SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS - WALTZ OF THE WEEKEND

At last! The return of the Soft Hearted Scientists! It’s been three years since we last heard from Cardiff’s cult psychedelic troubadours, and seven years since the release of their last album proper, but this month sees the Scientists return with WALTZ OF THE WEEKEND, their biggest and most ambitious studio album yet.

It’s an album swollen with ambition, and bursting at the seams with inspiration. Clearly the Covid lockdown, however inconvenient, (and I, for one, loved it), has left the band chomping at the bit, bursting with three years’ worth of songs, melodies and other creative impulses to get out of their system. And what a torrent of creativity came gushing forth – we all know lead vocalist Nathan Hall is never short of an idea for a good tune, but this album seems to have brought the best out in everyone. Twelve tracks, crammed with eclectic instrumentation, radio friendly kaleidoscopic pop songs, heartbroken ballads and innovative experimentation, packed onto a single CD with a 75 minute running time – truly, our cup runneth over.

Opening track What Grows Inside the Garden enjoys the same dizzying pop-art dissonance of The Byrds’ Artificial Energy, an apt reference because this is a song that clearly belongs in 1967. Likewise, the title track, a psychedelic waltz inspired by a day trip to Tintern Abbey, is as trippy as anything you’ll find on A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS. Given that I’m name-dropping reference points here, the glorious Rode My Bike put me in mind of The Dukes Of Stratosphears’ manically inventive 25 O’CLOCK album – none of this is to say that anything on this album is derivative, rather, this is an album that can hold its own alongside these classic psychedelic recordings. If you’re a fan of psychedelic music - and, let’s face it, you’re reading this on the Mind De-Coder blogsite - then this is an album that will satisfy that particularly lysergic itch, and you'll be tapping your foot along to it too.

The credit must be shared with producer Frank Naughton, whose wizardry in the studio gives the songs space to breathe so that they never feel cluttered, despite the sheer variety of instruments the’ve managed to lay their hands on – string sections, harpsichords, broken-down pianos, kitchen sinks, and what sounded like an oud, sitars and quite likely a lot more, are all employed to give the songs colour, but they never dominate or feel used just for the sake of it. In fact, the studio is deployed as one more instrument in their sonic arsenal. When Sea Anemone Song, which starts off life as a slightly plaintive ballad disappears into the K-hole, you actually feel as if you’re floating off into space with it. Elsewhere The Things We Make becomes consumed with a dub-laden expansiveness, and Creepers and Vines transforms halfway through into a series of mind-bending transitions, sections, and sound events that will leave your head spinning, while the eleven-minute Lost Mariners is nothing less than a psychedelic odyssey.

The lyrics are cryptically opaque but there’s usually a line or two that tumble forth from the firmament of surreal wordplay which you can clutch to your heart. My current fave: You and I are drinking wine and staring at the garden, appears to be speaking to me on several levels. In fact, I feel as if the whole album has a multitude of layers that will only be revealed upon repeated listens - melodic excursions, exotic instrumentation, a clever bass line, a production trick, a stumbled-upon lyric, an experimental flourish, an on-the-note percussive embellishment - it will take some time to take in the sheer gleeful inventiveness the Soft Hearted Scientists have brought to the table.

It’s hard to pick a favourite track when so much is on offer, but Gadzooks! delivers a bar-room piano that might have been stolen from the end of Tomorrow Never Knows, and otherwise sounds like the semi-legendary and regrettably short-lived psychedelic group (the aptly named) Tintern Abbey having a go at I Am The Walrus - it’s that good. Once again, I’m not making comparisons, but making the case that WALTZ OF THE WEEKEND is as good as those classic psychedelic recordings I really like and rate.

So, from the top: THE NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS, A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS, 25 O’CLOCK, Tomorrow Never Knows, Bee-Side/Vacuum Cleaner, WALTZ OF THE WEEKEND…they all belong on the same list.

Mind blown.

Available to order, or download, from their Bandcamp page now.

MIND DE-CODER 106

MIND DE-CODER 106

 To listen to the show just scroll to the bottom of the page

“All day long the door of the subconscious remains just ajar; we slip through to the other side, and return again, as easily and secretly as a cat”.

