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EL'S RECORD OF THE WEEK
Posted 17/06/2009 - 12:45 by El
EL'S SINGLE OF THE WEEK THE TIME AND SPACE MACHINE - CHILDREN OF THE SUN Richard Norris, one half of Saturday Morning Breakfast Show favourites Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve (which he formed with Erol Alkan) and The Grid, has a newish project called The Time and Space Machine. Following a rare as hens teeth vinyl-only album release last year, he has finally released his first single, on 7 inch vinyl, called Children Of The Sun - a blissed out psychedelic mix of dreamy vocals driven by a hypnotic krautrock beat that manages to combine Primal Scream and Neu! with the sort of feeling you get when you realise that you've just fallen in love with the girl who works in the trouser shop. (Or something). The single is released on July 6th, but you can hear it first on The Saturday Morning Breakfast Show.
PREVIOUS SINGLES OF THE WEEK GOD HELP THE GIRL - FUNNY LITTLE FROG Funny Little Frog is the 2nd single by God Help The Girl, the side project put together by Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch. The first single, Come Monday Night, was single of the week even before we did Single Of The Week. The current single, a cover of a previous single by Belle and Sebastian from their album The Life Pursuit, is a classy, soulful example of Murdoch's songmanship, featuring vocals by Britany Stallings, orchestra and brass, and overall, a precious feeling of enchantment that makes you yearn for someone to love (and if you have someone to love already, then it makes you want to sing this song to them using your favourite hairbrush). If you get in quick it's available as a free download from www.godhelpthegirl.com Also, be sure to check out the videos on You Tube - they'll make you feel as if you've stumbled across something deceptively special that will put a smile on your face for the rest of the week. MIDDX - GOT ME GOING Only three people know who Middx is, and I ain't one of them, but this excellent single from laptop/bedroom producer Middx, officially my favourite record ever for, ooh, days nows, is a radiant mix of a sweet soul sample and tuneful glitchiness reminiscent of The Avalanches or The Go! Team on a really good day. Only available on 7 inch vinyl, catch it on the Saturday Morning Breakfast Show or check out the video on You Tube. POPPY AND THE JEZEBELS - RHUBARB AND CUSTARD 3rd single from devastingly cool all-girl indie-pop band Poppy and The Jezebels. They formed as 14 year olds and released their first album while still at school. Their previous single UFO is a regular on the Saturday Morning Breakfast Show playlist, but this single, released on 7 inch vinyl or a download from their website, is clever, intriguing and funny and makes me want to be 17 again - which would still probably make me older than them. Imagine Lily Allen produced by Joe Meek and that will give you an idea of where they're coming from.
MIND DE-CODER 11 (23-03-09)
Posted 23/03/2009 - 19:26 by El
MIND DE-CODER 11 (23-03-09) JULEE CRUISE UP IN FLAMES Back when Twin Peaks was first on Julee Cruise was the girl for me. She was the coolest girl around, she sang numbed out songs about broken promises, crushed relationships and heartache in a way that made loneliness seem almost narcotic. She looked great too. Words by David Lynch and music by Angelo Badalamenti, this track is from the album The Voice Of Love, released in 1993. This particular track is from a live performance of Lynch and Badalamenti's Industrial Symphony No.1 in which she starred as the The Dream Of The Heartbroken Woman. It still gives me shivers. And while that was getting started, you may have noticed the opening minute or so of The Stone Roses' Breaking Into Heaven, from 1994's Second Coming, that is to say, the bit John Leckie produced before bailing out. I mention this, just in case you thought it was vaguely familiar and it was puzzling you where you may have heard it before - because, let's face it, none of us would have played The Second Coming recently, would we? Would we? BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD EXPECTING TO FLY I've never really been a fan of Buffalo Springfield, but this particular Neal Young written track, taken from 1967's Buffalo Springfield Again, is as light as a feather and never fails to enchant. (It was arranged for orchestration by Jack Nietzche, trivia fans). LEVITATION NADINE The first thing that you notice about this opening track from their debut Coppelia EP is how short it is, given everyone was expecting Topographic Oceans. The sound is one of syrupy vocals spiralling around this condensed wash of noise that cascades to a sudden stop and leaves you simply needing more...sugar oceans, indeed. C.C.C. MAN ALIVE This evening's mash-up, and very clever. C.C.C.'s speciality is to mix classic 60's tracks together. In this track he combines The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Th