MIND DE-CODER 89

MIND DE-CODER 89

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

“I’ve never seen such infinite beauty in all my life - I wish I could talk in technicolour”

                                                                                                 Woman takes LSD in 1956

THE PORCUPINE TREE     THE SKY MOVES SIDEWAYS (PHASE 1)

I think The Porcupine Tree started out as a private joke between multi-instrumentalist Steve Taylor and collaborator Malcolm Stocks who, entirely for their own amusement, fabricated a fictional band with a detailed back-story which included information on alleged band members and album titles, as well as a ‘colourful’ history which purportedly included events such as a meeting at a 1970s rock festival and several trips in and out of prison. Wilson even went on to create several hours worth of music to provide evidence of the bands existence and then, at some point, in the early 90s, the band became a real thing, with real members, and real albums and, indeed, real fans. Initially inspired by Pink Floyd the early albums were highly psychedelic but I understand that they became a lot heavier with later albums exploring something of a progressive metal direction (words to strike fear into the heart, I fear). The Sky Moves Sideways, however, from their 1995 release of the same name, more or less melts from the speakers, creating a lysergic ambiance that is almost overwhelming. Epic.

JANE WEAVER      ELEMENT (LOOPS VARIATION)/MILK LOOP/ARROWS (LOOP VARIATION)/FOUND BIRDS

Four tracks from the new release by swirling psychedelicist Jane Weaver, the fairly wonderful LOOPS IN THE SECRET SOCIETY, a re-imagined journey through parts of 2014’s THE SILVER GLOBE and 2017’s MODERN KOSMOLOGY, with new ambient pieces primed and polished, and new tangents explored. By turns propulsive, cosmic, exotic and highly transcendent, the album is segued as a seamless whole, taking the listener on an immersive journey through brain-melting, luminous, cosmological soundscapes that take in proggy spacerock explorations, motorik loops, electronic experimentation and ambient sketches which combine to capture the sounds and colours of a particularly glorious sunrise. Marvellous.

MANFRED MANN     RAINBOW EYES

 Striving for some kind of cultural relevancy, the Manfred’s dabbled in psychedelia but their hearts were never really in it. That being said, the dreamy Rainbow Eyes, recorded in 1967 but never released (it hardly got beyond this demo stage) hints at what could have been.

NATHAN HALL AND THE SINISTER LOCALS     SCATTERSPARKS

The title track to the most recent release from Nathan Hall And The Sinister Locals is a trifling fancy, a hazy interlude, a quirky vignette, but one which employs that most favoured of all the psychedelic tropes - the backwards guitar, so there’ll be no complaints from me, then. Elsewhere, off-kilter delights, bucolic whimsy, clever wordplay and psychedelic loveliness abound.

 GRATEFUL DEAD     MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON

Considered by many to be the very apex of the band’s experimental phase (bless them an’ all, but I could never be doing with that whole bluegrass thing that followed) AOXOMOXOA, released in 1969, features many of the Grateful Dead’s most wilfully out-there tracks. Mountains Of The Moon has a gorgeous folk feel with the simple guitar picking and harpsichord accompaniment giving it a lysergic renaissance feel - they even go so far as to throw in some folderol-de-riddle’s for that authentic bucolic effect. This version is taken from the original recording - in 1971 the band suffered something of a crisis of confidence and remixed much of the album, removing many of the embellishments that must have seemed like a good idea at the time but were no doubt suggested by their prodigious acid use - for myself, I prefer to keep the choir that accompanied the original version of this song, which remains, to my mind, one of the prettiest they recorded.

BRAINTICKET     (THERE’S A SHADOW) WATCHIN’ YOU

Brainticket’s debut album, the potently hallucinogenic  COTTONWOODHILL, actually came with a health warning: "Listen only once a day to this album. Your brain might be destroyed", but their second release, PSYCHONAUT, released in 1972, is an altogether more relaxed affair - more trippy than overwhelmingly lysergic - but (There’s A Shadow) Watchin’ You is probably the most hard-rocking track the band ever recorded. Elsewhere, sitars, tablas, and various other ethnic instruments sit alongside more traditional instruments and draw a line between psychedelia and European prog.

