MIND DE-CODER 110
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“If God Dropped acid, would he see people?”
Steven Wright
THE LOVE MACHINE MINDBLOWER
I’ve been fascinated by this album since I came across it a short while back.
I mean, just check out that cover. Released in 1967 ELECTRONIC MUSIC TO BLOW
YOUR MIND BY!!! (that title - three
exclamation marks!!!) promises so much, but, unusually, for a shameless,
psychsploitation, studio cash-in, actually delivers. The music is groovy,
trippy, and intensely psychedelic, employing the very latest studio in trickery
- stereo panning, phasing, out space synths, and cosmic Moog sounds - and
although no actual band was hurt in the making of this album, it sounds
like the sort of group you’d expect to come across in an episode of Batman
(played by Adam West, obvs.) where the fight scene with The Riddler and his
minions takes palace inside a swinging night club populated by non-plussed
teens digging the latest sounds.
THE TWILIGHTS ONCE UPON A
TWILIGHT
The Twilights started life as a beat-pop group in Adelaide, but
following a sojourn to the UK in the summer of 1966 (where they recorded three
tracks at Abbey Road Studios, with producer-engineer Norman Smith, no less)
they embraced Eastern philosophy and introduced exotic instruments to their
burgeoning sound which served them well when they returned to Australia. The
group were popular enough to be invited by Seven Network (a major television
network in Australia) to develop a weekly TV sitcom based on The Monkees TV
series and the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night film. The project was to be sponsored by Ford Motor Company which got
as far as a pilot before Ford withdrew their support and the project was
shelved. Music for the show was released on their next album, the trippy ONCE
UPON A TWILIGHT, released in 1968.
THE BEATLES GLASS ONION
Glass Onion was a song deliberately filled with red herrings,
obscure imagery, and allusions to past works written by Lennon as something of a
head-fuck for all those people who read too much into Beatles lyrics. Fully
aware of the power of The Beatles’ own mythology, and with a general dislike of
those who over-interpreted his work, Lennon deliberately inserted references to
I Am The Walrus, Strawberry Fields Forever, Lady Madonna, The
Fool On The Hill, and Fixing A Holein order to suggest a continual
strand running through The Beatles’ works, even if such a strand was never
intended in the first place. It was a psychedelic fix on their 1968 release THE
BEATLES (the WHITE ALBUM to you and me), an album that had otherwise left the
trappings of flower power behind them in 1967.
DAVE MCLEAN FAINTLY BLOWING
This is an absolutely brain-melting cover of Kaleidoscope’s 1969 release
Faintly Blowing by Dave McLean, taking a break from his day job with
London psych-duo The Chemistry Set. It will be released in April as an 8″
lathe-cut single recorded for the marvelous Fruits de Mer record label - home to all things of a
psychedelic, krautrock, acid folk, and
proggish nature. Mind De-Coder favourite Peter Daltrey, from the original band,
is particularly fond of the ending.
THE LUCK OF EDEN HALL LOVE IS
ONLY SLEEPING
Chicago’s neo-psychedelicists achieve psychotropic lift-off with this
cover of The Monkees’ Love Is Only Sleeping, taken from last year’s AN
INTRODUCTION TO THE LUCK OF EDEN HALL released by the Fruits De Mer record
label. The album features every track the band has produced for the label plus
a couple of original tracks released as singles.
JULIAN COPE SQWUBBSY VERSUS
KING PLANK
In the absence of any new material from Julian Cope so far this year (I
think last year saw five or so releases, so he’s been a bit slow getting out of
the gate this year) I’ve been enjoying giving FLOORED GENIUS 3 - AN ODDICON OF LOST RARITIES AND VERSIONS
1978-1998 a spin of late. Released in those far-off days of the year 2000, it
features a selection of previously unreleased demos, studio and live
recordings, many recorded during periods when Cope was in between record deals.