Spencer Davis Group, Pink Floyd and Mick Jagger's one outstanding solo track Memo To Turner (from the soundtrack to Performance) to mesmerising effect. You can find it at http://www.mashups.blogspot.com/ along with a whole bunch of excellent mash-ups. CCC is the creator of Revolved and Cracked Pepper, two Beatles Mash-up albums also available at the same site. VELVET UNDERGROUND LADY GODIVA'S OPERATION First time I heard this track it blew me away. When Lou Reed's voice breaks in over John Cale's blank vocals on this Burroughsian rendition of the Lady Godiva tale I very nearly leapt out of my skin. Taken from 1967's White Light/White Heat, one of my favourite albums of all time. I'd never heard a record like it before, and I haven't heard anything like it since. I've never re-bought The Velvet Underground on CD, prefering to stick with the original vinyl recordings After all, if you take away the background noise in a VU recording, you've taken away half the song. I believe the studio was actually being built around them as White Light/White Heat was being recorded. Mo Tucker sounds like she's playing telephone directories - which I think she was. THE ALIENS BOATS This was originally recorded by Aliens founder Gordon Anderson under his Lone Pigeon moniker on the album Schooozzzmmmii a year or two ago. Then The Aliens re-recorded on their most recent album, Luna, released last year in 2008. Of the two, the former version has a rougher edge and a guitar solo that sounds like a mosquito buzzing around your head while you're outside some warm summer's evening trying to enjoy a quiet smoke. The Aliens' version has an altogether more organic feel to it with a softer edge. I toyed between the two but came down on the side of The Aliens, but I'm still not entirely sure I made the right choice. THE BYRDS 8 MILES HIGH I listened to this once under agreeable circumstances and the experience literally thrilled me. I never knew how much was going on it, how important the noise of it was. It's one of the greatest records ever made, and taken from their 1966 release Fifth Dimension, the last to feature Gene Clark in the line-up. This was, without doubt, his finest hour. I'm a big fan of their next album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, but I think this was The Byrds at their very best. PINK FLOYD SEE EMILY PLAY And then we come to quite simply my favourite record from the sixties, Pink Floyd's See Emily Play, released in 1967, when England was swinging liked a pendulum do. Playful, childlike, slightly taunting, sonically amazing - it's the perfect pop song, and trippy as anything. Syd Barret's finest moment. It never fails to put a smile on my face. After that I thought a play a section from one of those helpful educational films warning against the dangers of mixing LSD with hotdogs. The film is a trip in itself. You can watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Sk5EsLvI4 All I can say is, it's never happened to me. THE BEATLES IT'S ALL TOO MUCH By no means The Beatles' greatest song (George Harrison wrote it, for a start, but it does have that brilliant intro, though), but a very good example as to why I prefer English psychedelic music over the American approach. American psychedelic music is notably rock-based, and at its very best is pretty far-out, transformational, and usually has something to do with losing yourself in some desert and riding a wild snake, or something. English psychedelia, on the other hand, is usually pop-based, has a cozy, traditional Victorian nursery-rhyme feel to it and the limits to personal transformation can be summed up in Harrison's lines: "Show me I'm everywhere, and get me home for tea", a lyric I've always enormously comforting. Although recorded in 1967 in the midst of their post-Pepper comedown, you can find it on The Yellow Submarine soundtrack, released in 1969. LISTEN WITH SARAH BLUE PARSLEY Avant-garde, experimental folk music from Sarah Nelson, aka Listen With Sarah. This particular track can be found on the Folk Off: New Folk And Psychedelia compilation album, released in 2006, but can also be found on The Blue Parsley/July EP released in 2004. She specialises in cut 'n' paste, dada-esque sound collages and was discovered by John Peel about a week before he died. RIDE ROLLING THUNDER A lovely tune, this, taken from their third album Carnival Of Light, released in 1994, after they'd left the shoe-gazing scene behind decided to get all authentic. It's a sweet album, but I think the in-fighting had begun by now and they were not much longer for this world. It was more or less at this time that Oasis burst onto the scene with Definitely Maybe. Singer/guitarist Andy Bell was heard to opine that he wished his band sounded like Oasis. A few years later he joined them - which just goes to show that you should be careful what you wish for. JAPANSE TEMPLE BELL ISEHARA Sometimes you just need to give your mind a little space in which to drift away. This does