MIND
DE-CODER 97
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The war on drugs has always been a war on people.
Natalie Ginsberg
THE
MOODY BLUES THE DAY BEGINS
With the release of DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED in 1967, the Moody Blues had created something entirely new – a stereophonic-concept-symphonic-rock album which combined high-art pomp with a psychedelic sensibility and early prog-rock leanings. Nobody was expecting it – least of all their record company who were expecting an adaptation of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 for Decca's newly formed Deram Records division in order to demonstrate their latest recording techniques, which were named "Deramic Sound". The Moody Blues had other ideas, and in collaboration with the London Festival Orchestra set about recording one of the defining documents of the blossoming psychedelic era, and one of the most enduringly popular albums of its day. The Day Begins works as something of an overture for the album as a whole, featuring elements of the album’s ground-breaking hit-single Nights In White Satin in orchestral stylee before concluding with a poem by drummer Mike Edge. The whole thing could have been a toe-curling embarrassment, but through sheer creative genius it is, in fact, every bit the equal of SGT. PEPPERS and PET SOUNDS which had previously set the bar almost impossibly high for studio innovation. This track is taken from the original 1968 recording and not the 1978 remix which has pretty much been used since it was discovered that the master tapes had deteriorated, just in case you’re concerned about that sort of thing.
AGITATION
FREE IN THE SILENCE OF THE MORNING
SUN
Considered for decades to be among your Krautrock's second-string artists, Agitation Free nevertheless quickly established a reputation as one of the pioneers of Berlin’s underground music scene. Whilst their first album owed more to trippy cosmic-psych excursions with added exotic middle-Eastern embellishments and ethnic found-sounds (it really is that good), their second release, SECOND, released in 1973, largely eschewed the Floydian explorations for a larger sonic palette which combined free-jazz, rock, avant-garde and progressive rock with a free-spirited funkiness. The superb Silence Of The Morning Sunrise, with electronic birds chirping along to tranquil electric guitars gliding along the organ's mist layers, is very nearly as transcendentally lovely as the title suggests.
Between were a band heavily steeped in the Indian Classical tradition infused with the minimalist, avant-garde goings-on of Stockhausen, Cage, and Reich (et al.) and influenced by the writings of Jung and other philosophical musings of the time – so what you get is something deeply psychedelic and progressive – in other words, entirely forward-thinking and krautrock in nature. Their second album AND THE WATERS OPENED, released in 1973, fuses all of these influences together and throws in some Spiritual Jazz and medieval vibes for good measure. The title track has an otherworldly beauty to it which expresses the serenity of meditation, despite the conga freak-out which appears out of nowhere halfway through it.
SAIRIE SCARLET AND BLUE
Spectral psych-folk from Brighton’s Sairie whose debut EP, released earlier this year, opens with the mesmerising title track Scarlet And Blue, whose ringing autoharp and smoothly pitched vocal legato is strongly reminiscent of Gwydion Pendderwen’s Spring Strathspey, a big favourite of mine and up there with Anne Briggs’ Blackwaterside and Magnet’s Willow Song (I can offer no greater praise). Elsewhere the spirit of Judy Dyble’s post-Fairport band Trader Horne looms large. This is early days for the band but I find myself very much looking forward to an album in the near future.
POPOL
VUH JA, DEINE LIEBE IST SÜßER ALS
WEIN
Or Yes, Your Love Is Sweeter Than Wine, as Popol Vuh draw inspiration from the Song of Songs, the ancient love poems attributed to King Solomon in your Old Testament texts. This is sacred music, crafted from the same synthesis of Eastern and Western popular, classical and devotional traditions that the band visited with the Hosianna Mantra some two years before. Taken from their 1975 release, DAS HOHELIED SALOMOS (THE SONG OF SOLOMON), the album has a timeless, healing quality – vocalist Djon Yun’s voice is serene and ethereal whilst band-leader Florian Fricke’s vision is never less than evocative, taking in sweeping, cosmic swathes of subtly shifting rhythms, tempos, and textures. Sublime.
