MIND DE-CODER 104

MIND DE-CODER 104

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For Stefan, however I might find him

 

MORE EXPERIENCE     THE TWILIGHT (LUNATIC SPACE DIARY)

 Birdsong loveliness introduces the album ELECTRIC LABORATORY OF HIGH SPACE EXPERIENCE, released last year by More Experience, a Polish band very much at home to the likes of Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, and Jefferson Airplane. I return to them later in the show, so for now, by way of introduction, I allow the ambiance to be taken over by…

 

THE FUGS     EXORCISING THE EVIL SPIRITS FROM THE PENTAGON, OCT. 21, 1967

 If ever a band encapsulated the spirit of the American counter-culture in the 1960s, it was The Fugs. Named after the euphemism for fuck employed by Norman Mailer in his 1948 novel ‘The Naked and The Dead’ (when, presumably, you couldn’t get away with that sort of language - legend has it that when he was approached by the actress Tallulah Bankhead at a cocktail party she exclaimed “Oh, you’re the man who can’t spell fuck”, something Mailer has always denied) The Fugs were formed by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, joined shortly thereafter by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of The Holy Modal Rounders, who provided a musical virtuosity otherwise lacking in the initial concept for the band. The FBI referred to them, quite laudably, as the "most vulgar thing the human mind could possibly conceive", which isn’t bad going.

 TENDERNESS JUNCTION, the first of two albums released in 1968 by the band, was a subversive mix of psychedelia, pastiche and surreal humour. It contains Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon Oct. 21, 1967, a real-life recording of an anti-war protest at The Pentagon where protesters purportedly attempted to encircle and levitate the Pentagon while repeatedly chanting "Out, demons, out!". I understand the event, chronicled by Norman Mailer, who briefly returns to the story, in his book ‘The Armies of the Night’, evolved into a love-in, and a good time was had by all.

 The Pentagon, sadly, failed to levitate, otherwise, I’m sure we would have heard about it.

 

JULIAN COPE    NED KELLY DAWN (excerpt)

 The first of four tracks from Julian Cope on this evening’s show because the man’s been on a bit of a roll recently. Ned Kelly Dawn is, in fact, an excerpt of an excerpt - I’ve cut down to 3 minutes what is originally a 15-minute track cut down to 11 minutes by Cope for his 2021 release COLD WAR PSYCHEDELIA, a collection of previously unreleased tracks recorded during the death throws of The Teardrop Explodes back in 1982. Ned Kelly Dawn was inspired by the penultimate scene from the Mick Jagger movie which Julian found himself obsessing over following an acid trip during the recording of their near-aborted third album EVERYBODY WANTS TO SHAG THE TEARDROP EXPLODES, and I think it’s trippy as nobody’s business and I’m almost sure that I never have to hear the full 15-minute version, but only when I don’t think about it too much.

ANTON BARBEAU     JULIAN COPE

 A love song to Julian Cope, taken from the most recent release by Anton Barbeau, POWER POP!!!, released earlier this year. On it are references to the Goddess, Silbury Hill, The Armenian genocide, Amon Düül, his wife Dorian, and other Arch-Drude touchstones that speak of a life well lived. Cult pop figure Barbeau supported Cope on his 2011 and 2012 UK tours and, clearly, the two bonded over a backstage spliff or two (also documented in the song). In fact, the three exclamation marks in the album’s title indicate that the much-maligned genre is name-checked here in an archly ironic way - what you actually get is a scattering of psychedelic song fragments and fully fleshed-out tunes that take in a tapestry of styles and sonic textures that suggest an early ABBA getting hipped to Krautrock, disavowing their Schlager roots, taking loads of drugs and merging their tight, super-pop sound with a kosmische vibe that catches the ear of young David Bowie who offers to produce, co-write and sing on their next record. Something like that, anyway.

 

ANDY BELL     THE SKY WITHOUT YOU

 There are many different strands of psychedelia present on FLICKER, the latest release from Ride’s Andy Bell, but the album is never predictable. The Sky Without You, the album’s opener is a gorgeous instrumental awash with backward guitars and vocal echoes that’s as tripped out as it’s possible to be. Elsewhere he takes inspiration from his own back catalogue of songs, many written as far back as the 1990s, but this is less an album steeped in nostalgia, rather it takes the sum of its influences - shoegaze bliss, shuffling beats, pastoral loveliness, kosmiche experimentation, synthetic pulses, and a certain Bowie-esque stomp - and produces something that speaks to the lysergic yearning in us all.