the job perfectly. Taken from the album Japanese Temple Bells 8-17 Century (every home should have one), this particular bell can be heard at Isehara, near Yokohama, apparently. VLADIMIR COSMA PROMENADE SENTIMENTALE Taken from the soundtrack to the defiantly stylish 1982 French art-house film debut by dirctor Jean-Jacques Beineix, who went on to make the classic Betty Blue (still my favourite film ever). Exquisitly shot, the film is well served by this beautiful piano piece by Vladimir Cosma. The film absolutely haunted me the first time I saw it and I spent months searching the record shops of London until I was able to track down a copy of the soundtrack in a little back street off Covent Garden. This was in the days before the internet , of course, and if you really wanted to find an obscure French soundtrack you had to be prepared to give up your weekends for the hunt. I've never regretted the time it took, because Promenade Sentimentale is one of the most beautiful pieces of music you will ever hear, and I seem to have owned a copy of it for 27 years. Cool. JULIAN COPE METRANIL VAVIN Metranil Vavin was a fictional Russian emigré living in Paris in the 1970's who wrote soggily sentimental poems about his mother, who was either dead or possibly stayed behind in Russia; I understand it was never made entirely clear. None of this has anything to do with this track, that for me always sparkles like a jewel in the Julian Cope treasure chest of songs. You can find it on World Shut Your Mouth, his debut solo LP which he released in 1984 and which remains my favourite of the 30 or so albums I seem to own by him. In the sleeve notes, he writes:'Metranil Vavin was a good poet', but I always thought he was singing about me. THE LOLLIPOP TRAIN JOYFUL
Lovely, pastoral pop from Angie Tillett, taken from the compilation Dream Drops, released by Spanish label Siesta as part of a series of three psychedelic albums for children (the other two albums in the series being Algebra spaghetti and Simultaneous Icecream) that kind of sound like The Yellow Submarine on a detour through Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory . Angie Tillett, purportedly a teenage chambermaid from the kitschy English seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea, went on to produce two infectiously giddy pop albums under the guise of the wonderful Death By Chocolate, based around 60's spy movie instrumentals, 70's childrens programmes theme tunes, quirky bubblegum psychedelia and a quintessentialy English pop sound. With the Lollipop Train she produced one album, Junior Electric Magazine, an album that shimmers with incandescent vivacity that is frivolous, sophisticated and engaging - you won't hear a prettier record. I'm a big fan. Can you tell?
MARK F SMITH PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN
Mark F Smith, mind, not Mark E Smith, because that would be too weird. Wind In The Willows is one of my favourite books that typifies the kind of Englishness that English psychedelic pop of the 60's aspires to, so it's only fitting that I play my favourite chapter here - the magical, haunting Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (needless to say it made something of an impression on Syd Barrett, too). Think of it as a bed-time treat. It will take you somewhere far away.
SCHUBERT TRIO IN E FLAT OP.100
I know nothing about classical music - I don't even know what 'Op.100' means - but I do know that I like this, that it fit the mood of comfortable reverie I was trying to create, and that you can find this particular recording on the soundtrack to Tony Scott's The Hunger, that I played a little something from last week. Seems to me that once the psychedelic bubble burst a lot of bands were burnt out and were looking for something simple and authentic to return to. A lot of bands found it in American country music, others looked to the blues. I can't really be doing with either - but having enjoyed a bit of Schubert under engaging conditions, say, I don't think that you can get very much more authentic than this. Bach's pretty good, too. (And I think we can safely leave The Band at The Big Pink).
THE BEATLES TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS
Possibly The Beatles' finest moment, certainly one of the greatest psychedelic records ever made, if not the greatest - the exhilerating Tomorrow Never Knows. "I want the sound of a thousand Tibetan monks chanting..." said John, and he got it. From 1966's Revolver, of course, this was the only song I could think of to finish the Mind De-Coder series with. 'Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream'. Sometimes that sounds like a call to arms...
And that was Mind De-Coder 11. The final in the series by me, at least. I will return later in the year with Meadow Meal.
Until then, thanks for listening. It's been a pleasure.
And remember kids...just say 'know'.
(That's Mick Jagger at the very end, by the way. Just in case it was bugging you.)