COIL     STRANGE BIRDS

Formed in London in 1983 by John Balance as a solo side project to Psychic TV, Coil developed into a full-scale musical group in 1984, when Balance cemented a partnership with Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson, founder member of Psychic TV and formerly of Throbbing Gristle. Archly experimental, their vision encapsulated a potent trinity of chemically-altered states, occult arcana and technological transmutation which explored, as the cover of their debut release puts it: “How sound can affect the physical and mental state of the serious listener”. The vaguely tropical sound piece Strange Birds is taken from their 1999 release MUSICK TO PLAY IN THE DARK VOL. 1, one of two albums that marked the band’s migration from solar to lunar expressionism - it’s an extraordinary, immersive listen, and possibly not for the faint of heart. Julian Cope is a fan…

JULIAN COPE     POSITIVE DRUG TEST

...so much so that his newest release, JOHN BALANCE ENTERS VALHALLA, is dedicated explicitly to the memory of John Balance, who died of an alcohol-related fall in 2004. Across five rhythm-laden tracks, Cope brings a funky, upbeat tribute to Balance, in which hefty, largely instrumental, grooves shimmer and shake, guiding the listener through the various stages of the artist’s journey into legendary Valhalla. The massive motorik groove of the 15-minute title track depicts John’s journey out of the Earthly Realm, its final musical moments enacting a conversation between two air-force pilots mistaking John’s Shamanic Spectral Body for a distant UFO - if this was ever the case, the mighty Positive Drugs Test suggests that the UFO in question may well have been Funkadelic’s cosmic mothership. Whilst not the psychedelic album Cope’s been promising for some time, this is as far-out that Archdrude has been for ages, a cause for some celebration in these here parts. I found myself mesmerised.

WEST COAST POP ART EXPERIMENTAL BAND     AS KIND AS SUMMER

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band’s music was often as unwieldy as their name - haphazard and pretentious but, on those occasions when it all came together, the band could produce music that was undeniably exquisite and very much at home to off-the-wall psychedelic excursions. As Kind As Summer is taken from their fourth (and arguably their best) album, A CHILD’S GUIDE TO GOOD AND EVIL, released in 1968, pretty much at the height of west hippie excess. The band comes with quite a back-story - rich-kid playboy buys himself into the band and bank-rolls their first album in return for being allowed to front them and write all their songs - but as this song only lasts less than two minutes, you’ll just have to read about it elsewhere - MD 73 is a good place to start.

THE FOURMYULA     BANG ON HARRY

This week’s kiwi band (I’m thinking of turning it into a short-lived thing) are The Fourmyula who, between 1968 and 1971 when they disbanded, enjoyed a string of hits unmatched by any other New Zealand group. In fact, their No. 1 hit Nature was voted New Zealand’s best song in 75 years in a 2001 poll. The cheerfully Barrett-esque Bang On Harry is taken from their 1969 album, GREEN B HOLIDAY, considered something of a milestone in your New Zealand pop circles; an ambitious concept album themed around a summer tour and immortalising the small towns and local characters encountered of which, I expect, Harry was one.

THE STAINED GLASS     A SCENE INBETWEEN

The Stained Glass are considered one of the great lost bands of the West Coast psychedelic era, of which, it must be said, there are quite a few. A Scene Inbetween, tucked away on the b-side of a 1967 release, is a terrific track that show-cases their distinctive take on psychedelia at their very best, but for some reason the fickle record-buying public ignored them and they split in 1969.

NICK NICELY      SOUVENIR

nick nicely, of course (he prefers the lower case spelling), is no stranger to the whims and vicissitudes of the record-buying public himself but has, nevertheless, been able to grow quite the cult following since the release of his debut single Hilly Fields (1892), back in 1982. The mighty Souvenir is taken from his 2017 release SLEEP SAFARI, an homage to unconsciousness, lyrically exploring sleep’s mysteries through a surrealist eye. On it, he eschews his earlier mix of backwards guitars and lysergic ambience for swirling, distorted electronic rhythms that owe as much to the dance floor as they do somnambulist reverie, but the overall effect is, as usual, profoundly psychedelic, full of tuneful inventions and deep euphoria. Gorgeous.

