by the far right, and the Nazi party in particular; although, in fairness to LaVey, he removed that book’s inherent racism, antisemitism and misogyny from his own text. LaVey’s reading can be found on his recording SATANIC MASS: THE FIRST AUTHENTIC RECORDING IN HISTORY OF A SATANIC CEREMONY, recorded live at The Church Of Satan, San Francisco, California, Friday 13th September, III Anno Satanas (1967 to you and me). Side one of the album features an audio recording of the baptism of LaVey's daughter, Zeena, into The Church of Satan. Side two features excerpts from the then-unpublished book, ‘The Satanic Bible’, recited by LaVey over the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner and John Philip Sousa - it was never a runaway best-seller, but remains something of an artefact in its own right. I can’t be doing with taking it too seriously, what with a personal predilection towards the ACIM side of things and all, so I include a few extraneous sound effects in the background. Not that I doubt LaVey’s integrity, but I suspect he was only in it for the sex, drugs and fucking Jayne Mansfield.

ALL THEM WITCHES     VOODOO CHILE

More at home to The Doors than the Experience, this extended version of the classic Hendrix track Voodoo Chile, is given a heavy blues vibe that positions them somewhere between Led Zeppelin and Blue Cheer, and taken from the Nashville band’s self-released album recorded live at The V Club, called, if you can find it at all, HUNTINGTON, WV 10/4/14, an album so apparently rare that it doesn’t appear anywhere on their CV.

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