MIND DE-CODER 10
Posted 16/03/2009 - 14:05 by El
MIND DE-CODER 10 (16-03-09) SYD MATTERS AUTOMATIC Syd Matters, otherwise known as French musician Jonathon Morali, released the debut album, a Whisper And A Sigh, from which this track is taken, in 2002. On it he creates elegiac, finger picked folk over etherial electronic rhythms that place him somewhere between Nick Drake and Radiohead. It provides the perfect introduction to this evening's show, an altogether more gentle soundtrack to come down to. THE PRETTY THINGS BRACELETS OF FINGERS The Pretty Things' album SF Sorrow, recorded in 1967, has the dubious distinction of being considered the world's first 'Rock Opera', pre-dating The Beatles and The Who by a year. In it, we follow the story of Sebastian F. Sorrow, from birth, through love, war, tragedy, madness and the disillusionment of old age. (It's a comedy). It's widely regarded as something of a psychedelic classic, and was recorded in the same EMI studios that Pink Floyd and The Beatles were using to create their own psychedelic classics, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and Sgt. Pepper's. For one reason or another it failed to create the same impact as either of those two albums, and became one of the great lost albums of the sixties, which is where I found it. Bracelets Of Fingers seems to be about our hero's job at The Misery Factory. Do you know, I think it's narrative may have had something to do with that whole business concerning its popularity. PAUL WELLER 111 Bit of a suprise this. For the past 20 years or so I've regarded Paul Weller as a trad-dad rockist who seemed to be turning into Eric Clapton with each album release. Then he comes along with 22 Dreams, an album alive with music's possibilities, embracing electronica, krautrock, classical, folk and psychedelia (with the odd lumpen dad-rock filler, it must be said). 111 is a chaotic mix of Moog, mellotron and free-jazz experimentation, for example. I mean, who knew? I like the album so much I include another track from it later on. JEFFERSON AIRPLANE A SMALL PACKAGE OF VALUE WILL COME TO YOU, SHORTLY For Many, it's Surrealistic Pillow, for others, it's After Bathing At Baxters. I'm an After Bathing At Baxters man, myself. Granted Surrealistic Pillow has got Somebody To Love and White Rabbit on it, as well as the lovely acoustic ballad Comin' Back To Me, but After Bathing At Baxters, recorded and released in 1967, the same year is Surrealistic Pillow, is literally a trip. Released at the height of the west coast hippy vibe, this is an album soaked in LSD use, offering up a unique, experimental sound of the sixties waiting to implode; but for now, everyone is clearly having a whale of a time as is in evidence on this particular track. There'll be a better one later on in the show. BEYOND THE WIZARD'S SLEEVE RED TUESDAY From the album West, released last year in 2008, and a very good example of exacly what it is that Erol Alkan and Richard Norris do to other people's psychedelic classics. Problem is, I don't know who did this tune originally, so there's not very much else I can say about it. COLLEEN THE GOLDEN MORNING BREAKS Colleen creates simple, fragile and instrumental tunes of child-like, folk-speckled psychedelic bliss (in a fuzzy-hearted, etherial sort of way, that you may or may not find captivating). The Golden Morning Breaks, released in 2005 and from which this track is taken, spins music as delicate as an early-morning dew-kissed web, and is as diaphanous and lovely. But I need to save some superlatives for the next track... ANNE BRIGGS SHE WALKS THROUGH THE FAIR
Something of a folk standard this - I have versions by Shirley Collins and Sandy Denny to name but two, but Anne Briggs breathes such life into it that this is possibly the definitive version of the song. (Any folkies want to come and argue this point with me?). Briggs' voice was quite simply pure and breathtakingly beautiful - she, on the other hand, hated the sound of her recorded voice so much she stopped singing at the age of 27. As folk music became electrified and increasingly popular, with bands such as Fairport Convention and Pentangle reinventing the British folk tradition, more and more women were singing in a style started by Briggs, her legend flourished, and yet still she refused to sing. It's now been 30 years or so since the woman touted as the greatest legend in English folk music retired from the scene and she's still not singing. On the album Anne Briggs: A Collection, one of my favourite albums ever, you will find her singing, largely unaccompanied by instrumentation, and her crystalline voice is mesmerising and spellbinding. She only ever recorded 30 songs or so - but as somebody once wrote - these are not just songs, they are the key to a way of thinking. Anyway, I'm a big fan, me.
ISOBEL CAMPBELL HORI HORO
Here's someone who agrees with me, although I've often thought that Milk White Sheets, the album from which this song is taken, released in 2005, owes more to the loveliness of Vashty Bunyan. Isobel Campbell, of course, used to be in Belle And Sebastian, where she was often accused of adding a certain twee-ness to the band's proceedings. She put paid to that kind of criticism with her work with gravel-voiced bluesman Mark Lanegan and The Ballad Of The Broken Seas, which I never really cared for, myself, because I really can't be doing with gravelly-voices. On this album, however, Campbell's voice is almost weightless in its delicacy - the album is charming and simple, she even has a go at Willow's Song - all in all, it's lovely.
DELIBES THE FLOWER SONG
From the opera Lakme, by Leo Delibes, of course and, sadly, very popular amongst advertisers these days. I first heard it in the film The Hunger, Tony Scott's seductive 1983 vampire movie, featuring David Bowie and the sexy lesbian scene between Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon for which it served as a very erotic accompaniment. Despite the fact you can hear it everywhere these days, from shopping malls to elevators to British Airways adverts to bloody cellphone ringtones, it still remains one of the sexiest, most exotic pieces of music you are ever likely to hear. It certainly had an effect on me, and I'm not going to not play it just because every bugger has heard it. I don't know who is responsible for this particularly ravishing recording - but you can find it on The Hunger soundtrack.
ERIK SATIE GYMNOPÈDIES #3
On the other hand, when it came to Satie's Gymnopèdies, I did think - hang on, every bugger really has heard these, but they fit the mood I was trying to create so perfectly that I had to use one of them, albeit a little reluctantly. But only a little. Anyway, I chose Gymnopèdies #3 because it's the least well known of the series, but also because I've discovered that it has a hypnotic like quality that can lead to an almost out of body experience, if listened to properly. Which is perfect because it allows the next track to arrive almost unnoticed...
