MIND DE-CODER 109
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“Happiness is hard to find - we just want peace to blow our minds”.
Tomorrow - Revolution
JULIAN COPE THE PAINTED YOUTH OF COTHIEMUIR WOOD BRING GIFTS
AND A SPECIAL FEAST TO THE BUILDERS OF THEIR NEW
STONE CIRCLE
A short while ago Julian Cope released his third album of the year, COPE’S NOTES 5: THE MODERN ANTIQUARIAN, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his mind-blowing guide to Neolithic stone circles, The Modern Antiquarian, originally published in 1998. You might think that over three albums the quality control might have dropped a little, but I love this album, and this track in particular (and, frankly, you just don’t come across this sort of title enough these days). The songs - odes to the Ridgeway and Neolithic bull castration feature quite heavily - are catchy bastards and the accompanying booklet contains a 6,000-word memoir explaining the precise impulses that sent the Archdrude off life’s urban highways into the nether regions of Ye Olde UK, and how he extricated himself from the Music Biz long enough to bring forth this monster tome. The man is a national treasure himself - marvellous.
NIRVANA ST. JOHNS WOOD AFFAIR
Despite the title - THE EXISTENCE OF CHANCE IS EVERYTHING AND NOTHING WHILE THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT IS THE LIVING LIFE, AND SO SAY ALL OF US (or ALL OF US for short, because it is, let’s face it, a bit of a mouthful) this is not the greatest psychedelic album of all time, or even the sixties. Released in 1968, it does contain Rainbow Chaser, which is a bona fide psych-pop classic, but elsewhere the album is a little too dainty for your serious fans of psychedelia. That being said, the closing track, St. John’s Wood Affair, is an ambitious slice of baroque psychedelia and more than justifies any interest you might have in giving the album a spin.
THE REVERBERATIONS DAYDREAMING
The Reverberations are a band very much at home to the jingle-jangle sound of 60s West Coast psychedelia, but for their third album, HALF-REMEMBERD DREAMS, released earlier this year, they introduce an element of gentle, jazz guitar-based arrangements, as evidenced by the lovely Daydreaming, to a release characterised by their love of everything from the Beatles to 13th Floor Elevators.
MAYA ONGAKU NUSKA
Taking over where Kikagaku Moyo left off, Japan’s Maya Ongaku inhabit an atmospheric world of mellifluous guitars, sinuous bass lines, floating woodwinds and delicate percussion with the occasional smattering of field recordings, and it all just sounds so effortlessly pretty. Released on the brilliant Guruguru Brain label, their debut album APPROACH TO ANIMA, released earlier this year, enjoys a dreamy psych-folk charm, both experimental and spacious, that allows the music and the listener to embark on a captivating, introspective journey, much of which is encapsulated on the transcendental Nuska.
KIM FOWLEY STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Let’s be generous - Kim Fowley was an American record producer, songwriter and musician who was, by turns, notorious, charismatic and sleazy, and an unapologetically obnoxious rock'n'roll huckster whose career might be best summed up as ‘checkered’. That being said, he was often ahead of the game - his 1965 single, The Trip, for example, possibly stands as the first psychedelic 45. Strangers From The Sky, released in 1967, was a tale-from-the-Twilight-Zone collaboration with West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band’s Michael Lloyd who co-wrote, arranged, conducted and apparently played all the instruments on the track. Singles like this don’t trouble the charts. That’s not what they’re for. They're just meant to be. (Although I'm sure everybody involved would have been as equally delighted if this was not, in fact, the case, and the record had charted.)
MR AND MRS SMITH AND MR DRAKE CAMOUFLAGE
The ever so slightly deranged Camouflage is taken from eponymously titled MR AND MRS SMITH AND MR DRAKE, otherwise known as English psych-folk band The Sea Nymphs, who were themselves a side project of the intensely weird psych-avant-art rock band Cardiacs, who enjoyed something of a cult following in their time together. The album, recorded in 1984, was initially only available on cassette through the fan club and at concert venues but has recently been re-released on CD and is now available for a good listen - expect an alternate universe of warped music hall, Stravinsky and Wicker Man medleys drawn from the deep loam of Kingston-Upon-Thames. Weird, by any reckoning.
