specialist music

MIND DE-CODER 33

 

 

 

 

BUTTHOLE SURFERS     SWEAT LOAF

 

First time I ever heard this track, in a state of blissful delirium brought on following a pleasant experience with the Spacemen 3, I literally erupted from the sofa as if I’d had an electronic cattle prod shoved up the psychic jacksie. The Butthole Surfers aren’t so much a band; more the aural equivalent of a nightmarish acid trip – but, crucially I didn’t know that at the time – ‘listen to this’, they’d said, and left me to it. Sweat Loaf utilizes a warped riff from Black Sabbath’s Sweet Leaf and can be found on Surfer’s heaviest, darkest and most disturbing album, LOCUST ABORTION TECHNICIAN, released 1987 – an album that veers from heavy fucked-up psychedelia to grungy noise rock to progressive guitar and tape effects to almost folky numbers in one big, gloriously schizophrenic mess. Not for the unwary, that’s all I’m saying.

 

 

DJ FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION     INTRODUCTION (BILL COSBY TALKS TO KIDS ABOUT DRUGS)

 

DJ Female Convict Scorpion is the rather cool nom de plume for Josh Pollock of psychedelic rockers 3 Leafs, who creates tripped out DJ mixes and self-releases them on the internet. His latest release, A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO DJ FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION, a career retrospective that includes a track from his 10 previous releases, was released in 2012, takes in wigged-out astral jams, low slung slithery funk, strange movie samples, spaced out psychedelia and stuttery old-school hip-hop. As you can imagine, I’m quite a fan, but I can’t tell you much about this track – Bill Cosby Talks To Kid About Drugs was an album released in 1971 which pretty much does what it says on the label; it even won a Grammy for best Album for Children, but what is that acid laced vibe he uses beneath it? It sounds like a lounge version of Black Sabbath. The only DJ you’d want at your wedding.

 

At this point I played a trailer for a psychesploitation movie called The Love-Ins that, all things considered, I can probably live without seeing.

 

 

THE CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN     FIRE

 

I can’t believe I haven’t played this before, and yet here it is; a song that takes me right back to my nights at Alice In Wonderland and magical mystery trips to Chislehurst Caves (I appreciate that this won’t mean anything to many of you). The big thing about this record, of course, which was a big and, indeed, defining hit for the band back in 1968 is that it had no bass or guitar on it – the lead instrument was, in fact, a hammond electric organ, somewhat augmented by an orchestral section featuring prominent brass. But everyone knows that.

 

 

BEYOND THE WIZARD’S SLEEVE     DIG IT

 

Those Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve boys with an adaptation of The Monkees’ Can You Dig It, from the soundtrack to their cult movie Head which more or less saw off the last of their career in 1968. This rather fine interpretation (in hip-hop stylee they take their favourite bits and extend them) is from the Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve album BIRTH, which was available briefly in 2005.

 

 

ART     AFRICAN THING

 

African Thing is one of the truly weird tracks on the album SUPERNATURAL FAIRY TALES, released in 1967 by Art – Formerly The V.I.P. s and soon to become Spooky Tooth – which was never quite as weird or as psychedelic as you might hope, given the title and all. This was their only release, and whilst there’s a couple of interesting covers on it, if not particularly inspiring takes of them, Art were pretty much doomed to become psychedelic also-rans. I like African Thing, though.

 

 

 

THE SOFT MACHINE     FEELIN’, REELIN’, SQUEALIN’

 

This track, released in 1967, was due to be The Soft machine’s debut single, until semi-legendary producer Kim Fowley famously got his hands on it, spliced up the master-tape, taking a musique concrète approach to the song's piano-and-flute instrumental section and presented it back to the band, completely blowing their collective mind. It was way too far out for the A-side so was relegated to the B-side of Love Makes Sweet Music. The single failed to chart, but for many the story of the Soft Machine started with Feelin’, Reelin’, Squealin’.

 

 

THE STONE ROSES     BEGGING YOU

 

Their greatest sonic assault from the much unloved Second Coming, released in 1992. Focussed; sharp; throbbing with menace. If only the rest of the album had been this good.