                                                                     Walter de La Mare

                                                                    

 TOR LUNDVALL     SLOW HUMMING AT DAWN

 Tor Lundvall is an American artist and composer whose ghostly, liminal, recordings are essentially paintings with music. Taken from the album INSECT WINGS, LEAF MATTER AND BROKEN TWIGS - EARLY AMBIENT RECORDINGS 1991-1994, released in 2016, these minimalist recordings, which incorporate found sound, droning synthesizers, and spectral piano are a celebration of stillness and solitude. Slow Humming At Dawn inspires a moment of deep reflection which, it is to be hoped, will carry you through the show like a balm to the senses.

 

There’s a lot going on through the beginning of the show with voices and sitar coming in and out of focus - whilst all of that is going on, I include…

 

ALISON COTTON     MURMURATIONS OVER THE MOOR

 Alison Cotton once played viola in Mind De-Coder favourites The Eighteenth Day Of May and still performs in The Left Outsides, whose atmospheric, hypnotic songs inhabit a certain pastoral psychedelia reminiscent of chilly English fields at dawn. Her most recent solo release, THE PORTRAIT YOU PAINTED OF ME, released last year, is a study in exquisite melancholy. Murmurations Over The Moor is a wordless piece of layered vocals that drifts like an eerie lament across the foggy moors of Northern England, a siren to lure the unwary traveller - as is so often the case with your atmospheric goings-on, it sounds beguilingly lovely.

 

DOROTHY ASHBY     MYSELF WHEN YOUNG

 

Every now and then you unexpectedly come across a piece of music that simply has no precedent, that takes you on a journey you had no idea you were waiting to go on, and blows your mind along the way. Such was my reaction upon discovering THE RUBAIYAT OF DOROTHY ASHBY, an album by jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby, released in 1970. For a start, I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a jazz harpist, but Dorothy Ashby not only occupied that particular niche, but made it her own, in a genre not generally interested in a black woman playing the harp, classically or otherwise. Such was her skill, on this album, she was also able to introduce the Japanese koto, a plucked zither instrument, and successfully integrate it into an album that succeeds in taking jazz into new, previously unexplored dimensions - and I mean this in a good way. Myself When Young opens the album, combines an Eastern vibe with a funky soul-jazz groove - Alice Coltrane is a touchstone, but, really, this album is head music for the heart - a transcendent marriage of soul, world music, and free jazz. Spiritual and unique.

 

KALEIDOSCOPE     FAINTLY BLOWING

 If their first album, TANGERINE DREAM, provides a whimsical showcase of where playful British psychedelia was at in 1967, their second album, FAINTLY BLOWING, released in 1969, is an altogether more experimental affair, and here, in accordance with the times, the monitors have been turned up to nine. The result is a record just as pretty as their debut but a little punchier and more exploratory - the title track is one of the more beautiful psychedelic recordings from that period, but the world had moved on and psychedelia was, sadly, soon to become passé. That being said, this remains a hugely enjoyable artifact from that time just before a heavier, blues-based period of prog would rear its head and, frankly, is worth the price of admission for the cover alone.

 

NATHAN HALL AND THE SINISTER LOCALS     CASTLES IN MY HEAD

 With the promise of a new album by Soft-Hearted Scientists on its way, I just wanted to include the gorgeous Castles In My Head from SHS’s prodigiously talented Nathan Hall, whose been keeping the halls of psychedelia bedecked with gloriously technicolour tales of bees, ghosts, butterflies, Ferris wheels, stone circles, highwaymen, and righteous revenge fantasies with those Sinister Locals of his, while we await the long-delayed release from Cardiff’s very own magic music realists. Castles In My Head, taken from last year’s GOLDEN FLEECE, contains what is possibly my favourite line in any song ever: “If you can’t evict your demons, make sure they pay their rent.” I’m a huge fan of Soft Hearted Scientists, and I have my pocket money saved for the upcoming release, but seven albums in, it’s these solo affairs that are beginning to look like the day job.