PEARLS BEFORE SWINE TRANSLUCENT CARRIAGES
…and speaking of weird, the beautiful yet slightly disturbing Translucent Carriages is taken from the album BALAKLAVA, released in 1968 by psych-folk band Pearls Before Swine, who were very big in the underground college circuit in the late sixties. The band’s music was dark and mysterious, often rooted in traditional music, and ancient philosophy, with a nod to religion and spirituality thrown in to lighten the mood. The album was a themed anti-war album, with the title chosen to reflect the futility of war. For a band that often favoured a kitchen sink approach to instrumentation, Translucent Carriages is simply performed with acoustic guitar. It contains unsettling breathing noises and whispered lines of commentary, including a quote from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus: "In peace, sons bury their fathers/ in war, fathers bury their sons," and remains as relevant as ever.
MY BLOODY VALENTINE STRAWBERRY WINE
The shimmering, effervescent Strawberry Wine, all surgery sweetness, owes more to the jingly-jangle playfulness of The Byrds and the vocal stylings of The Mamas and The Papas than the band they eventually were to become, but it remains my favourite recording by the group. Released in 1987.
PETER DALTREY AND THE KNOW ESCAPE CASABLANCA
Daltrey is best known for his work with cult 60s British psych band Kaleidoscope, whilst The Know Escape is the nom de plume for musician and long time fan Mark Mortimer of DC Fontana. Their collaboration on the album RUNNING THROUGH CHELSEA, released earlier this year, is an elaborate, exotic, multi-coloured dream of a psychedelic album which gleefully embraces a toy box of instrumentation, including Mellotrons, Baroque strings, sitars, Hammond organs, 12-string guitars, brass, orchestral reeds and rare folk instruments from all over the place and throws them through a mixing desk mastered by long-time Julian Cope collaborator Donald Ross Skinner to produce an album that sounds both modern and equally at home to 60s psychedelia. Highly recommended.
SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS RODE MY BIKE
The Soft Hearted Scientists’ glorious WALTZ OF THE WEEKEND is probably my album of the year, and rightly so. To provide a final glimpse of the menagerie of tunes it contains (while we eagerly await their next offering) I felt compelled to introduce you to the insanely catchy Rode My Bike, recently released as a very limited lathe-cut 7" single, which comes with a special badge! Eagle-eared listeners will recognize the trippy middle section as being lifted directly from the album’s Gadzooks! which I played a couple of shows back. Despite containing a chorus that’s little more than a bitter rant against the world that makes Alan Partridge seem philosophical and well-adjusted, this is the SHS at their most playful. Altogether now: I am what I am - A lifelong punk!
TOMORROW REVOLUTION
This is the new mix of what remains my favourite psychedelic single of all time, sans the riddle that usually starts the more familiar version of this killer track, originally released in 1967. Guitarist Steve Howe felt that the band’s only album was let down by the production tools available at the time and could be more fully realised using the audio technology available today. Whether he is right or wrong is an entirely subjective matter, but I didn’t need much of an excuse to play this mind-bending slice of 60s psychedelia.
APPLE PHOTOGRAPH
Apple’s only album, AN APPLE A DAY, is considered something of a lost psych
classic, but by the time it was released in 1969, it felt a little behind the times. These days, of course, such considerations are meaningless and Photograph, whose combination of brass/orchestral arrangements and Alice In Wonderland-style lyrical surrealism conjures up images of Syd Barrett fronting The Kinks is worth the price of admission alone.
JIM AND JEAN TIME GOES BACKWARDS
The moodily psychedelic Time Goes Backwards can be found on the album PEOPLE WORLD, released in 1968 by American folk duo Jim Glover and Jean Ray who, despite adding a contemporary flowery sound to their releases failed to make an impact on the record-buying public. Jean Glover, however, made quite the impression on Neil Young, who wrote both Cinnamon Girl and Cowgirl In The Sand about her, and if that isn’t a legacy, then I don’t know what is.