SPACEMEN 3 ECSTASY SYMPHONY/TRANSPARENT RADIATION (FLASHBACK)
The numbed-out, narcotic bliss from Spacemen 3's key recording, The Transparent Radiation EP, released in 1987. This record blew my mind the first time I heard it, and even now I still get a shiver when I hear vocalist Sonic Boom utter, "I was wide awake in a dream..." only to follow it some 7 minutes later with the immortal, "You know? It sounds like...ecstasy". A record that will wash all over you and take you somewhere very far away, a place of distant reverie, and very splendid too.
JULY HELLO WHO'S THERE?
And back to earth with a bang. Returning to England in 1968 from a stint in Spain and just in time to catch the tail end of the psychedelic craze, The Tomcats hastily renamed themselves July and got out a quick album, called July, which has since become a much sought after psychedelic artefact. They were never as good as Pink Floyd, say, but the album does hold two genuinely weird psychedelic classics - Dandelion Seeds and My Clown. It also has this track, Hello Who's There, a kind of chirpy cockney knees up in Small Faces stylee which I included because sometimes one doesn't want to disappear up one's own arse. And it makes me laugh, of course. Mind you, I edited about three verses out of it because it does get a bit much, and then I had it disappear into a bit of Faust I had left over from last week.
JEFFERSON AIRPLANE WATCH HER RIDE
The second single that was released from After Bathing At Baxters and one on which Grace Slick's vocal just soars in a way that always makes me soar too.
I have it disappear into a rather fine radio ad they seem to have made for Levi Jeans round about the same time as the album release in 1967 - the thing is, is it possible for a counter-cultural group to make an advert, no matter how ironic or trippy, without shredding any remains of their artistic dignity? However, I happen to own a collection of psychedelic promos and radio spots from the sixties (every home should own one) and they all do appear to be at it. It is a very good promo, though.
MY BLOODY VALENTINE SWALLOW
From The Tremelo EP, released in 1991, as an accompaniment for the Loveless LP. It's a lovely tune, for a start, a strange collage of faintly Middle Eastern noise over which vocalist Bilinda Butcher's voice floats like a giddy swoon. It gives me goosebumps.
THE BEATLES REVOLUTION 20
The Legendary Revolution 1 (Take 20), that appeared on the internet for about 5 minutes last week before getting taken down by the powers of darkness. Fortunately, I just happened to be on line at the time. So here you are, a genuine curio for your listening pleasure...
PAUL WELLER NIGHT FLIGHT
From 22 Dreams, again, Paul Weller with more acid-folk charm. And that would be Terrence McKenna positing the theory that you and I might actually be the centre of the mandala. Or something.
And that was Mind De-Coder 10.
I thank you.
MIND DE-CODER 9 (09-03-09)
Posted 09/03/2009 - 17:04 by El
MIND DE-CODER 9
(09-03-09)
ALEISTER CROWLEY THE POET
The Great Beast himself introducing tonights show with a poem taken from a special selection of wax cylinder recordings made between 1910-1914, and made available in 2001 as The Great Beasts Speaks. The scratchy intonation is then drowned out by the first few moments of Why Don't You Eat Carrots?, by Faust, the opening track from their first album Faust, released in 1971. As the noise dies away we float off into...
THE ORB THE DREAM (THE FUTURE ACADEMY OF NOISE, RHYTHM & GARDENING MIX)
2007 saw the re-union of Dr Alex Patterson with original sonic conspirator Youth to produce The Dream, an album that sounded rather like 1991's seminal Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, and which kind of made every other Orb album since that release until this one irrelevant. That is to say, it's got the tunes, and lots of little tripped out, dubbed up, ambient bubblebath type bits that made The Orb so splendid in the first place. I've plundered those bits shamelessly for tonight's show.
DOT ALLISON ALLELUJAH
Lovely track, this, taken from her third album Exaltation Of Larks, released in 2007. Dot Allison was once part of One Dove, whose album Morning Dove White, released in 1993, remains a beautiful, gorgeous, intoxicating benchmark in ambient dub pop. Exaltation Of Larks is a very different affair, rejoicing in it's gentle loveliness, this is an album of soft, heart-breaking, fragile folk songs that manages to sound like a hazy velveteen swoon. Or something. This track, Allelujah, disappears into some more noise supplied by Faust, the opening minutes from Meadow Meal, also from Faust, an album I've been playing a lot recently, until that too is overtaken by the mesmerising sounds of...
