Mind De-Coder 112

MIND DE-CODER 112

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 The snowflake has melted!

 

ALAN BLACK     ADVENTURE THROUGH INNER SPACE (excerpt)

 Mash-up artist, screenwriter, polymath - in truth, Alan Black retired from the world of creating mash-ups back in 2019, but he’s left a treasure trove of albums to download and explore on his website . Expect to discover aural soundscapes and ambient creations adapted from a plethora of sources which include the paranormal, historical, literary, philosophical, film, radio, and comedy excerpts, and, in this instance, Disneyland. Adventure Through Inner Space is taken from his 2018 DISNEYLAND REVISITED and is all over the show, allowing the listener to dip into inner and outer space as the mood takes you…

 

APPLETREE THEATRE     …IN THE BEGINNING…

 This spoken word track almost gets lost with everything else going on in the first few minutes of the show, but In The Beginning is taken from the 1968 release, PLAYBACK, by Terrance and John Boylan, previously of The Ginger Men, an act blending rock 'n' roll with folk and blues. After landing a solo contract Terrance recruited his brother and a group of session musicians to concoct this psych-baroque concept album under the name of Appletree Theatre. It was a loosely woven affair, divided into three acts, an overture, and an epilogue, with full-length pop songs linked by vocal narratives and snatches of music, including elements of jazz, acid rock, and classical music. It sold moderately well, given a certain definition of 'moderately well', but both John Lennon and John Peel counted themselves fans, which still counts for something in my book (that would be The Mind De-Coder Book of Vicarious Pleasures, but it sadly got lost on the way to the printers).

 

MOON WIRING CLUB     GHOSTS OF THE UNDERGROUND MARKET

 Witness the entirely shonky, cronky and wonky Ghosts Of The Underground Market, summoned from a congealing swirl of antique cultural entertainment detritus! This is taken from the most recent release from Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring Club, SEPIA CAT CITY - the ill-logical conclusion to the Cat Location LP Trilogy that began with THE MOST UNUSUAL CAT IN THE VILLAGE, continued with THE ONLY CAT LEFT IN TOWN  and now presented as a magnificently dilapidated denouement with Maximum AudioRot Collage techniques in unique MWC stylee. SEPIA CAT CITY is a place seemingly drained of vital nutrients, where architectural styles overleap and overlap, infrastructures crumble, concreted underground markets team with monochromatic-kaleidoscopic memory patterns and unruly yet stylish ghost youth gangs such as the MOSTLY ALMOST SEPIA SOCIETY gather around closing-down department stores and glass corridors over the motorway to jeer mockingly: “GET ON THE TELLY!”

 

RIVAL SELF     PHENOMENOLOGY

 Phenomenology is taken from a superb trip of an album by producer, DJ, turntable musician, and cassette looper, Rival Self, an artist well known within your hip hop circles since the mid-90s, but who seems to have passed me by until the release of his self-titled debut LP last year. It’s a meticulously detailed field trip through the mind of a 60s-obsessed crate-digger, very much aligned with the likes of DJ Shadow and Kid Koala. Combining a love of psychedelia with the spirit of jazz, he’s not beyond stitching together the stoned philosophical musings of Eric Burden alongside snippets of wordplay from the likes of Rakim and Blackalicious, appearing to have accidentally created his own sub-genre of instrumental hip hop in the process. I count myself a fan.

 

THE LOVE MACHINE     INNER EAR FREAKOUT.

 This track pretty much does what it says on the label. Inner Ear Freakout is taken from the 1968 psychsploitation release ELECTRONIC MUSIC TO BLOW YOUR MIND BY!!!, a cynical studio ploy to cash-in on the hippie craze sweeping America. Recorded by session musicians eager to try out all the new buttons on the mixing desk - stereo panning, phasing, outer space synth, and moog sounds abound - it shouldn’t work but it does, and the result is as groovy as fuck.

 

BROADCAST     I BLINK YOU BLINK

I Blink You Blink is  short vignette from SPELL BLANKET, a recently released collection of Trish Keenan’s demos, home recordings, and voice notes for what would most likely have been Broadcast’s fifth album. Oscillating from minute-long loop fragments and textural studies to more fleshed-out, properly arranged songs, Keenan’s otherworldly vocals bring a hauntological ambience to these once lost tunes. I understand that the basket is now empty, and that this is the last material Broadcast will ever release - if so this album plays out as a very fine tribute to the band’s singular brand of retro-futurist psychedelia. The time has come to finally let Trish Keenan go, I guess, and let her return to wherever, or whenever, has made a home for her; and for James Cargill, who formed broadcast with Keenan in 1995, to finally move on, too.