THE HARE AND THE HOOFE     DID I DREAM PARTS 1-4

The Hare And The Hoofe are rapidly becoming a band to cherish - their marvellously entertaining and deliciously weird debut album seldom off the phonogram. Bursting with fuzzed-up psychedelia and deranged invention, THE HARE AND THE HOOFE, a double album no less, has garnered praise from all quarters - my favourite comparing it to a Blake’s 7 re-imagining of The Pretty Things’ SF SORROW, which sums things up very nicely, I think. The deliriously catchy Did I Dream Parts 1-4 sees something very similar to The Psychedelic Furs’ Sister Europe reconceived as a mad rock opera performed by IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD-era Moody Blues, and I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface of the album yet. A mind-bending listen.

THE FENWEH     WHERE DID THE SEA GO?

Absolutely gorgeous - The Fenweh’s knack of dreaming up sublime melodies makes them the band I go to when I want to wander around the house humming a pretty tune and feeling good about myself and more or less everything else too. Their eponymous debut album, released last year, is simply a superb distillation of gather-in-the-mushrooms-era British folk acts such as Heron, Trees and the Judy Dyble-led Fairport Convention when they were still trying to be Jefferson Airplane but, and get this, with better tunes. There are other reference points: Where Did The Sea Go? Could be taken from Michael Head’s THE MAGICAL WORLD OF THE STRANDS. They really are that good.

SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS     MOTHS MISTOOK US FOR THE MOON

Plaintive loveliness from Soft Hearted Scientists who returned earlier this year with a cover of The Bee Gees’ Please Read Me for an as-yet-unreleased album for the wonderful Fruits De Mer record label and, from the b-side, the first new music from  SHS in some years, Moths Mistook Us For The Moon, which ought remind anyone who needs reminding why we need a new album from the psychedelic troubadours as quickly as possible. A thing of quiet beauty.

PURPLE OVERDOSE     HER ARMS EMBRACED THE SUN

I think you know what to expect when a group calls itself Purple Overdose, and the Greek band Purple Overdose don’t disappoint, producing a cosmic blend of hard rock and jazz combined with distinct oriental influences and whatever it is the Greek equivalent of acid folk is called. It is, as you might imagine, a sound heavily indebted to the 60s, but you’ll receive no complaints here. Her Arms Embraced The Sun is taken from their 1999 release, REBORN, an unabashed celestial voyage of lysergic grooviness and arch progginess.

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MIND DE-CODER 88

MIND DE-CODER 88

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

In an empty, unarticulated space our mind loses our sense of time as well. Our mind loses our sense of time and we enter the twilight of the immeasurable. Dämmerung des unermesslichen.

                                              Thomas Mann

PETER COOK AND DUDLEY MOORE     THE BEE SIDE

Quite literally the b-side to their 1967 single The L.S.Bumble Bee, a satire upon all the fuss being stirred up in the popular press regarding LSD use amongst the cognoscenti of the swinging London set, of which Pete and Dud were undoubtedly a part and a remarkably well-informed part at that. The b-side is done in the style of a Dagenham sketch taken straight from Not Only...But Also in a knowing style that suggests the pair knew of that which they were talking about.

THE DIRTY FILTHY MUD     FOREST OF BLACK

The unpromisingly monikered Dirty Filthy Mud were little-known garage act who released just the one single in 1968, a fuzzed-out slice of propulsive rock that I’m pretty sure has been co-opted by Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve at some point or other in their career. It’s just the sort of thing they’d go for - audaciously obscure with an electronic pulse that owes more to the likes of United States Of America and Fifty Foot Hose than Uncle Joe And The Fish who were, at the very least, an inspiration. I just read that last sentence back to myself - I could be talking gobbledegook.

THE CHAPTA     JOURNEY TO THE SUN

New Zealand’s Chapta unleash their inner Spinal Tap (in their Listen To The Flower People phase) for this gloriously dippy track, taken from their debut album, the fittingly entitled THE CHAPTA - ONE, released in 1971 (although, rather disappointingly, their second and final album was called OPEN DOOR). Hailing from Christchurch (one of New Zealand’s least rock ‘n’ roll cities - let’s face it), the band released five singles in the couple of years they remained together and were highly regarded at the time - sadly they’ve been swallowed by the mists of time - you may have to ask your parents about them.