MR
ELEVATOR ALONE TOGETHER
The woozy and buoyant Alone Together is the stand-out track on the new album GOODBYE, BLUE SKY, released earlier this year by the Californian acid-soaked outfit previously known as Mr. Elevator And The Brain Hotel. Previous albums were more at home to keyboard-driven psych-rock, but this album is an altogether more expansive affair, featuring swathes of synths with vintage tones and a cinematic lustre.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Koobas, who were one of those bands whose careers never really took off. Signed by Brian Epstein, their early career, at least, mirrored that of fellow Liverpudlians, The Beatles, what with both of them playing Hamburg and touring England in the sort of package deals that would feature Helen Shapiro as the main draw, but come 1965 while The Beatles were playing Shea Stadium, Koobas were resident group in the Rock Ballroom at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Ayr, Scotland. Their only album, recorded after they’d already decided to call it a day, is, nevertheless, a celebratory affair, taking in reverb-drenched psychedelia, fuzzed-up guitars, drum-breaks straight out of The Beatles playbook, entirely incidental spoken-word interludes, a couple of truly great songs and, in the case of Circus, a bizarre sound collage inspired by the spirit of the times but not something that I imagine you’ll ever want to hear again. Released in 1969, the album sunk without a trace – the band no longer existed to promote it, and psychedelia, as far as the record-buying public was concerned, was so 1967, and that was that as far as Koobas were concerned. But I remain a fan.
JULIAN
COPE GREED-HEAD DETECTOR
I was driving along Highway 1 the other day. The sky was blue, the mountains and hills crystalline in the early Spring sunshine, I had the road to myself, a song in my heart, and Julian Cope’s 20 MOTHERS playing loud as hell on the stereo. It was a transcendent moment. I haven’t played the album in a few years, but greeted it like an old friend. Released in 1995, this was the album that celebrated Cope’s move to the Wessex countryside where the forces aligned and he took on the role of the ecstatic visionary. The album remains an entertaining and avowedly eclectic collection of love songs and devotional songs, ranging from pagan ur-rock through to sci-fi pop and bubblegum trance music. Greed-Head Detector (always good for a rousing sing-a-long) seems to speak across the years to a post-Brexit, Covid-infected present-day England, ruled over by a bunch of, and not to put too fine a point on it, corrupt, half-witted, unprincipled, incompetent, shameless, hypocritical, bungling, inept, disdainful, mendacious and contemptuous mountebanks, led by a blustering humgruffin who is the very definition of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. All together now, and as loud as you can: “Fuck, fuck, fuck you, fuck, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”
THE
MOON I SHOULD BE DREAMING
Low-key cult psychedelia from The Moon - a kind of second-tier supergroup in the late sixties who featured an ex-Beach Boy (not one of the famous ones) - who understood that backward guitars and cymbals are the very essence of psychedelic pop and that the studio is just one more instrument in the psychedelic arsenal of swirling arrangements. Sadly, the record-buying public disagreed and the group’s two albums were destined for that aforementioned cult-status amongst collectors of this sort of thing. The spacey psych-pop gem I Should Be Dreaming, is taken from the band’s first album, WITHOUT EARTH, released in 1968 - an album that sits somewhere between SGT. PEPPERS and The Left Banke, which should be all the recommendation you need to check it out.
THE
CROMAGNON BAND THUNDER PERFECT
At the very least, the name suggests a Scandinavian
sludge-metal band, but the Cromagnon Band seem to have grown out of a team of
hip-hop producers who decided to have a go themselves and set about reverse
engineering hip-hop - on acid - to see what made it tick, threw in some Moog
and Rhodes heavy psych-funk and ended up with a sound that featured on compilations from Andy Votel
and Doug Shipton’s Finder Keepers label and sampled by The Go! Team, without
having yet released a record. Thunder Perfect - a timeless distillation of
cop-show funk - is the b-side to Green Smoke, a vinyl 45 no less, and their
debut release, a psyched-up dose of cinematic breakbeat business in the 70s
tradition, released as a single last year. An album, it is to be hoped, awaits
in the wings.