 

ALAN BLACK     ADVENTURE THROUGH INNER SPACE (excerpt)

 We return for another brief dive into the immersive world of Alan Black and the Disneyland ride.

 

JOHN ST. FIELD     DUNE VOICES

 John St. Field was a pseudonym adopted by the semi-legendary Scottish songwriter and folk-musician Jackie Leven back in the early seventies, due to unspecified problems with ‘the forces of law and order.’ Whatever those problems were, they resulted in Jackie’s debut album, CONTROL, recorded in 1971, only being made available in Spain upon release. It’s a whimsical affair, very much at home to the copious amounts of LSD he was taking at the time, as evidenced by this track, the effects-laden Dune Voices. He went on to build a devoted cult following during his lengthy, wildly varied, and often turbulent career but never achieved the level of success that he deserved, but it all began here.

 

PAUL ROLAND     SUMMER OF 1810

 Summer of 1810 is taken from the psych-folk gem WYRD TALES OF ANTIQUARY, released last year, by English singer-songwriter, author, music journalist and all round psychedelic cult celebrity Paul Roland (he’s also been credited with spearheading steampunk music, but we won’t go there). The album (his 25th) features a combination of pastoral interludes and delicately orchestrated acoustic songs which create an atmosphere as evocative as the title suggests. Magickal and transportative.

 

NICK NICELY     DAY THAT NEVER CAME.

 …and speaking of semi-legendary psychedelic cult celebrities, the new single from the greatest pop star that never was, nick nicely (always in the lower key) is a bit of a lysergic treat, and is available to download from Bandcamp right now.

 

RIDE     LIGHT IN A QUIET ROOM

For their 7th album (their 3rd since reforming), Ride have taken all the power from their debut album and dialled it up to 11, or possibly 13 - every track sounds like the momentous closing track from a stupendous album - Light In A Quiet Room, for example, is only track 3, but is epic, a psychedelic barrage of sound that grows from an understated wistful beginning. Amidst the sonic-cathedral sound palette of swirling guitars and dreamy vocals, INTERPLAY also contains funky basslines, shuffling breakbeats, ephemeral synths, fragmented samples, strings and pianos, and moments of electronic processing. It’s a dynamic listen, to say the least.

 

THE APPLETREE THEATRE     LOTUS FLOWER

 

A second track from the baroque-psych concept album PLAYBACK, this track, something of a delightful instrumental groover, complete with reverse tape effects, also appeared as the b-side to the second and final single released to promote the album in 1968.

 

NICK FRATER     LOOSE TEA IN DISGUISE

Croydon-based singer/songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist Nick Frater has made the ultimate pastiche album - a pastiche of a pastiche, in fact. NICK FRATER PRESENTS THE PREBUTLES 1967-1970, released last year, is a loving homage not to The Beatles, but to The Rutles - the original pre-fab four. Eleven unheard songs from The Prebutles' time experimenting with tea and the studio. Recorded using period instruments and techniques, it’s heartwarming stuff, but remember…nothing is real.

 

ASTRAL SON     NOTHING REMAINS

 Astral Son is the moniker employed by Dutch musician, studio wizard, and artist Leonardo Soundweaver when he needs to scratch his psychedelic itch. He creates a lysergic soundscape that exists somewhere between Pink Floyd at their most Astronomy Domine-ness and Spacemen 3 at their most Transparent Radiation-ness - truly it is a place to lose yourself in. Taken from the album MYTHOS, released last year, opening track Nothing Remains shimmers with Barrett-esque chord changes over a motorik groove. Trippy progressive psychedelia at its best.

 

LES BIG BYRD     THE NIGHT BUS

 … and speaking of trippy, progressive psychedelia at its best, Sweden’s Les Big Byrd return with the immersive and experimental DIAMONDS, RHINESTONES AND HARD RAIN, released last year. It’s a mesmerising swirl of sound influenced by everything from disco to a kind of astral spacerock that puts me in mind of Hawkwind as much as it does Spiritualised. But as Jack Kerouac used to say: All comparisons are odious, and album closer The Night Bus finds room to wander down sonic avenues all of its own. I’m no fan of the saxophone, me, rating it barely above the recorder for what it can add to a song, but on this track, the effect is electrifyingly kosmiche.