 

THE LIGHT MUSIC COMPANY     A GARDEN AFTER RAIN

 Orchestral loveliness from The Light Music Company, a collaborative project combining the talents of Martin Newell, of Cleaners from Venus, and Rachel Love, formerly of the semi-legendary twee-pop trio Dolly Mixture. A Garden After Rain is taken from the rather marvellous mini-album HOUSEWIVES’ FAVOURITES, which consists of six light-instrumental pieces composed and played on cello and piano, then further augmented by electronic keyboards and field recordings. Released last year, experience has shown that they may be used in a domestic environment, as a background for informal gatherings, or to add atmosphere to otherwise-dull holiday movies, filmed on Super 8 and shown to the neighbours on bank holidays.

 

KATE BOLLINGER     LADY IN THE DARKEST HOUR

 

The delicate Lady In The Darkest Hour is taken from the album LOOK AT IT IN THE LIGHT, a six-track EP released by (the lovely) singer-songwriter Kate Bollinger last year. I’ve been fortunate enough to have heard it under what I’m euphemistically referring to as delightful circumstances, and I was absolutely enchanted by it. Bittersweet yet reassuring, the album apparently draws much of its inspiration from old Beatles demos - I’m supposing the Esher Demos which accompanied the recent Giles Martin remix of the White Album because I’ve never come across any other demos by The Beatles. The songs are warm and elegant, folksy and comforting, underscored with light psychedelic flourishes which are absolutely captivating. One of my favourite releases from last year.

 

KOLUMBO     NUKOI’I

 Texas-born Frank LoCrasto has made a career out of creating music that nestles comfortably alongside the dusty grooves of space-age jazz and technicolour tropicalia, but for his first album released under the moniker of Kolumbo, he’s fully embraced the vintage cocktail soundscapes of Exotica. Nukoi’i is taken from the album GUNG HO, released last year, a hugely enjoyable collection of excursions into the world of Arthur Lyman, Les Baxter, Esquivel, and Martin Denny - strings, woodwinds, brass, keyboard, and percussion all make an appearance, buoyed by an edge of psychedelia complete with synthesizers and loads of tape echo. Dive right in and enjoy the view.

 

SPROATLY SMITH     AFON GWY-THE WATER IS WIDE/HIDDEN DEPTHS

 These mesmerising tracks are taken from the album RIVER WYE SUITE, an album that Sproatly Smith’s Ian Smith and Matt King have been working on for nearly a decade, originally commissioned for the Hereford River Carnival’s campaign in 2014 to rejuvenate the heavily populated river in Herefordshire. The campaign, however forward-thinking, seems to have failed - these days the river is literally full of shit, not, as one might suppose, the result of water companies pouring raw sewage into England’s waters, but thanks rather to the 1,200,000 tonnes of chicken shit, and nearly 2000 tonnes of nitrogen, which runs off into the river each year, the result of an endless expansion of chicken farms along the Wye Valley. With these tracks, however, taken from last year’s gorgeous release, Sproatly Smith summon up a River Wye of the soul, a dreamy and sometimes dark pastoral psych-folk ambiance that drifts over the mystical countryside of Herefordshire, wending its way from the Cambrian mountains of Wales and moving ever more slowly, down through the landscape from Hay through Hereford to Ross and then Chepstow - where it meets the Severn, and the sea. This journey is captured using samples, field recordings, acoustic instrumentation, and a general lysergic oddness resulting in a cohesive, dreamy, playful folk soundscape. The languid Afon Gwy/The Water Is Wild, which opens the album, paints an evocative picture in sound, whilst Hidden Depths is an altogether stranger affair, featuring the creepy and sinister childhood PIF ‘The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water’, narrated by Donald Pleasence, which made watching television such a terrifying experience in the 1970s, alongside an ad from the 80s promoting the enjoyment to be found holidaying on the Norfolk Broads, and some sax. Hauntological trippiness at its best.

TEMPLES     EXOTICO

For their fourth album, Temples employed the considerable talents of producer Sean Ono Lennon to enhance their sonic palette. Lennon, of course, as one half of Ghost Of A Sabre Tooth Tiger, is no stranger to your psychedelic excursions but, strangely, for their latest release, EXOTICO, the band chose this moment to pull back from their usual enjoyable mix of psychedelia and krautrock, and, instead, go down the highly polished pop route already occupied by Tame Impala. The band see this album more as an aural voyage through postcard vistas, cascading melodic waterfalls and tropical lagoons, with each track a place to stop off and enjoy the view. The title track, Exotico, owes less to Martin Denny but enjoys a John Barry stuck on an island in the Pacific Ocean vibe that wouldn’t be out of place on the soundtrack of a goofy sixties spy-pastiche like Our Man Flint.