 

THE CHEMISTRY SET     LOVELY CUPPA TEA

 On which The Chemistry Set visit pepperland for a nice cuppa tea - although, in fairness, on this, PINK FELT TRIP, their 35th album (!), it’s the spirit of The Moody Blues which abides. Having come for a Lovely Cuppa Tea, do check out their cover of Mark Fry’s The Witch, which comes with no less than four remixes, each more trippier than the last, on an album replete with Mellotron flutes, gongs, pianos, choirs, orchestral percussion and Iranian setars. It’s the switched on sound of 1967 - today!

 

ELMER GANTRY’S VELVET OPERA     DREAM STARTS

 Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera started life as mod/soul act The Five Proud Walkers before staging a musical volte-face after supporting underground sensations The Pink Floyd in 1967. The following year saw the release of the self-titled debut album which contained an explosion of psychedelic sounds. On the whole, they were a tad too heavy for me, but Dream Starts is an exemplary excursion into the spaced-out sound of psychedelia in 1968.

 

AYSHEA     MR WHITE’S FLYING MACHINE

 Mr White's White Flying Machine sounds pretty much like you think a song with a title like that ought to, although, released in 1970, it had pretty much missed the psychedelic boat, as it were. I think this track was originally recorded by The Syn, who may, for all I have been able to ascertain, also be responsible for the backing on this version - if this is the case, then their own recording never saw the light of day, although this version does appear on the compilation FLOWERMEN - RARE BLOOMS FROM THE SYN 1965-69, released by the excellent Cherry Red label earlier this year. Ayshea Brough was something of a TV celebrity at the time - she had her own show, Lift Off With Ayshea, on which Bowie unveiled his first performance of Starman three weeks before his seminal TOTP performance, as well as appearing in episodes of Jason King and the cult Gerry Anderson live-action series, and Mind De-Coder favourite, UFO (and, it must be said, The Golden Shot and Celebrity Squares). Mr White's White Flying Machine makes an appearance on her self-titled debut, released in 1970 and was, I believe, a single. If there is anything else to know about it, you will have to seek much further than I appear to have done.

 

I have this drift off into the last few moments of the third movement of Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 (otherwise known as Marche Funèbre) played backwards, which sounds suitably psychedelic…

 

MORT GARSON    CATHEDRAL OF PLEASURE

 Mort Garson was a composer, arranger, songwriter, and pioneer of electronic music whose best work straddled that tricky divide between the psychedelic elevator music of the 60s and mind-bending occult-influenced space-age electronic pop of the 70s. The erotically-charged Cathedral Of Pleasure can be found on the album MUSIC FROM PATCH CORD PRODUCTIONS, a collection of rare and unreleased recordings released in 2020, which includes music for never-aired radio advertisements, themes for science fiction films, concupiscent oddities, mellow reveries, journeys into the dark and mystical, and groovy interstellar space-pop, all of which begs the question: what denomination is this, and can I join?

ASTREL K     IS IT IT OR IS IT I?

 Astrel K is the moniker adopted by singer-guitarist Rhys Edwards of Ulrika Spacek, for his debut solo album FLICKERING I. Released on Stereolab’s Duophonic label earlier this year, it’s an artful mix of hauntological experimentation and unconventional melodies inspired by the sort of library music and obscure film soundtracks drawn on by one-time Duophonic label-mates Broadcast. Is It It Or Is It I? initially comes over like The Avalanches or MGMT chilling out on some yacht in the Riviera and you might wonder about its inclusion in the show (although there’s nothing wrong with either The Avalanches or MGMT chilling out on a yacht in the Riviera, of course). Stick around, though, for halfway through the song takes on an hallucinatory dimension as an off-kilter guitar riff appears from nowhere while the rest of the track appears to float off into space. 

 

GWENNO     TRESOR

 The sublime Tresor is the title track to Gwenno’s third album, released earlier this year and sung almost entirely in Kernewek (or Cornish to you, unless you’re one of the fewer than a thousand people fluent in the language). Gorgeous, sensual and psychedelically-tinged, Tresor (or Treasure) is captivatingly alluring, inviting the listener to lose themselves in the languid soundscape, even if one is never entirely sure what she’s singing about (not speaking Kernewek, and all) - although I understand that, on an album that explores nature and motherhood, the ethereal Tresor confronts the contradictions that come with visibility as a woman and the challenges of wielding women’s power.