CHRISTINA CARTER PALE ROSE CREAM
Rare as hens teeth, this, not least because it was only made available on a tape cassette, limited to 200 copies. Luckily, some of us never threw our old tape players out. Luckier still, some of us know the distributer's mother, otherwise this lovely album would have completely passed me by. Christina Carter is better known for her work with free-folk group Charalambides. This album, Texas Working Blues, released last year in 2008, is a bewitching album of simple ballads, layered in electric grace that leave the listener simply mesmerised. I expect you can download it these days.
NICK NICELY 49 CIGARS
The B-side to his single Hillyfields (1892), released in 1982, and which took a year to make. This track was recorded in one take. I'd be hard pressed to say which side I prefer - 49 Cigars often makes me sing out the title in inappropriate places whenever it pops into my head, though. All in all, the perfect pop record. A lovely bit of vinyl.
NOBODY & MYSTIC CHORDS OF MEMORY THE SEED
Taken from one of my favourite records, Tree Coloured See, released in 2005. Nobody, otherwise known as Elvin Estella, has produced an album bursting with a rainbow of pop-coloured melodies and spiralling abandon that never fails to delight. You should check it out.
FORTYONE ANOTHER SHORT STORY
Taken from the album Give Your Hugs A Kid, from cut 'n' paste genius Fortyone. It's like listening to cartoons on the radio. Fortyone must have produced about 30 albums by now and they all sound like this. He is a man who needs to get out more. He will send you all his albums for free if you write to him at www.41music.net and ask him to. He's nice like that.
THE ORB FOREST OF LYONNESS
LINDA PERHACS CHIMACUM RAIN
Almost unbearbly lovely, Chimacum Rain is taken from the exquisitely otherworldly album Parallelograms, released in 1970 - an album that shimmers with eerie beauty.
THE ORB SUPERNATURAL
SERGIUS GOLOWIN DIE WEISS ALM
A song that sounds unlike any other song I've ever heard and is very beautiful indeed. Sergius Golowin was a disillusioned ex-MP, poet, mystic and disenfranchised Gypsy leader who hung out in the Swiss Alps with his three wives and a lot of acid. As Julian Cope states in Krautrocksampler, his one album, Lord Krishna Von Goloka, released in 1973, is one of the finest Cosmic rock LPs of all time, and it only has three tracks on it - a Kosmiche epic of high-magic proportions. This is holy music and it will get you high. Sergius Golowin lives in the mountains still. This album could only ever have been made there.
BETA BAND IT'S NOT TOO BEAUTIFUL
The Beta Band were a band that promised so much and delivered so very little. Their debut album, The Beta Band, released in 1999, is a case in point. It lacked all the sparkle and inventiveness of their opening salvo, the 3 EPs, to the extent that the band disowned it themselves, stating that record company interference kept them from producing the album they wanted. It did have this one track on it, though, that hinted at the greatness they could have achieved if only they'd been left alone - the epic It's Not Too Beautiful. Just in case you were wondering, that orchestral piece is taken from the John Williams score to the Walt Disney film Black Hole.
THE ORB PHANTOM OF UKRAINE
SALAKO DO IT YOURSELF
Probably my favourite track on tonight's show, taken from the magical little album Musicality, released in 1999. It is an album of light, pastoral, inventive, playful, whimsical, delightful psychedelic pop songs that sound like it was recorded in someone's bedroom in Hull, which I think it was.
BLUR CARAMEL
I never really cared for the album 13 when it came out - I just couldn't find the tunes on it, and if nothing else, Blur are about the tunes. Over the years I kept returning to it and then, one day, there they were, the tunes! (Hidden behind varying shades of grief, it must be said). And William Orbit's production is great, creating a whole world of sound to wrap yourself up in. Blur's grown up and heartbroken album.
There were bits and bobs that I knocked together from pieces of a mix put together by MP3J, a mash up artist who creates long mixes based around The Beatles. At some point he mashes up Nirvana's No Apologies with John Lennon's Imagine. You can hear the full track at www.mp3j.podomatic.com where it's hidden away on WTF 47
THE BEATLES STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
At some point I had to play this record; it is, after all, one of the most psychedelic pieces of music ever created - it would have been churlish not to have played it. It still sounds great. It's never been matched, really. Nobody really knows how to, or aspires to, make records this fantastic these days. Can you imagine what the world would sound like if they did?
MAJOR ORGAN AND THE ADDING MACHINE TRANSMISSION
A bit of noise, really, from the densely weird album Major Organ And The adding Machine, released in 2001, by members of Elephant 6 (which either means something to you or not). The album is made up of sound collages, tape loops, distortion, spoken word pieces and sometimes songs. It is very psychedelic but also very frightening, depending upon the quality of your mood. It therefore disappears very nicely into the following track...