JEAN LE FENNEC     MES ENFANTS D’AUTRE PART

Generally regarded as one of the weirdest French psychsploitation albums to emerge from the 6os, Jean Le Fennec’s PHANTASTIC, released in 1969, is a bizarre mix of spacey instrumentation, distorted vocals and far-out synthesiser effects that comes over like a cross between Serge Gainsbourg and Bruce Haack channeling the spirit of Syd Barrett. Jean Le Fennec remains a tantalizingly obscure figure in your psych-pop circles, although a bit of research reveals that he may have been Belgian and also responsible for the space-age cosmic krautrock release PLANÈTES released in 1981 under the name Jean Hoyoux, if that’s any help.

THE HARE AND THE HOOFE     LADYE LOVIBONDE-GOODWIN PAVANNE

A marvelous, marvelous band - The Hare And The Hoofe are a polymesmeric force of cosmic far-outedness whose eponymously entitled debut album provides a head-spinning mix of bonkers psychedelia which critical opinion places somewhere between The Who, The Stooges, ELO, Sparks, Pink Floyd, Brainiac, Bowie, Judas Priest, and, if I may throw my own tuppenth worth into the hat, Cranium Pie. Available as a gatefold double LP, Disc One rounds up the ‘hits’ so far and includes the mind-bending Ladye Lovibonde-Goodwin Pavanne, whilst the second consists of a rock opera featuring time-traveling scientists and giant laser-eyed robots. So, a proper band then. It really is as good as it sounds.

THE TRANSPERSONALS    TO FIND HER EVERYWHERE

To Find Her Everywhere is a song so transcendentally gorgeous it instills within the listener an almost-state of narcotic bliss, which it pretty much defines as ‘falling in love, drinking red wine and taking strange drugs’ - which is kind of hard to disagree with. Taken from their debut release SAY GOODBYE TO FREE WILL (THE PERILS OF CHEERLEADING), an album of majestic psychedelia, released in 2011, this track is simply sublime and is the musical equivalent of being intoxicatingly loved-up.

TANGERINE DREAM     FLUTE ORGAN PIECE

This track is taken from Tangerine Dream’s recent 18-CD boxset IN SEARCH OF HADES: THE VIRGIN RECORDINGS 1973-1979, a lavish and, indeed, definitive statement of this period in the band’s history. It features newly remastered versions of all the albums released in this creatively fecund period and includes a number of bonus discs, including a selection of out-takes from their PHAEDRA sessions, recorded in 1973, from which the rather lovely Flute Organ Piece is taken. PHAEDRA pretty much marked the end of Tangerine Dream’s truly experimental stage - after this album they would veer more towards the Vangelis scheme of things, but here they largely eschew melody for experimentation and atmosphere, the music creating an introspective soundspace of colour.

ROKUROKUBI     TARKA

Rokurokubi is the stage name of Brighton based singer-songwriter Rose Dutton whose debut album, SATURN IN PISCES, is an astonishing collection of lush acid-folk songs redolent of times spent jamming in woods and otherwise getting it together in the country. The songs explore kaleidoscopic fairy tales of love, lost innocence, longing and revenge that exist somewhere between the traditional folk canon found in Cecil Sharp House and the psychedelic folk re-imaginings of the 1970s. Absolutely spell-binding.

 

SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS     PLEASE READ ME

This track sees the welcome return of Soft Hearted Scientists with a cover of the Bee Gees 1967 psych-pop gem Please Read Me, recorded especially for the wonderful Fruits De Mer record label. An understated flourish of sitar introduces the song, which then soars like a magical white kite on the gentlest of lysergic breezes. It really is quite captivating. The b-side is just as lovely and features an SHS original which will, no doubt, find itself in the next show. Croeso yn ôl, bechgyn.

I’m playing this song for my good friend Rhys who loved this band and who sadly passed away before I could play him this record. Wherever you are now, brother, I hope it’s full of stone circles, magic mushrooms and comely maidens with pupils the size of dinner plates.