 

MORE EXPERIENCE     THE TRIP 

The Trip pretty much does what it says on the label - and when the spoken word intro appears, delivered by a character who goes by the name of Eryk Paluch: “There’s so much to explore in your imagination, you’ll make a trip among the nebulas and stars…”, you’ll think you’re listening to the voice of God, or possibly a down-at-the heel shaman, reduced to hanging around drafty bus-shelters in Northampton bumming fags*, and drunk on cheap White Lightning (whichever image serves you best). Poland’s More Experience combine lysergic guitars with spoken word passages, field and space recordings, Canterbury stylings and kosmische ambience on their album ELECTRIC LABORATORY OF HIGH SPACE EXPERIENCE, and the effect is verily a trip unto itself. Tellingly, it was released on Old Hippie Records last year.

*I appreciate that this means something entirely different in your American parlance. 

 THE FUGS     NATIONAL HAIKU CONTEST 

A short piece, lasting no more than 28 seconds, National Haiku Contest, a teenager's surreal haiku in response to an unwanted pregnancy, is taken from side two of The Fugs’ second release in 1968, IT CRAWLED INTO MY HAND, HONEST. In fact, side two of the album is entirely made up of this sort of thing: a strange sound collage of songs and vocal snippets with segments ranging from four minutes to 15 seconds, making for a disjointed and surreal listening experience. Clearly there was something in the water at the time, as The Mother’s of Invention and The Holy Modal Rounders, who pretty much made up the more musically accomplished half of The Fugs, were doing similar things with their own releases, as if a traditional suite of songs was no longer able to do justice to the explosion of counter-cultural tensions that defined that year. I’ve been listening to The Fugs a lot, lately, because this year seems no less insane, in it’s own way, and they very nearly make sense of it.

 

JOHN MYRTLE     BALLAD OF THE RAIN

 Whimsical psychedelia from John Myrtle, whose debut album, MYRTLE SOUP, released earlier this year, is very much at home to the likes of The Kinks and Syd Barrett. Wistful and playful, it enjoys the sort of breezy, sun-drenched appeal one might experience whilst undertaking a Sunday afternoon stroll through Itchycoo Park, say, in order to catch the lunchtime performance by the Trumpton Fire Brigade at the local bandstand whereupon you tuck into flask of tea and a cheese and onion sandwhich whilst enjoying the show, supine in a stripy deckchair and otherwise at one with the world - high as a kite, obvs.

 

DANA GILLESPIE     SOUVENIRS OF STEFAN

 As famous for her dalliances with the likes of David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Michael Caine (Bowie wrote wrote Andy Warhol for her, and she sang backing vocals on his ZIGGY STARDUST album) as she is for her run of risque albums steeped deeply in the blues, Dana Gillespie’s little-known debut album, FOOLISH SEASONS, released in 1968, is an exhilarating slice of eclectic British pop music. Equal parts psych-pop, orchestrated pop, folk and blues, it’s one of the great lost albums of the Swinging London era - probably because it was, inexplicably, only ever released in the United States where nobody paid any attention to it at all. The gently psychedelic Euro-pop of Souvenirs Of Stefan recalls the likes of Francoise Hardy, or the soundtrack to a German art house movie featuring a pair of sexually indolent teenagers full of existentialist despair who take loads of drugs and hitch-hike around the Mediterranean - there'll be a scene on the beach of one of the lesser-known Greek Islands where they lose it for a bit - and it never fails to put a smile on my face or make me wonder just what that film would be like.

 It’s a little known fact but Dana Gillespie was the British Junior Water Skiing Champion in 1962.

 

JULIAN COPE     SLOW STRASBOURG

Lately, Cope (or Copey, or the Arch-Drude, whichever you prefer) has taken to releasing a series of  albums which document and otherwise shine a light on key releases in his back-catalogue. Called COPE’S NOTES, the CDs are accompanied by a beautifully produced booklet and include previously unreleased tracks, demos and spoken word pieces taken from Cope’s autobiography ‘Head-On/Repossessed’. The booklet includes handwritten lyrics, poems, photographs and a memoir in the form of a lengthy essay that discusses the period in question. Amongst fans of Julian Cope these are considered highly desirable artefacts. The first of these releases focussed on The Teardrop Explodes, the second features the story behind his cult release DROOLIAN, the third, released a few weeks ago, tells the story of his debut solo album WORLD SHUT YOUR MOUTH, released in 1984. It includes, on the accompanying CD, this track, Slow Strasbourg, a previously unreleased track which has really grown on me and gives you an idea of what these releases are all about. Cope hopes to release a COPE’S NOTES for all of his previous releases, but given they now number in the 50s that might be a bit optimistic. Still, fingers crossed.

