MIND
DE-CODER 95
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Lose yourself in circles of sound
Sarah Cracknell
JANE WEAVER YOU ARE DISSOLVED
The exquisite Jane Weaver starts the show
with a track from her 2015 release THE AMBER LIGHT, originally released as a
bonus CD to accompany her album THE SILVER GLOBE, but eventually released in
its own right. Featuring collaborations with sound designer, composer, and electronic
music pioneer Suzanne Ciani, Tom Furse (keyboardist from The Horrors) and Sean
Canty from Demdike Stare, the album positively vibrates with new-age
motivational music, radiophonic folk and kosmische krautrock beats. You Are
Dissolved is velveteen synth-pop loveliness raised to the nth
degree (where n = rapturous).
...and especially for Nathan Hall, whilst Jane Weaver segues into the next track, keen-eared listeners can hear music by The Flowerbuds, the fictional group whose appearance at the Paradise campsite scandalises the cast of the 1969 film Carry On Camping. Improbably, Brian Hodgson, a member of the experimental electronic band White Noise – and the man who created the voices of the Daleks and the sound of the Tardis – is thought to have been involved as The Flowerbuds unleashed their brand of improbable cheesy instrumental mayhem on the Carry On team.
JASON CREST A PLACE IN THE SUN
Jason Crest – formerly The Good Thing
Brigade – released 5 singles in their short time together but, despite being
known as a dynamic live act, they failed to garner any commercial success. The
mellotron and flute-soaked psychedelia of A Place In The Sun, released
in 1969, was Jason Crest's last throw of the dice for a hit but, sadly, the
record-buying public were indifferent to its charms and the band split shortly
thereafter. Since then, of course, they’ve become quite collectible and their
singles appear on many compilation albums of British psychedelia. Is it worth
mentioning that no one in the band was actually named Jason Crest?
THE SMALL BREED AN ELDERFLOWER PARLIAMENT
A self-described "small herd of
musicians who produce vibrant melodies" with a lush variation of
harmonies and instruments, The Small Breed find inspiration in the
flower-bathed landscape of the southern Dutch countryside where they were born
and bred. An Elderflower Parliament, released earlier this year, would
find itself very much at home in the golden era of 1967. Think of The Beatles
sharing a special pot of elderflower tea with The Pink Floyd and The Pretty
Things and you won’t go far wrong.
KEITH RELF SHAPES IN MY MIND
At the height of The Yardbirds’ success,
singer Keith Relf was not averse to knocking out a solo single or two. I read
somewhere that with Shapes In my Mind, released in 1966, the year when
when music and culture exploded into something transcendent, Relf was trying to
create, with music, the experience of an LSD trip and, you know, I completely
get what he was trying to do. This is a slightly stranger, alternative version
of the track that was released as a single – it has a darker, more
lysergic feel to the production – but it
ain’t no Happenings 10 Years Time Ago.
MANFRED MANN FUNNIEST GIG
The rather marvellous Funniest Gig
was the nearest Manfred Mann ever got to full-on psychedelia. Unfortunately, it
was hidden away on the b-side to one of the band’s most neglected singles, So
Long Dad, released in 1967, so it has remained something of a lost classic.
Weirdly surreal lyrics recount playing to an audience of strawberries and bananas, whilst the
recording includes snippets of both the A-side and their previous hit single, Ha,
Ha, Said The Clown, lost somewhere within of what amounts to the track’s
middle eight. Groups simply don’t do enough of this sort of thing anymore.
BALDUIN
AUTUMN ALMANAC
Swiss multi-instrumentalist Balduin
displays an impeccable choice in cover versions on his most recent release,
last years’ psychedelic joyride LOOK AT ME, I’M YOU. His cover of The Kinks’
1967 single, Autumn Almanac - my favourite Kinks song – shimmers beneath
a lysergic haze. Radiantly gorgeous.
SAINT ETIENNE WILSON
In 2009, St. Etienne brought in producer
Richard X to remix, reinvigorate and generally reupholster their classic 1991 DIY
hip-pop release FOXBASE ALPHA. This is what he made of Wilson, the
album’s most archly psychedelic track. Featuring a Wilson Pickett organ sample
and a gleeful plundering of a decimal currency training record found at a
jumble sale in 1982 (or something), Wilson manages to reference British
Prime Minister Harold Wilson (who, of course, brought in decimal currency)
whilst, at the same time, channeling the spirit of an Anglicised De La Soul
track. Outstandingly trippy.
MARQUIS OF KENSINGTON THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD
The Marquis of Kensington was a British
studio project featuring Robert Wace, then manager of The Kinks, and the record
producer Mike Leander. I’m pretty certain this was their only release – a sort
of Ray Davies meets Noel Coward vamping of the aristocracy that could have only
been made during that giddy celebration of swinging London in 1967. I think I
first came across it on the soundtrack of Peter Whitehead’s documentary of the era ‘Tonite
Let's All Make Love In London’ in which it appears to act as something of a wry social commentary upon a world in which pop stars, fashion designers, artists,
actors, photographers and their models were quickly becoming the new
aristocracy. Or it might just have been a joke. Certainly, Wace and Leander
didn’t take it too seriously, as evidenced by the b-side, Reverse Thrust,
which I’ve also included, attributed to The Marquis Of Kensington’s Minstrels,
which is essentially an instrumental version of the a-side played backwards.