RIAA FRANKENSTEIN COMPUTER MURDER GOD
Tonight's mash up, brought you by RIAA, from the album Schizophrenia Suite, an album made up of mash ups and sound collages inspired by mental illness. What you get in this track, then, are the paranoid schizophrenic rantings of Francis E. Drec versus Henry Mancini's Background to Murder. Francis E. Drec was a disbarred US lawyer later known for the bizarre socio-political tracts of conspiracy theories with which he regaled the mass media. There are various websites dedicated to his spoken outpourings, streams of words spewing from his polluted, fractured mind, but I suspect that you'd have to be as falling-apart as he was to actually spend any time listening to them. This track lasts 10 minutes or so. I thought about 30 seconds was all anyone would want to deal with, so I bring us back to Earth with...
MARK FRY FLUTE AND LUTE
Recorded in 1972, Dreaming With Alice, from which this track is taken, is one trippy little psych-folk record that comes over as a cross between Donovan's erotic mysticism and the woodsy romps of Comus. If this song sounds like he's taking the piss, then he probably is - typical lyrics from the album go like this: "Did you ever stumble on Satan's smile or a Catholic Saint's confession / And life is like walking on an endless mile, each step another lesson". The album's title track is split into 8 sections and spread out over the whole album. The overall effect is one of focussing in and out of a trip. The album itself is surreal, rural and magical, eventually submerging itself in echo, fuzzed wah-wah guitar and backwards tape. I love it.
JULIAN COPE LAND OF FEAR
The first outing for this song that Julian Cope seems to have returned to at least three times as far as I can work out, most completely on his 20 Mothers album. I like this version, though, which is tagged onto the end of Eat The Poor, one of the track's on Cope's first solo EP Sunshine Playroom, released in 1983. I don't believe it's ever been released on CD so this is taken from my original vinyl copy, so it may sound a bit scratchy.
FAUST MISS FORTUNE (OUTRO)
The last few minutes of Miss Fortune, one of the three tracks on Faust, that I've been dipping in and out of for this show. The album is a trip in itself and defies categorization - but not unlike every musical idea ever distilled through one perfect moment of insane creative energy and then released on clear vinyl, with a clear lyric sheet and a clear jacket. To mis-quote Copey, it sounds like music from a parallel universe suspended in time played through an old radio. Crucial, in other words.
And that was Mind De-Coder 9. I thank you.
MIND DE-CODER 8 (O3-03-09)
Posted 04/03/2009 - 15:02 by El
MIND DE-CODER 8 (02-03-09) THE CHRISTIAN ASTRONAUTS PREPARE TO FIRE Taken from the album Beyond The Blue, a home-made album by the Shoup family in 1971 - it's my favourite Christian kiddie record ever, featuring all members of the Shoup family and a seven foot cardboard robot called Loosenut. Join them as they travel through space in search of the Lord Jesus and his heavenly resting place. Or not. BEYOND THE WIZARD'S SLEEVE SPACE The introductory track from the album West released in 2008. It gets your head sorted right for what is to follow. PINK FLOYD ASTRONOMY DOMINE I've been avoiding using anything by Pink Floyd in the Mind De-Coder series because it's all a bit obvious, and there are so many other great psychedelic tracks that I've wanted to introduce you to. However, they did make the best psychedelic album in the world ever, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, in 1967 and now that we've made it to Mind De-Coder 8 I felt that the time was right to slip some into the show. This is taken from the original mono recording that's been unavailable for some years now, but was recently re-released as part of the 3-CD set they released three years ago to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the album. ASH RA TEMPLE SCHWINGUNGEN (excerpt) The great Ash Ra Temple, and I'm sure that there are those who would consider that I have done the band wrong by only playing an excerpt of this beautiful track, taken from the album Schwingungen, released in 1972. The band are normally noted for their mind-bending, soul-enhancing wig outs, but on this track, which I think translates as 'Vibrations', they are on on a trip to find God with a great eternal chord sequence that the band themselves believed was the sound of heaven. Hopefully they didn't find Captain Shoup and family waiting for them there. GORILLAZ HONG KONG I was listening to this track the other day and I thought it would sound great on Mind De-Coder. I still stand by that initial thought even though I have no idea why I had it. You can find it on D-Sides, released in 2007, a collection of B-Sides and rarities. Over the introduction to the song I played a snippet from a the album Teenage Diary released in 1965 and starring the then newly crowned Miss America Vonda Von Dyke, designed to scare good American Christian teenagers away from the horrors of sex. Despite it's simplistic message - sex is bad, Jesus is good, it does ask one very profound question that has stayed with me ever since I first heard it - What does Love require? This is a very deep question and not as easy to dismiss as you might imagine. Or maybe that's just me. Skin up, eh? MAGNET GENTLY JOHNNY From the soundtrack to The Wicker Man, recently released in 2002. One of the sexiest songs I've ever heard. TRACY THORN SEASCAPE From the absolutely lovely