 

ADVISORY CIRCLE     JUST A DREAM 

This is the track that plays beneath the spoken word piece I have playing. It’s one of two tracks I’ve pulled from the album FULL CIRCLE, released earlier this year by Cate Brooks in her guise as the slightly sinister but mostly benign Advisory Circle, whose previous releases have come to be defined by the Ghost Box hauntological aesthetic. This, her most recent release, actually sheds much of what I’ve come to enjoy as the Ghost Box whimsy - instead of disembodied voices we are presented with retro-futuristic synth pieces that owe more to 80s than the 70s and, whilst this is a completely recognizable direction for your hauntologically-inspired musicians to take, I miss the disembodied voices, me. Still there were hints of old-school hauntology hidden within the album - Just A Dream employs the sort disorientating undertones I was looking for and it doesn’t disappoint.

 

RJ MCKENDREE     BOG ASPHODEL

 

Earlier this year, English author Tom Cox -  who writes about folklore, rambling, wildlife, psychedelic music, local history and golf - published his first novel, ‘Villager’. Its setting is the fictional village of Underhill and the West Country moorland that surrounds it, and its chapters tell the story of the village and its inhabitants, with tales stretching from prehistory to 2099 - to give you an idea of what the book is like, one of the narrators is the spirit of the moorland itself, which stands as a silent witness to the goings on of the villagers across the centuries. One such tale centres on RJ McKendree, an American musician who moves to the village in 1968 and records a haunting set of acid-folk songs before vanishing into myth and legend, whose tale surfaces again and again throughout the novel. The author gave the book to a talented musician friend and asked him to record what he imagined this album would sound like. The musician friend, visionary multi-instrumentalist, guitar builder, and producer Will Twynham, who records psychedelic rock under the name Dimorphodons, presented Cox with an album that sounded as every bit as mysterious and magical as the music Cox had in his head while writing the story of the enigmatic RJ Mckendree and the album he recorded. The album was named WALLFLOWER, and while it purports to be one of the great lost classic acid-folk albums of the sixties, you can buy the book and the CD and enjoy the two together. I love stuff like this. 

JULIAN COPE     I KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE BELIEVED

For the last few years Julian Cope appears to have been involved in a long running dispute with a neighbour which, for legal reasons he was unable to comment on, but which seems to have been resolved successfully in Cope’s favour, resulting in the song I Know What It’s Like To Be Believed, which you can find on his most recent album proper, ENGLAND EXPECTORATES, which was released earlier this year. Elsewhere, the album works as something of a state-of-the nation address as Cope skewers what was then Boris Johnson’s cultural and political landscape, but which applies equally well to Rishi Sunak’s vision for a Britain united under a Prime Minister who’s richer than the king but who is admired in Pony Club circles as one of those dads who stays behind to help put away the jumps after the riding sessions. By turns angry, cynical and obturate (it includes the sing-a-long crowd pleaser Cunts Can Fuck Off) it’s also surprisingly poppy, but unlikely to win him any new fans. Just as well he’s got so many old ones, then.

 

GAZ HUNTER     ELLESS DEE

 

You can’t really go wrong with an album title like LYSERGIC SOUNDSCAPES OF DREAMADELICA - I mean, the stall is set out right there - but in actual fact, the title is a little disingenuous, promising much but delivering instead something much more poppy. Except, and I can’t emphasize this enough, for the rivetting, aptly named Elless Dee. This track more than lives up to the album’s title, delivering a proggy flute-driven intro which escalates into a blistering space-rock wig-out designed to leave a melon-sized grin on your face.

 

JULIAN COPE     KRANKENHAUS - JOKER’S BIRTHDAY DUCK HUNT 

The lysergic bard at his most tripped-out.  Once again taken from last years’ COLD WAR PSYCHEDELIA, this was rescued from a long forgotten play Copey wrote in Pig German, entitled ‘Die Kankenhaus’. It features three gentlemen - Krank, Hellmouth and Joker - more ancient than anyone suspects, and their peculiar adventures. ‘Nuff said.

 

THE BEATLES     TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS (TAKE 1)

 

Tomorrow Never Knows is arguablly one of the greatest psychedelic tracks ever recorded, but this initial mix, known as Take 1, is in itself, not to be sniffed at. Taken from the bonus disc which accompanies the recent Giles Martin mix of of The Beatles’ seminal 1966 release REVOLVER it features a tape loop made from a performance of drums, electric guitar recorded through a rotating Leslie speaker and a second guitar with fuzz tone. It sounds for all the world like the future trying to break through from another dimension.