The archly proto-metal weirdness of Sqwubbsy Versus King Plank was
clearly recorded sometime around 1990 during the making of PEGGY SUICIDE as it
features, well, Sqwubbsy the 7-foot alien that had taken to hanging around with
Cope in them days, and the riff from that album’s Hanging Out & Hung Up
On The Line is wandering around the background of the song like a lost waif
in need of adoption. It also includes a dedication to Cope’s Uncle Neil, the
other black sheep of the family.
THE SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS
WALTZ OF THE WEEKEND
The title track from last year’s rather splendid release from the
Cardiff based wizards of psychedelia, inspired by a day trip to Tintern Abbey.
If you haven’t bought yourself a copy of the album yet (it was my album of the
year just in case that counts for anything) the ubiquitous Fruits De Mer have
just released a collectors version on vinyl - a triple LP! - which includes a
complete disc’s worth of extended remixes by the album’s producer that takes what
are already epic tracks into new territory. Extremely covetable.
PAPERNUT CAMBRIDGE SERGEANT
MAJOR MUSHROOMS
What can I say? They had me at the title. Sergeant Major Mushrooms is
taken from the album MELLOTRON PHASE VOL. 2, an entirely instrumental album of
library music released in 2017 by the Kent based project formed by Ian Button - formerly
guitarist with Death In Vegas and Thrashing Doves amongst others, now a prolific
underground producer/writer and co-founder of Gare du Nord Records. Apart from drums, some bass guitar, and percussion, all
the instrument sounds on the record were made originally by a Mellotron or one
of its contemporary tape/disc-based playback instruments, and it’s a gas from
start to finish. You’ve got a marching band on acid with your Sergeant Major
Mushrooms, cosmic space psych, slinky 60s swinging London grooves, spy
thriller action scenes and everything you could possibly want from an album.
BROADCAST MICROTRONICS 6
(EXCERPT)
Mictrotronics 6 only lasts about 90 seconds but even then I play
only an excerpt, just for the effect of it, you understand. It’s taken from the
album MICROTRONICS VOL. 1, a collection of instrumentals initially released on
tour for 2003’s HA HA SOUND. It sells itself as stereo recorded music for links
and bridges, which is pretty much what I used it for (I also overlaid a few
seconds from a new release by Moon Wiring Club over the top of it, but we’ll
save that for another day).
EMILE EASY RIDE
For his second solo release, SPIRIT, Danish-French musician Emil Bureau
creates an experimental and organic sound that is very much at home to nature,
the universe in general, and technicolour soundscapes in particular. Best known
for fronting Copenhagen based psych-rockers The Sonic Dawn, the re-minted Emile
finds a new home for his more introspective acoustic compositions which draw
inspiration from late 60s counterculture and the surrealistic art movement.
Contemplative and highly lysergic.
KIM FOWLEY WAR GAME
I think I included this track for its novelty value, a genuine
what-the-fuck moment from his debut album LOVE IS ALIVE AND WELL, released in
1967. Elsewhere on the album you get Fowley in full-on LA flower-power mode,
although whether the self-proclaimed Lord of Garbage meant it, or whether this
was just one more bandwagon he was gleefully ripping off while doing his best
Sky Saxon and The Seeds impression depends upon how just how far you think his
tongue was entrenched in (hopefully his own) cheek. The jury is out.
ST JOHNS WOOD AFFAIR WHERE IS
THE ENTRANCE TO PLAY?
Originally released in 2016, the eponymously entitled ST JOHNS WOOD
AFFAIR immerses itself in the bewitching allure of 1960s psychedelia. Main man
Keith Smart was a longstanding guitarist in Nirvana (not that Nirvana)
but now takes centre stage in his own band, named after that band’s best song.
The darkly shimmering Where Is The Entrance To Play is a loving homage
to the psychedelic sound of the 60s - ley lines, eternal sunshine and
kaleidoscopic eyes abound.