CHAD AND JEREMY PIPE DREAM
From the Marquis of Kensington to the Duke
of Wellington via Jeremy Clyde, one half of winsome duo Chad and Jeremy, the
Duke’s grandson. The Yanks, of course, loved this sort of thing so the pair
decamped to the states where their career took off as a kind of novelty folk
act in the vein of Peter and Gordon, and where they found a fame of sorts being
photographed as bowler-hatted city gents or appearing as guest stars on Batman,
where Catwoman stole their voices. They were not destined for lasting fame, but
they had one remarkable album in them, THE ARK, produced by the legendary Gary
Usher who, apparently, spent so much money on the album that he was fired by
Columbia Records. Sadly, its luscious mix of baroque psychedelia and sunshine
pop was markedly out of place in 1968 when rock music had turned angry and
hard, but there’s no denying the whimsical, harpsichord-decorated Pipe Dream
is the hippie-anthem that never was.
ROY HUDD
SIR RHUBARB TANSY
It turns out that the late Roy Hudd – comedian,
satirist, author and panto stalwart – also enjoyed something of a musical
career back in the day, releasing no less than seven singles between 1966 and
1978. Sir Rhubarb Tansy, the b-side to his 1967 release Artificial
Jumping Spider Seller is a track very much inspired by the spirit of
psychedelia that wouldn’t have sounded very much out of place if it had been
performed by The Kinks circa their Village Green Preservation days.
Unfortunately, his recent obituaries failed to mention this comedic foray into
the world of whimsical psych-pop, focussing instead on his music hall career,
so I can’t tell you very much else about it. File under: Odd – even by the
standards of the day.
THE DUKES OF STRATOSPHEAR COLLIDEASCOPE
I’m undergoing a bit of a recently-revived
love affair with the Dukes Of Stratosphear at the moment, following the receipt
of PSURROUNDABOUT RIDE, a lovingly curated collection of everything the band
recorded, plus a 5.1 Surround mix of their two classic albums, 25 O’CLOCK and
PSONIC PSUNSPOT. I don’t usually wank on about this sort of thing – but with
albums as gloriously psychedelic as these, a 5.1 Surround mix is a truly
mind-bending treat. The guilelessly trippy Collideascope from 1987’s
PSONIC PSUNSPOT sparkles like a lysergic gem on the window ledge of reality.
THE MOVE
8 MILES HIGH
An absolutely creditable cover of The Byrds’
8 Miles High that burns so brightly it seems scarcely able to contain
the incandescent energy of its own creation. The band wisely eschew any Roger
McGuinn guitar trickery and simply turn all the monitors up to 11, but they get the harmonies spot on. This
would have been recorded sometime around 1967 for a BBC Radio session but I
don’t believe it’s ever been officially released. I found it on an online
bootleg compilation THE MOVE – UNRELEASED BBC 1967-1971 and it fairly blew my
socks off.
SPOOKY TOOTH I AM THE WALRUS
Taken from the band’s 1970 release THE LAST
PUFF, Spooky Tooth come over all Vanilla Fudge with this incredibly heavy cover
of The Beatles’ I Am The Walrus. Steering clear of the psychedelic
production that embellished Lennon’s paean to lysergic disintegration, this
Hammond-laden dirge (and I say that fondly) turned The Beatles’ most
mind-bending moment into something nearly quite menacing – and despite the fact that there's nary and exhortation to stick anything up your jumper in sight, it remains one of the best Beatles covers ever recorded.
For many, Amon Düül’s 1973 release, VIVE LA TRANCE, is either their last good album, or their first bad album (although no album they ever made can truly be considered bad - it's all a matter of perspective) but for myself, I
think I sit somewhere between those two opinions. The album undoubtedly lacks
the freaky cosmic acid-anarchic flashbacks of their earlier albums, but Apocalyptic
Bore is as good as anything they’ve ever done and features a guitar wig-out
that could take you so far out to inner space you’ll need to leave a trail of
kosmiche breadcrumbs in order to find your way back home again.
MOONSTONE MURK
Acid-folk weirdness from Moonstone, a
Canadian psych-folk band whose only album, MOONSTONE, was privately released on
an obscure record label in 1973 to almost universal indifference. The
unpromisingly titled, but strangely compelling, Murk is, without doubt, the strangest thing on it – the rest of the album enjoys a bucolic feel that owes
much to the more esoterically-inclined English folk scene and pastoral elements
of German krautfolk acts, with an acoustic West Coast vibe that puts me in mind
of Jefferson Airplane’s Coming Back To Me. The album is a gentle,
understated wonder – singer Carolyn Maclead sounds like a cross between Vasthi
Bunyan and Linda Perhacs while the tracks deploy delicate and gentle
fingerpicking guitar, sometimes accompanied by flute or piano. Altogether, it’s unquantifiably lovely and ever so slightly trippy. Gorgeous.