 

HIERONYMUS HARRY     MARSH OF LOVE

Hieronymus Harry is the non de plume employed by the Toronto-based Harrison Forman, whose debut album, released originally on cassette and then digitally in 2022, invokes a time, place, and feeling that is strikingly different from our present moment. Harkening back to the late 1960s when artists like Pentangle, and the Incredible String Band conjured madcap, mystical worlds, THE RIVER OF DOOM captures naturalistic performances on acoustic instruments to create spellbinding surrealist folk songs.  Marsh Of Love enjoys a haunted melody that puts one in mind of Skip Spence embracing his inner weirdness, but the whole album has this surreal outsider vibe that’s best enjoyed sitting by a campfire deep inside your mind.

 

 ALAN BLACK     ADVENTURE THROUGH INNER SPACE (excerpt)

 In which our hero explores a snowflake. A real one. Not a Trump supporter.

 

LAETITIA SADIER     LA NAGEUSE NUE

 ROOTING FOR LOVE*, the latest release from Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier, employs a palette of humming synths, wandering bass, gentle vibraphone clatter, exotica-hued lounge elements and the sort of intricate backing vocals that suggest this is a Stereolab with the guitars turned down. But the disparate textures and dreamscapes hide an understated fury that can be quite shocking when you actually begin to pay attention to the words. The sociopolitical spirit that always drove Stereolab is still proudly on display here, with songs calling for an end to this era of isolation, fragmentation, and a striving for collective knowledge. I’ve no idea what the Wurlitzer-enhanced La Nageuse Nue is all about (a quick Google search translates the title to The Naked Swimmer, if that’s any help) - Sadier’s deadpan delivery is playfully arch - but it slips and slides across an exotica-tinged landscape with a lysergic melody all of its own.

 (* Don’t get me started on what that title means here in New Zealand.)

 

EAMON RA     HAPPIEST DAY GONE ASTRAY 

Happiest Day Gone Astray is a small perfect interlude of gauzy woodwind and backwards bits taken from the album DUNCE WITCH SNOWMAN, released last year by Seattle DIY pop maven Eamon Ra, an artist very much at home to The Kinks, although not necessarily on this track.

 

LUNER DUNES     FREE TO DO 

Trippy instrumental space music from Luner Dunes, a band whose second album, GALAXSEA, looks to both krautrock grooves and Miles Davis for inspiration. Released in 2011, it was a truly kaleidoscopic mix of trippy acid-rock, haunting choirs, lounge moves, and deep bass dives. It’s recently been given the re-release treatment with a bonus six tracks. Essential listening for space cadets.

 

JULIAN COPE     POET IS PRIEST

This is the full 22-minute version of Poet Is Priest, originally recorded for Cope’s heathen folk masterpiece JEHOVAHKILL in 1992, but rejected by his record company at the time (alongside much of the rest of the album, truth be told - Island Records dropped him from their roster within a week of the album’s release). That version of the album featured a considerably truncated version of the track, but 2006 saw a deluxe version of the album re-released with the full-length version included as a bonus track. It’s an epic piece, in every sense of the word, a krautrock funk song featuring a shamanic guitar riff, rave influences, and incorporating "acoustic astrology" from astronomer and musician Fiorella Terenzi, an Italian-born astrophysicist, author, and recording artist who is best known for taking recordings of radio waves from far-away galaxies and turning them into music. I was listening to it the other day whilst driving over the Remutaka Hills and it sounded mind-blowing. It’s been a long-time coming, but I had to include it in the show.

 

Fans of the arch-drude might be interested to learn that a 6th installment of Cope’s Notes has just been released which delves deep into the making of this most notorious of albums. It includes 40-plus minutes of rare demos, versions and unreleased music, and a 48-page booklet featuring handwritten lyrics and rare photos and is available here just in case this is the sort of thing that makes you unfeasibly excited.

 ALAN BLACK     ADVENTURE THROUGH INNER SPACE (excerpt)

 A final visit with Alan Black to our adventure through inner space. The snowflake melts, although that sentence probably means something entirely different these days.

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