  

KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN      GESANG DER JÜNGLINGE (excerpt)

 It has been said by better people than I that this recording by the experimental, avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen had some influence on the creation of The Beatles’ ground-breaking psychedelic onslaught Tomorrow Never Knows. Recorded in 1956, Gesang der Jünglinge (Song of the Youths) was conceived as the final part of an electronic music Mass written by Stockhausen, a devout Catholic, to be performed as an actual service in the famous Cologne Cathedral, a proposal formally rejected by the church, it must be said. Using the prerecorded voice of a boy named Josef Protschka (who went on as an adult to have a successful career as a vocalist), Stockhausen manipulated the recording, making it unintelligible, as well as speeding up the original sound of the boy’s voice to make it sound higher. A few years later, Paul McCartney skips into Abbey Road carrying a bag of 1⁄4-inch audio tape loops he had made at home after listening to this recording, that’s all I’m saying.

 

SILVER PEOPLE     TORN BETWEEN THE WIZARDS OF MY PAST AND THE DEMONS OF MY PRESENT

 Silver People is the nom de plume by which full-time lawyer and part-time bedroom producer Jake Reeves created last year’s GNOME COUNTRY, a pastoral romp through the lysergic fields of psychedelia, taking in enough arcane references to the Lord of The Rings, the Legend of King Arthur, and other fantasy elements (wizards and gnomes for a start) to fill a second-hand book shop in Glastonbury. Psych-folk trippiness combines with trip hop beats, Eastern-tinged guitars, and spy movie keyboards - Torn Between The Wizards Of My Past And The Demons Of My Present (great title) seems to sit somewhere between Mazzy Star and early Massive Attack, but inhabits a world all of its own. Highly recommended.

 

TWINK     BRAND NEW MORNING

 Twink - these days known as Mohammed Abdullah John Alder for reasons best known to himself - is a doyen of British psychedelia, having played in groups such as Mind De-Coder favorites Tomorrow, The Pretty Things, Pink Fairies and the short-lived Stars with Syd Barrett. Brand New Morning was recorded as a single in 2019 with members of Papernut Cambridge, a pop collective centered around the songwriting and production talents of former Death in Vegas member Ian Button, and Picturebox, a lo-fi folk collective channeling the Canterbury Sound. It’s a joyous, surreal celebration of optimism, waking up and feeling inexplicably better, combining an UP THE JUNCTION-era Manfred Mann jazz vibe with Barrett-era Pink Floyd playfulness. It can also be found on last year’s retrospective YOU REACHED FOR THE STARS - THE BEST OF TWINK, a collection of tracks that spans his career featuring iconic songs from the seminal THINK PINK album and beyond, curated by Twink himself. Wonderful.

 

SHARRON KRAUS     THE WORLD WITHIN THE WORLD

 Haunting, spectral, and lovely, The World Within The World is taken from British wyrd-folk artist Sharron Kraus’ most recent album KIN, released last year. Delia Derbyshire-esque synths take the track away from the Appalachian music with which she is often aligned, and instead places the song somewhere on the hauntological axis that runs from Broadcast to Belbury Poly (with whom Kraus recorded a wonderful concept album about Chanctonbury Ring in 2019, alongside the writer Justin Hopper) and the overall effect is spellbinding. The album was mainly written during the Covid pandemic, and many of the songs obliquely reflect themes like isolation, separation, family bonds, and the human need for interaction, but this track pretty much does what it says on the label and creates a world all of its own to inhabit. Mesmerising.

 

ANONA     MOTH SONG

 Anona is the name by which Brighton-based Ella Russell - whose most recent work encompasses vocals with Wax Machine as well as playing flute and drums with her own band The New Eves - records her own bucolic take on the folklore-laced fables cluttering up the garden shed of her mind. I understand this eponymous EP, released earlier this year, was recorded in a makeshift garden studio, so I’m not entirely wrong here. Moth Song takes us out of the shed and into the garden where we spend an enjoyable few moments taking it all in. Lovely.