MEG BAIRD AND MARY LATTIMORE     IN CEDARS

Ambient folk gorgeousness from Espers’  Meg Baird - who could sing a shopping list and make it sound celestial - and acclaimed harpist Mary Lattimore, whose enigmatic, spectral experimental harp sounds move and unfold like nature itself. Their first album together, 2017’s GHOST FORESTS, plays to both their strengths, but rather than produce the album of exquisite pastoral loveliness you’d expect, the pair have made an album that’s altogether stranger, exploring the sound of light on water here and seismic geopolitical anxiety there, both ethereal and earthy, bucolic and avant-garde, in which Baird’s voice is as much the instrument as Lattimore's harp. Beauty, previously unimagined, awaits.

JUSTIN HOPPER & SHARRON KRAUS WITH THE BELBURY POLY     WANDERER

This track is from the latest Ghost Box release, CHANCTONBURY RINGS, a spoken word and music project by Justin Hopper, author of the book ‘The Olde Weird Albion’, folk musician Sharron Kraus, and Belbury Poly’s Jim Jupp, whose production permeates the album with a hauntological ambiance that takes in distorted pipes, ghostly morris dancers, accordion groans and dark synths. Equal parts folk, electronic music, poetry, prose and found sound, the album is a poetical, autobiographical and psychogeographical account of Chanctonbury Ring, a pre-historic hill fort that sits atop Chanctonbury Hill on the West Sussex Downs. Evocative, to say the least, and completely compelling.

CARL TURNEY & BRIAN CAMPBELL    LO SATURNALIA!

“Mid-winter is the low ebb of the year, the heart of the lifeless season when the sun describes a wearily flattened arc across the sky: its luminosity dimmed and wan, its passage brief. Shadows lengthen, branches grow bare and bony, temperatures drop and darkness prevails. There is a need for cheer, for hope and conviviality, for reminders of Spring’s renewal to come. Old mid-winter rites and rituals...bring a little warmth and light to this chill time of scarcity and spiritual despond”.

Thus reads the accompanying notes to THE FOLKLORE TAPES CALENDAR CUSTOMS VOL.III - MID-WINTER RITES AND REVELRIES, the label’s exploration of the other side of winter. Each of the artists contributing to this limited edition cassette compilation from Folklore Tapes - an open-ended research project exploring the myths, mysteries, magic and arcana of Great Britain - researched a particular mid-winter ritual and, informed by their findings, conjured a soundpiece in response. The Clinic’s Carl Turney and Brian Campbell looked to Saturnalia, the ancient Roman festival of Saturn - a period of general all-round merrymaking and good cheer, and, otherwise, a pagan pre-cursor to Christmas - as their inspiration, and take us on an hallucinogenic sleighride through the season with acousmatic carolling, text-sound collage, composed music and augmented field-recordings. Perfect for these crisp evenings when the smell of woodsmoke fills the air.

THE COMET IS COMING     TIMEWAVE ZERO

The Comet Is Coming inhabit a boundaryless world in which cosmic jazz, grime, dubstep and psychedelic rock wash over each other to create a potent brew that owes as much to Slimzee and 808 State as it does The Mahavishnu Orchestra or Sun Ra’s space(d) excursions. Taken from their second album, TRUST IN THE LIFEFORCE OF THE GREAT MYSTERY, released in 2019, Afro-beat rhythms carry Timewave Zero, pushing the limits of jazz beyond conception, but in a good way.

GRAND VEYMONT    UPIE

Grand Veymont are one of those bands that we fans of Stereolab and Broadcast turn to when we’re looking for a percolating hauntological  fix, although Upie, taken from their eponymous debut album, transcends the band’s influences and shows just how far-out they can go when they become untethered. Taking their name from the highest peak in the Vercors Regional Nature Park in South Eastern France, this French band excel at combining a pastoral kosmische vibe with the rhythmic pulse of Can and Neu! and the more off-kilter moments of Air to create what they call a krautrock salon.

MOON WIRING CLUB     PHANTOM FUNGICIDE

Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring Club picks up on a latent oddness and hauntological nostalgia associated with GHASTLY GARDEN CENTRES for his latest release. Phantom Fungicide is a woozy, discombobulating trawl through the ramshackle aisles of your nearest Placemakers gardening section.