 

 

FAR EAST FAMILY BAND     UNDISCOVERED NORTHERN TERRITORY

 

A little bit of ambient filler, really, that, on their third album NIPPONJIN: JOIN OUR MENTAL PHASE SOUND, a keyboard heavy space-rock album released in 1975 by the Japanese prog band, serves at the intro to a far heavier track that I decided not to use, and instead, allowed the track to disappear into…

 

 

UEH     CAMBOUS

 

I was always a big fan of the shoegazing scene but I’ve been very sparing in my use of it in Mind De-Coder, despite the transcendental use of shimmering guitars being right up my street back in the day. Ueh are a French avant-rock group who, back in 2002 at least, were connected to Acid Mothers Temple and had this track included on the Acid Mother Temple family compilation DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, DON’T DO WHATEVER YOU DON’T WANT!, a round up of all things Acid Mother Temple-ish and my go to album for cosmic rock goings-on. I don’t know very much else about them really, but I thought after all this time a little transcendental shimmering might be just the thing. Expect tracks by Lush, Ride and Chapterhouse next week. 

 

 

TRAFFIC     DEAR MR. FANTASY

 

Deeply soulful psychedelic vibes from Stevie Winwood’s Traffic and the title track from their 1967 debut MR FANTASY, a stone-cold tripped out classic of reverb-saturated mellow grooves played in a psychedelic jazz-blues stylee. 

 

I’m a big fan of Oliver!, me.

 

 

TIMOTHY LEARY AND ASH RA TEMPEL     SPACE

 

In 1972, having been sprung from jail by The Weatherman (of the ‘you don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows’ variety, Timothy Leary was smuggled safely out of America and into Algeria where he was delivered into the hands of the Black Panther Party who immediately took him hostage and demanded half the advance of his next book to release him. He somehow escaped this situation and fled for Switzerland with a group of fellow mind-travellers where he avoids deportation back to America by moving from canton to canton, and finally meets up with Sergius Golowin, the disillusioned ex-MP and mystic who takes them to his mountain retreat (see Mind De-Coder 30). In 1972 he was visited by Ash Ra Tempel, accompanied by Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, the man who more than any other created the krautrock scene, and legendary producer Dieter Dierks, the man who more than any other, recorded it and, most crucially, captured it in the studio.  There was a sympathetic meeting of minds shall we say, and the resulting album, 7UP (so called because Leary spiked the bottles of 7Up with acid during the recording sessions) is one of the most far out and gone pieces of music you will ever hear. Space takes up all of one side and is divided into four tracks that segue together and is unlike anything ever recorded before or after – a kosmiche musik astral plane freak-out that will literally blow your mind clean away if you listen to it in the same state in which is was recorded. Absolutely crucial listening for the committed head.

 

 

MESMERIZING EYE     SIDE 2

 

In fact, the only way down from 7UP is to drift away into side 2 of PSYCHEDELIA: AN ELECTRIC LIGHT SHOW by The Mesmerizing Eye, who know a thing or two about this sort of thing. It’s pretty much a psychploitation album, put together by a couple of Hollywood-based producers and nameless session musicians in 1967 to cash in on the psychedelic craze. It works as an instrumental sound collage with a wide array of tripped out sound effects and has the best cover art you’ve ever seen. The titles alone should tell you everything you need to know about this album: 1) may the bird of paradise fly up your flute, 2) requiem for suzy creamcheese, 3) the war for my mind, 4) dear mom, send money, and 5) exercise in frustration.

 

 

PETER SARSTEDT     BLAGGED

 

Blagged is not strictly a psychedelic record in and of itself, although it does feature a very fine use of phasing, but who can resist a record that starts with the lines : “…and as I blagged another cigarette from her”? Peter Sarstedt is most well known for his 1969 hit Where Did You Go To (my Lovely), but this terrific little track can be found on the B-side to the rather less well-known I am A Cathedral, released in 1968.

 

 

THE FLOOR     TRUSTING MR. JONES

 

Here’s something you don’t hear every day, A Danish psychedelic band, who released their only album, 1st FLOOR, in 1967. It’s fairly derivative of what was happening in London at the time, but let’s not forget that English was their second language and that some of the songs are quite impressive. I particularly like Trusting Mr Jones, which seems to have captured the English psyche-sensibility perfectly with its backwards guitars  and all.