DARLING BUDS LET’S GO ROUND
THERE
The Darling Buds were known more for their ebullient songs and bright
melodies than the deft employment of the occasional psychedelic flourish, but Let’s
Go Round There, taken from their 1989 debut album POP SAID hits the mark
quite nicely. Willingly or not, they were part of Melody Maker journalist Chris
Roberts’ Blonde Movement - a handful of buzzing bands with blonde singers which
would have included The Primitives and Transvision Vamp. I can’t think of any
more, although Roberts came up with a whole Blonde Manifesto that was very
entertaining at the time despite being predicated upon his love for Blondie,
and Debbie Harry in particular. Anyway, I was thinking about them the other
day, gave the album a spin and was reminded how much I enjoyed this track back
then.
SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS RODE
MY BIKE VERSUS THE DANDY HORSE
This is one of three radical reworkings of tracks from WALTZ OF THE
WEEKEND by album producer and all-round psychedelic polymath Frank Naughton. He
pretty much takes the original, slips it a sugar cube and turns it inside out.
On the new 3-disc vinyl version of the album, these three tracks get a side all
to themselves. Of such things, dreams are made.
ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA 10538
OVERTURE
I think this track started out as a b-side for an upcoming single by The
Move. Then Roy Wood added six cellos to the mix and Electric Light Orchestra
was born. From 1970 onwards, ELO carried the torch of British pop
experimentalism, earning the praise of the masses, the critics, and many of
their idols, including John Lennon himself, who once described the outfit as
the “sons of The Beatles.” Thanks to their use of Harrisonesque descending
chord progressions, 10538 Overture sounds as though it could have been
plucked from the darker corners of Magical Mystery Tour or Sgt. Pepper’s.
Released as a single in 1972, it gave the band their first hit. You wouldn’t
want to listen to their first album more than once (this was the best thing on
it) but the future was just round the corner.
EMILE IMAGES
The second track from Emile on this evening’s show (there’s a lot of it
going on). Images, a balm-like instrumental with overdubbed birdsong,
is also taken from his most recent release, SPIRIT, an album replete with
many a soothing treat.
WALLACE COLLECTION DAYDREAM
Something of an earworm, this. It’s been floating around my head for
ages, so I thought I’d better just include it in the show. This is the original
version by the Belgian band Wallace Collection, who recorded it in Abbey Road
in 1969. It was a huge hit all over Europe although the UK remained strangely
resistant to its charms. There was a slightly more popular version recorded by
the German vocal group the Günter Kallmann Choir in 1970 which The Beta Band
sampled on their track Squares back in 2001 (which is where I first came
across it), and I understand that Günter Kallmann version was also sampled by
I, Monster for their 2003 hit Daydream In Blue, but I think, on the
whole, I prefer this version by the Wallace Collection, not least because the
outro seems to go on for longer than the actual song.
KING CREOSOTE DRONE IN B#
I thought I’d play the full 36 minutes of this track because it’s a
deeply immersive and, indeed, deeply psychedelic listen, and your 36-minute
tracks hardly ever get played on the radio these days. It’s the closing track
on the fiftieth release (!) by King Creosote (Kenny Anderson to his mum), an
album of enigmatic synths, fractured loops, and songs of delicate beauty. The
first 10 minutes or so pretty much do what it says on the label, A Drone In B# in fact, which isn’t as much fun
to listen to as you might imagine, so I layer it with a few bits and bobs until
it gets going, but once it gets going it reveals an affecting landscape of
sound in which to lose yourself. Enjoy.
JULIAN COPE PLANET RIDER:
TRANSMITTING
In the absence of any new material from Julian Cope in the last ten
minutes or so I thought I’d conclude the show with this track taken from the 1993 release FLOORED GENIUS 2 - THE BEST OF THE BBC RECORDINGS 1983-91, an album that
documents the period following the ignoble demise of The Teardrop Explodes in
which Cope and his wife Dorian locked themselves away and began plotting a new
life together - for some time it would involve Dinky toy cars. This is a radically
different reworking of the Planet Ride that would appear on ST JULIAN and was originally recorded for a Janice Long
session in 1986 but not without a cosmic charm of its own.
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