LA DÜSSELDORF SENTIMENTAL
Koschmiche ambiance from La Düsseldorf, Klaus Dinger’s post-Neu! outfit. The band’s first two
albums were very much cast in an expressionist, avant-garde mould, often with a
snarling, proto-punk attitude, but their third album, INDIVIDUELLOS, released
in 1980, is a far more relaxed affair in which Dinger’s playful, anarchic
spirit is tempered by layers of synths. Sentimental, an abstract tape
collage, featuring an answering machine message apparently from Dinger's
grandmother, sounds like a church service in reverse.
BRÖSELMASCHINE SCHMETTERLING
For an album released in 1971, Bröselmaschine’s kraut-folk
eponymously-titled masterpiece is pretty much my album of the year – I simply
can’t stop playing it. It’s an album that celebrates the imagination; its gentle,
acoustic grooves, replete with yearning female vocals, flutes, mandolins and
Middle-Eastern instrumentation, inhabit a soundscape of pastoral, ephemeral
otherworldliness. Schmetterling (or Butterfly according to my
trusty Google translate) has a loose Davy Graham She-Moves-Thru-The-Bizarre
vibe going for it which segues so subtly into Jimmy Page's White Summer
about halfway through that the effect can only be described as dream-like.
ASHRA
OCEAN OF TENDERNESS
After the dissolution of the original Ash
Ra Tempel in the mid-70's, Manuel Göttsching
streamlined the group's moniker, redefined its aims and goals, and then
re-emerged in 1976 as a one-man cosmic army. Gone are the mind-warping acid guitar
freak-outs of Amboss, say, replaced, in this instance, with clean, crisp
electronics awash with dreamy synths that float through a slowly shifting
atmosphere as the melodies gently unfurl. Taken from his 1976 release, NEW AGE
OF EARTH (regarded as one of the greatest ambient albums of all time), Ocean
Of Tenderness pretty much does what it says on the label - a gentle,
minimal flow of keyboard shading, electronic chirps, and a soft lead melody which
carefully unwinds throughout the track, sweeps the listener along on tides of
pure harmonic bliss.
THE GENE RAINS GROUP OFF SHORE
Dreamy Polynesian vibes from the Gene Rains
Group, a jazz quartet from Hawaii who performed in the Shell Bar at the
Hawaiian Village, the hot spot for the Island's top Exotica performers. Rains'
short career spanned the early to the mid-1960s, pretty much the golden era of
Tiki and Exotica music, but his work is as highly regarded as that of Martin
Denny and Arthur Lyman. Although he did not achieve the same level of renown as
his peers, Rains' albums nonetheless are textbook examples of the style of
Exotica. The majestic Off Shore is taken from his 1963 release, RAINS
IN THE TROPICS, a record designed to take you on a convivial, aural
voyage through lush, exotic landscapes.
THE SOUL FLUTES TRUST IN ME
A sultry recording of The Jungle Book’s Trust
In Me, recorded in 1968 by The Soul Flutes, a studio project that included
Herbie Hancock amongst a team of all-star session players and, indeed,
flautists. The eponymous album, SOUL FLUTES: TRUST IN ME, is a mellow delight,
and the title track floats on a hypnotic groove, drawing you in…
SIOUXIE AND THE BANSHEES TRUST IN ME
Siouxie and The Banshees certainly heeded
the call – their sensuous cover if this Disney classic is quietly astonishing.
Taken from their 1987 release THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, a David Bowie-inspired
collection of bold re-imaginings of songs that had shaken band members'
respective worlds during childhood and teenage years. I can do no better than
quote the Sounds review at the time: “Whereas once it was about a python
getting ready to crush a little boy to death, now it's a harp-laden lullaby of
rampant, swirling eroticism". Kaleidoscopically concupiscent.
WOLFGANG DAUNER QUINTET TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES TO FEEL THE SETTING
SUN
Wolfgang Dauner, who died earlier this
year, was that rarest of things - an internationally renowned German jazz
musician. Avowedly experimental – in the late 60s he would do to jazz what
Faust would later do to rock music – in 1969 he surprised everyone by turning into a psychedelic-jazz-pop-band and produced an album called THE OIMELS. Apart from the distorted guitar, exotic sounds and
other freak-outs so beloved by fans of psychedelic music, they included one primal punky stomper and sitar-drenched lounge freakouts into their set – they even have a go at The Beatles’ A Day In The Life
– but the astral Take Off Your Clothes To Feel The Sun is
untouchably blissed out. An extraordinary album in every respect.
The Sufis debut eponymous album, released
in 2012, is an album unabashedly in love with PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN,
although later they would take on dubby soft-rock influences. Wake Up, however,
is pure Barrett – playful, whimsical and lysergically curious.