little album A Distant Shore, Tracy Thorn's first solo release in 1982. Every song is wonderful elegy to vulnerability and heartache, and I was torn as to what track to include, but I decided on Seascape because it includes my second favourite line in any song - when she sings "...and I don't want to be saved", I realise that I don't want to be saved either. THE PRIMITIVES OCEAN BLUE And then I hear a song as beautiful as this I remember that I do want to be saved, because any world that has a song like this in it is a world worth living in. Gorgeous and ravishing. Taken from their album debut Lovely, released in 1988. PETER WYNGARDE JENNY KISSED ME Possibly the weirdest record I own is by Peter Wyngarde, and it's called When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head, originally released in 1970 and then withdrawn almost immediately due to the fact that nobody knew what to make of it. Since then it has become an album steeped in myth and mystery (don't you just love albums steeped in myth and mystery?). Peter Wyngarde, of course, played Jason King, part TV sleuth, and part hirsute shag-monster for ITC's Department S show in 1968. For a time, Wyngarde was the world's number one pin-up, so when he was approached to make an album to cash-in on his popularity, the record company was expecting a set of contemporary standards in the manner of Tony Christie singing 'Avenues and Alleyways'. What they got instead was an album of unbridled, rampant male sexuality couched in an aesthetic abandon that set of alarm bells even in those permissive times. No one was prepared for the song Rape, in which he explores the possible virtues of rape in several different languages like it was something you might actually want to try out every now and then, or was unlikely to forget 'Hippie and the Skinhead', in which Wyngarde reads out a letter to 'The Times' by two Home Counties skinhead girls, or the tale of 'Billy the Queer, Pilly Sexy Hippy' delivered as the worlds first rap record, over a Nashville honky tonk musical styling. Bizarre doesn't quite cover it. Amidst all this outrageousness, however, you will also find 'Jenny Kissed Me', which always makes me wish that she'd kissed me too. The album is now available on CD after being unavailable for the best part of 30 years. Marvellous. THE SHORTWAVE SET SUN MACHINE Taken from last years album Replica Sun Machine, by South London's junk shop enthusiasts The Shortwave Set. I do believe that is the sound of the hitherto unknown psychedelic banjo I hear being plucked. Possibly my favourite track on tonight's show. JULIAN COPE S.T.A.R.C.A.R. The mighty Julian Cope in epic form on this psyche-folk freakout taken from his 1994 eco-warrior manifesto of an album Autogeddon, in which he rails against car culture and the horrors of urban living. Not everyone's favourite Cope album, but definitely the one on which he has attitude in his latitude and longing in his longintude. SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE PROCESSION OF CHERRY BLOSSOM SPIRITS This track is taken from the album School Of The Flower, a true head-trip of a record that creates vivid psychedelic folk soundscapes that are both beautiful and ominous. Six Organs Of Admittance is the work of Ben Chesney, and this is his seventh album, released in 2001, and it is rain swept, broken and lovely. Allow yourself to float away. PG SIX GO YOUR WAY Go your way was originally recorded by Anne Briggs, who has appeared on a couple of Mind De-Coder's herself. This version is by Pat Gubler, from his first full-length solo release as PG Six, released on the album Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites, also released in 2001. It is an album of sublime simplicity, unashamedly folk, but blended with a lo-fi pop sensibility. He also uses the harp. More people should use the harp. THE GO! TEAM WILLOW'S SONG As I think I may have mentioned before, this is my favourite song of all time, and it's quite generous to anyone who wants to give it a go. Here The Go! Team apply their own distinctive approach and it works out really well. You can find this version on the bonus disc that came with their last album Proof Of Youth, that came out in 2007. I think this is an avenue that The Go! Team should explore more fully. I mean, for how long can you make a career out of shouting, no matter how joyously? IN GOWAN RING CIPHER'S STRING IN THE TREE IN I have no idea what this song title means. In fact, I know very little about In Gowan Ring; apart from what's on the Compendium CD, released in 2000, from which this track is taken. But, just for the record, In Gowan Ring is the work of American composer and multi-instumentalist B'eirth. He plays acoustic songs with strong roots in folk, medieval, and psychedelic music. Perfect for Mind De-Coder, then. Somewhere in this track I included a verse from It's A Fine Day, by Jane, because it felt like it belonged there. Hope that's all right. DAVID BOWIE LADY GRINNING SOUL So if I've done my job properly, you should have drifted away on some pastoral little trip that would have taken you off to some place with butterflies and possibly some stoned unicorns grazing in misty meadows, perhaps. And what better way to bring you back than with this track by David Bowie, from 1972's Aladdin Sane. This has always been my favourite Bowie song because it's just so late night and sexy and reminds me of someone who haven't seen for too long. It's one of those sort of songs. I thank you.
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