ME AND MY KITES GUARDIANS OF THE GARDEN PARTS 1 AND 2
Guardians Of The Garden Pts. 1 and 2 actually bookend a five-song cycle on the Swedish band’s fourth album, A SAFE TRAIL, released earlier this year, but I enjoyed them both so much I thought I’d include them both on this evening’s show, leaving you, dear listener, to track down the album for the full hallucinatory effect. Taking their inspiration from early progressive rock, acid folk and psych-pop (a pretty good summation of the band Fuchsia, whose track Me And My Kites provided them with their name) their trademark is psychedelia crossed with traditional Swedish melancholia which somehow blends into what they describe as “hippie pop” with a 60s/70s flavour, which will do very nicely. On Guardians Of The Garden, they capture that nice moment when acid folk, jazz and psychedelia briefly crossed paths - not in that difficult way when the jazz intrudes and goes all difficult, but in that gentle melodic way that makes you feel glad to be alive and very much in love with the girl from the trouser shop. Music to dream away on a Summer's day.
STONE PONEYS EVERGREEN PARTS 1 AND 2
For a band fronted by Linda Ronstadt, she remained largely underutilized on their first album, released in early 1967. The band briefly broke up, but returned later on in the year with a second album, EVERGREEN VOL. 2, and this time Rondstadt was positioned front and centre. Despite that, my favourite track on the album remains the title track on which, once again, she was side-lined by guitarist Kenny Edwards who played sitar on it and the wholly instrumental part 2. I’ve segued the two together because, between the two, they live up to the album’s tagline: ‘Catch a Stone Poney and take your mind for a ride’. Nice.
DOT ALLISON DOUBLE RAINBOW
The almost transcendentally lovely Double Rainbow can be found on the most recent release, CONSIOUSLOGY, by Dot Allison, previously of blissed-out electro dubsters One Dove, but now some nine albums into a solo career that has thus far taken in electroclash, baroque pastoralism, noir balladry and intimate folky melancholy. CONSCIOUSLOGY is a lushly produced wonder, that takes the sparse, intimate folk songs of her previous album, 2021’s HEART-SHAPED SCARS, and gives them a more avant-garde, experimental edge. For the gorgeous Double Rainbow she actually recorded the electrical activity in a plant which she then translated into pitch variations creating something formless, timeless but achingly beautiful.
LUBOŠ FIŠER HOMELESS/LOSING THE WAY
Recently I took a car to the airport, jumped on a plane, headed North, boarded a train to the coast, took a ferry to a small island, rode in a four-wheel drive until I could drive no further and then walked until I arrived in a remote tree-lined valley filled with bird song and wild peacocks where I have access to a caravan I like to visit when things get a bit too much. Once there I like to potter around and find things to do that need doing. It’s nice. I like it. I was accompanied this time by Czech composer Luboš Fišer’s delicately haunting and sacred score to Jaromil Jireš’s essential 1970 Eastern European hallucinogenic-baroque-witch-flick Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders. The film is one of the last and best works of the Czech New Wave, and Fišer’s eerie music plays a crucial part in conjuring an atmosphere of surreal, folkish horror which is easy to lose yourself in - Broadcast’s Trish Keenan was a big fan. The soundtrack album of the film's mystical score didn't even exist until thirty-six years after the film’s release when Finders Keepers—a European label that specialises in digging up 1970s hyper-obscurities like Hungarian funk and Turkish psych records—managed to get it out. It's a lovely and transporting LP featuring twenty-two short tracks which run the gamut from pastoral chamber music to harpsichord lullabies, unsettling children's choir music to Transylvanian organ atmospherics, foggy Euro-folk to music box melodies, all swathed in a dreamy glaze. Just the thing for a few days away when you’re trying to reconnect with yourself. Anyway, I enjoyed it so much that it was hard to choose a single track to include in the show, so I’ve chosen a couple of tracks to give you a taste of this incredible album, finally made available in 2006. Be sure to Czech the film out too (you see what I did there?).
WALKER PHILLIPS LOVEBIRD II
I was a huge fan of Walker Phillip’s first release, 2018’s MY LOVE SUNDAY, but his second album, GOD’S EYE, released earlier this year, takes his Donovan-esque, acid-folk, Age of Aquarius love-vibe even further. Side two of the album is taken up with the sixteen-minute Lovebird ii, which starts out in traditional song form before branching into experimental jazz, tape-spliced from an hour’s worth of improvisation, inspired, apparently, by the splicing technique pioneered by Teo Macero on Miles Davis’ BITCHES BREW. This is your proper acid-folk psychedelia dialled up to 11. Marvellous.