THE OTHER WITHOUT     NATURE HAS MADE A GARDEN IN THE WILDERNESS AND ITS NAME IS BEAUTY

I came across this track on Day 7 of Julian Cope’s SydArthur Festival  - the world’s first psychic rock ‘n’ roll festival - in which the archdrude invites us to celebrate, indeed, cerebrate, the full lunar month that separates the deaths of those two psychedelic giants - Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee - who passed away within 28 days of each other in 2006. The awesome tranquility of Nature Has Made A Garden In The Wilderness And Its Name Is Beauty is presented by Wiltshire duo The Other Without from their current release THE OTHER WITHOUT 2, a collection of four long blissed-out trips of quiet motion, field recordings, keyboard swells, birdsong, waves, motifs a-tinkling, and slow planetary turns.

  

NATHAN HALL AND THE SINISTER LOCALS     GHOSTS ARE NOT AS STRANGE AS BEING ALIVE

Nathan Hall is emitting - not only do we have a new single from the Soft Hearted Scientists, yesterday saw his new album with The Sinister Locals, SCATTERSPARKS, arrive in my mailbox. The album features 24 songs that cover a lot of ground, from psychedelic lullabies, communing with dead Roman soldiers on a boring Bank Holiday, sentient scarecrows, the death of smugness, vile blood soaked royalty, yummy mummies, hallucinations in a garden in Devon, a smack down between Winter and Spring, a requiem for Laika the space dog, a modern take on the House of the Rising Sun theme of corruption in bad places, a horrible prelude of winter during an August walk in Cardiff Bay near a deserted fairground, and an Ivor Cutler influenced end of the album song.

As usual, we’re offered a cornucopia of psychedelic delights, wistful imagery, baroque flourishes, bucolic whimsy and analogue electronics, and whilst the spirit of Syd is never too far away, these songs owe more to the visionary soundscapes of Brian Wilson; spacious and light, with swirling melodies, inventive touches and a lysergic sense of playfulness, this is an album to charm the senses and entrance the mind.

THE PULSELOVERS     THE EDGE OF THE CLOUD

For its latest release, the very fine A Year InThe Country brings us ECHOES AND REVERBERATIONS, a field recording-based mapping of real and imaginary film and television locations that is, in part, an exploration of their fictional counterparts’ themes - from apocalyptic tales to never-were documentaries and phantasmagorical government-commissioned instructional films via stories of conflicting mystical forces of the past and present; scientific experiments gone wrong and unleashed on the world; the discovery of buried ancient objects and the reawakening of their malignant alien influence; progressive struggles in a world of hidebound rural tradition and the once optimism of post-war new town modernism.

Each track contains field recordings from the spectral will-o’-the-wisps of locations’ imagined or often hidden flipsides. The Pulselovers present The Edge Of The Cloud, inspired by K. M. Peyton’s book ‘Flambards’, which was  filmed for television in 1978, and tells the story of Christina Parsons and her struggle to find her place in a world of Edwardian tradition (a privileged life in the titular country manor where servants, horses and fox hunting are a way of life) and modernity (suffrage, aviation, emancipation and independence). The track features field recordings made near Sawley Hall, Yorkshire where the series was filmed, but I do wish they’d been able to include snippets of David Fanshawe’s stirring Theme For Flambards - I always enjoyed it and don’t think I’ve heard it in 40 odd years.

MOON WIRING CLUB     AN ETERNITY IN GARDEN RETAIL

Room for one last trip around the garden centre as spectral presences dip in and out of earshot like potentiality just beyond grasp.

Owl Service end titles music

 AL STEWART     MY CONTEMPORARIES

Al Stewart was a key figure in your British folk circles. He played at the first-ever Glastonbury Festival in 1970, knew Yoko Ono before she met John Lennon, shared a London flat with a young Paul Simon, and hosted at the Les Cousins folk club in London in the 1960s. His debut album, BEDSITTER IMAGES, released in 1967, is an engaging but slightly twee recording, replete with observational storytelling, poetic lyrics and baroque orchestration. He would go on to better things but the album is not without a particular charm all of its own. I include the outrageously throwaway My Contemporaries because it brings a smile to my face each time I hear it.

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