NILSON HERE AND NOW/LIFTING THE VEIL
Two tracks from the new album, HERE AND NOW, by Nilson because it ticks so many boxes - acid-folk, hauntology and ambient psychedelic excursions combine to create the state of hallucinatory, hypnagogic wyrdness I get when trying to fall asleep after watching The Wickerman (for the umpteenth time) or Jonathan Miller’s 1966 adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. Pastoral loveliness sits side by side with woozy spectral wanderings, Radiophonic Workshop explorations, Italian Giallo soundtracks and the sort of phantasmagoric landscapes conjured-up by Quentin Smirhes, Delia Derbyshire, English folk songs, the spirit of Public Information Films, and the echoes left behind from when Broadcast and the Focus Group investigated those witch cults in the radio age. It’s both haunting and haunted, beautiful and strange - Nilson appears to have taken in all the same reference points which I enjoy here on Mind De-Coder, but has gone off and made his own contribution to the genre, whereas all I appear to do is play these things on the radio. He is to be lauded - Mind De-Coder’s album of the year and available on Bandcamp here.
PINK FLOYD INSTRUMENTAL IMPROVISATION
This track pretty much does what it says on the label - in 1967 Pink
Floyd were filmed at former landlord Mike Leonard’s house for an edition of the
BBC show, Tomorrow’s World. The band performed an untitled instrumental to
accompany a demonstration of Mike’s sound and light experiments. The episode
was broadcast on BBC1 TV on 17 January, 1968.
CAROL OF HARVEST PUT ON YOUR NIGHTCAP
Kraut-folk loveliness from Carol Of Harvest, who released their only eponymously titled album in 1978, long after the world had moved on from caring about pastoral-prog acoustic explorations if, indeed, it could ever truly have been said to have cared in the first place. Formed in Bavaria in 1976, the group split shortly after the album’s release, having failed to find an audience - a pity really because, as far as mellow, trippy acid-folk goes, CAROL OF HARVEST, enjoys a timeless (that word again) quality - keyboards and synthesisers weave spacey textures and soundscapes into a delicate folk tapestry woven by the rest of the band. The sixteen-minute Put On Your Nightcap sets the tone for the album with spacey arpeggiated guitar parts, astral synths, and sixteen-year-old singer Beate Krause’s mournful vocals. Named after a Walt Whitman poem - - a song of the grass and fields - the band were a fleeting presence which has, of course, made their only album, all the more desirable.
BROADCAST MICROTRONICS 06
In 2003 Broadcast released a 3” CD called MICROTRONICS VOLUME 1: STEREO RECORDED MUSIC FOR LINKS AND BRIDGES, which was sold during their tour to promote their album THE HA HA SOUND. It consists of 11 instrumental tracks, the longest lasting no more than 2:09 minutes and it pretty much does what it says on the label.
PETER
MICHAEL HAMEL THE VOICE OF SILENCE
Holy, meditative music from Peter Michael Hamel, who, following the demise of Between in 1975, has continued to pursue a long and illustrious career that has taken in experimental operatic and orchestral work in the minimalist tradition. His 1973 album, THE VOICE OF SILENCE, is a devotional piece heavily influenced by Indian Classical sounds - he even sings using the Hindustani musical form of Khayal. It’s a long piece, but go with it - it will take you somewhere pretty far out...
QUENTIN
SMIRHES QUENTIN AND THE FISHER PRICE
CLOCK
...and back to earth with a bump - but not necessarily our Earth, because the remarkable Quentin Smirhes (otherwise known as film-maker Sean Reynard to his mum) appears to occupy a world all of his own. This little gem appeared on YouTube last year.