 

RAVI SHANKAR     RAGA JOG (excerpt) 

An excerpt from a track that otherwise takes up all of side 1 of Ravi Shankar’s Western debut, THREE RAGAS, recorded in London in 1956. Although Shankar was already an accomplished and well-known musician in India in 1956, he was still almost completely unknown in the West (what with George Harrison only being 13 at the time). The album, considered his best, consists of three ragas, and was meant to be a kind of introduction to Shankar's music for the Western listener. In Sanskrit (he writes authoritatively), a Raga, or Raag, is defined as a composition of sounds that colours your mind. Within Indian classical musical systems, a Raag has the power to create very specific emotions in one’s mind, such as joy, sadness, happiness, romance, yearning, devotion, and more - Raga Jog, an evening Raga, expresses the yearning of a longing soul. So now you know.

 

SONGS OF GREEN PHEASANT     DEAF SARAH

 Songs Of Green Pheasant is the musical sobriquet employed by Sheffield-based musician Duncan Sumpner. The candle-lit folk of Deaf Sarah is taken from his 2012 release SOFT WOUNDS, a melancholy yet uplifting meditation on landscape, loss, and memory best listened to late at night or on a rainy day. This is undeniably lovely, but delightfully narcoleptic. Don’t nod off just yet.

 

MARK MCDOWELL     BELTANE DEW 

Bristol-based Mark McDowell became obsessed with your acid folk when he was presented with a bootleg of the LAMMAS NIGHT LAMENTS CDs, comprising eleven albums of late 60's and early 70's Acid Folk compiled by Mark Coyle through the now defunct website The Unbroken Circle, which concerned itself with wyrd folk & arcane acoustic music, encompassing all kinds of strange music concerned with landscape, nature, and a shared history of the British Isles (the Bob Stanley curated GATHER IN THE MUSHROOMS had the same effect on me). Since then, his music has explored many of the themes associated with acid-folk - paganism, witchcraft, and British folklore -  although he’s not above producing a psych-pop gem like Beltane Dew. This track is taken from his last year's FREEDOM TAPES, an album of simple riffs recorded into a flatbed cassette recorder and digitised for the studio. Apparently, the poor quality of the cassette recordings were out of time and tune and had to be stretched into place producing extreme tape flutter, but this only adds to the overall warmth of the album.

 

TIM BURGESS     WHEN I SEE YOU

Well, this is just lovely, and trippy as nobody’s business to boot. Former frontman with The Charlatans, Burgess opens When I See You with a narrated statement of intent (“I wanted to write a song about how I felt when I first saw you …”), and then does exactly that in a near seven-minute exploration of true love and blissful mundanity, written, I’m told, for the uncredited women who provides the backing vocals at the end of the track. It’s taken from his most recent release TYPICAL MUSIC, a sprawling double album that seems to encapsulate everything he’s been listening to these last few years. It rushes headlong through genres and styles, twisting and turning and looping around all the while, often within the same song. When I See You starts off as a cheerful love song that eventually closes with a pulsating, cosmic spaced-out coda. Marvellous.

 

MOODY BLUES     THE WORD/OM

 The two closing tracks from their classic release IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD, released in 1968, is surely the Moody Blues at their pseudiest, but there’s no denying this is top-notch psychedelia from a band who took themselves very seriously indeed. From drummer Graeme Edge’s poem, recited by vocalist Mike Pinder, we learn that the lost chord is, in fact, the mantra Om, after which the rest of the band join in with flutes, sitar, tablas, and cellos, and the whole effect is rather chin-strokingly wonderful. This is one of my key psychedelic releases from the sixties. Absolutely recommended.

 

JON HOPKINS     TAYOS CAVES, ECUADOR, I (excerpt}

 To conclude the show, I include a few moments from electronic producer Jon Hopkins' 2021 release MUSIC FOR PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY, in which he conceptualizes a new genre of music specifically engineered to enhance guided trips. His research took him to a cave in the Amazon rainforest, marveling at nature and thinking about synths. The field recordings from that expedition form the basis of MUSIC FOR PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY, his immersive soundtrack to consciousness exploration that’s timed to the length of a ketamine high. It’s a glacial, continuous, ambient piece that draws on the epic beauty of nature - spacious, delicate, comforting, a pastel mural of sound. I give you about four minutes, and then play around with the ending. Enjoy.

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