 

NILSON     BRIGG FAIR/A POEM 

For his second album, SCHOOL AND FOREST, the German born musician Nilson, who now resides in Costa Rica, creates a hauntology-infused, psych folk-tinged hypnogogic soundscape which strays from the hauntological/wyrd English pathways into Chilean folk traditions in which the past and the present exist simultaneously. The lovely Brigg Fair, a traditional English folk song, first sung by the Lincolnshire singer Joseph Taylor in 1905 (but passed onto him by the King of the Gypsies who taught him the song some time around the year 1850, folklore fact fans), is given a suitably psychedelic production as befits the song’s history, and as a result, it shimmers beneath a lysergic haze which puts the acid back into acid-folk. Likewise, A Poem, the second track I’ve included from this remarkable album, sounds as if its being channelled from a lost episode of cult British television series Sapphire and Steel which, these days, is considered a byword for hauntological wyrdness; or otherwise discovered on the Jean Ritchie collection of field recordings, old British ballads, drinking songs, children’s songs and games, hand bell ringing, dance tunes and folk songs which were gathered together on the album FIELD TRIP - ENGLAND in the 1950s. Fans of Broadcast, The Focus Group and, indeed, their collaboration in which they investigate witch cults of the radio age; early Ghost Box releases in general;  Bert Jansch’s 1971 release ROSEMARY LANE; and anyone who enjoys repeated viewings of Jonathan Miller’s production of Alice in Wonderland (which pretty much covers all of this show’s regular listeners, I should hope) will find that they’re very much at home to this album - acoustic psych-folk loveliness experienced through the lens of Radiophonic experimentation. Clever and engaging.

 

NATHAN HALL AND THE SINISTER LOCALS    SONG FOR JANET MARGOLIN

 

Something of an earworm, this, but in truth, all of the tracks on the most recent release from Nathan Hall and those Sinister Locals of his have a catchy sing-a-long-ability to them that marks this as one of the best albums he’s produced. GOLDEN FLEECE, released earlier this year, contains 14 songs of technicolour psychedelia with a heart. Awash with songs, sounds and lyrics to infuse your day with colour and hope, induce flashbacks to childhood, lift your mood and transport you around the solar system from the comfort of your sofa without the need to ingest illegal substances, although that too is obviously an enviable way to enjoy the album. The lovely Janet Margolin for whom he so wistfully yearns was a much sought-after actress in the 1960s who was let down by a studio system who cast her in too many obligatory romantic leads to allow her to achieve the star status she deserved (her last film part was a minor role in Ghostbusters II). She died of cancer, aged 50, in 1993. Song For Janet Margolin will live on, seemingly forever, in my mind as I hum it as I go about my daily business, so an immortality of sorts has been gained.

 

HAIZEA     ARROSA XURIAREN AZPIAN

 

I remember coming across a documentary once that charted the progress of language across time and the world as it attempted to create a sort of ur-language from which all subsequent languages have grown. The Basque language, it noted, had no known antecedents and existed separate from the world’s languages as if it came fully formed, or handed down by aliens. Judging by this song title, you can see what they were getting at. Arrosa Xuriaren Azpian (my trusty Google translate assures me it means: Under The White Rose) is taken from the album HONTZ GAUA (NIGHT OWL, btw) released in 1979 by the Basque acid-folk outfit Haizea (Wind) and is considered one of the jewels of the progressive European psychedelic folk movement about which, I confess, I know next to nothing, although, on the strength of this album alone, it seems to be a genre I really ought to be exploring). I came across this track on a podcast by the afore mentioned Nilson, and I was so attracted by its mesmerising ambience I had to fire off a quick email to him enquiring as to it provenance (fortunately it was played just before Trees’ equally mesmerising cover of Sally Free And Easy from their second album ON THE SHORE, so I was at least able to place my request in some kind of context, otherwise I would have been left floundering). Anyway, I think its gorgeous and I feel lucky to have come across it. You can find the captivating Nilson mix, called INTERLUDE, here on Mixcloud. It’s well worth a listen.

 

MORE EXPERIENCE     AT THE GATES OF DAWN (LUNATIC SPACE DIARY) 

Serene, sublime, birdsong ambience, which closes the album ELECTRIC LABORATORY OF HIGH SPACE EXPERIENCE. A trip completed. Peace is found.

 

THE FUGS     IRENE 

I don’t know who Irene is, but they close their album IT CRAWLED INTO MY HAND, HONEST with this track.

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