 

 

MOON WIRING CLUB     GARDEN GET TOGETHER

 

More spooky happenings from the Moon Wiring Club wherein the simple hauntological act of a garden get together is made slightly sinister. Taken from the 2011 release CLUTCH IT LIKE A GONK.

 

 

 

THE BLUE MAGOOS     RUSH HOUR

 

The Blue Magoos were one of the first garage-punk bands to achieve chart success, and one of the first to embrace psychedelia. They always had a way with a tune, too, as can be heard on the fuzzy day-glo pop of Rush Hour, from their second LP, ELECTRIC COMIC BOOK, released in 1967.

 

 

HOLISM GAEA     WEEPING MEADOW

 

In which Israeli duo translate The marriage Of Heaven And Hell by English mystic William Blake to sound through time and space (it says here). You won’t have heard anything like this album, BLAKESIAN WILLIAMNESS, released in 2012, before; it’s like an astral space-noise journey that sets its sights on infinity – truly cosmic music. I think Copey sums it up best in his March Address Drudion (http://www.headheritage.co.uk/addressdrudion/163/2013) in which he says that he guarantees you will still be playing this at social evenings of utter cunted-ness thirty years hence.

 

 

THE BYRDS     C.T.A. 102

 

“Some of you guys may be uncool, and we may be getting busted tonight. Now I know the usual thing in clubs is to kind of throw everything on the floor. But we don’t want the fuzz to close UFO down. So, like, if you’re uncool, will you please go out, and come back when you’re cool.”

                                                                    Suzy Creamcheese

 

 

ARS NOVA     ZARATHUSTRA

 

…and we kick off a cosmic show with an intense psychedelic re-working of Also Sprach Zarathustra by American rock band, Ars Nova, who managed to record two albums in the 60’s before splitting following a disastrous performance supporting The Doors at the Fillmore East in mid-1968. Zarathustra is taken from their first album, ARS NOVA, released in 1968.

 

 

APRYL FOOL     THE LOST MOTHER LAND PT.1

 

Apryl Fool were an extremely cool and long-haired Japanese rock group who released just the one album – a self-titled fairly half-hearted bar room post-Animals blues affair with the odd Dylan cover thrown in, released in 1969. Despite being cool and long-haired, the band would otherwise remain unremarkable were it not for the psychedelically unhinged The Lost Mother Land which, amidst the rest of the album, approached genuine meltdown. As Julian Cope laments of the album in his trusty JAPROCKSAMPLER, if only there’d been more of this magic in its grooves…

 

 

KALEIDOSCOPE     FLIGHT TO ASHIYA

 

Despite much radio play at the time, Kaleidoscope never achieved the kind of recognition they deserved and became, instead, one of the great unsung psychedelic bands of the 60’s. Flight To Ashiya was released as the lead single from their debut album TANGERINE DREAM, released 1967, but sadly, the record buying public weren’t interested in their dreamy, whimsical, psychedelic proto-prog sound and the album remains a cult pleasure amongst those of us who discovered it in later years.

 

 

PINK FLOYD     THE SCARECROW

 

…and speaking of psychedelic whimsy, here are Pink Floyd with a track from PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN, of course; perhaps the most pastoral and evocative of a certain kind of English psychedelia of them all. Recorded in one take, and released as the B-Side to See Emily Play in 1967, it strikes a peculiar meeting between innocence and sophistication that Piper At The Gates Of Dawn carried off so perfectly.

 

 

GANDALF     CAN YOU TRAVEL IN THE DARK ALONE

 

You’d expect a band with a name like Gandalf to hail from some misty meadow in Oxfordshire or the like, and have songs about elves and unicorns, but in fact they’re from new New Jersey and used to be called the unfortunately named Rahgoos, a garage-band specializing in cover versions, until the drummer read Lord of the Rings and suggested a name change and a subtle change of direction, resulting in the band writing a couple of their own songs and releasing a self-titled album in 1969. It’s generally a low key affair that enjoys some lovely psychedelic flourishes– you can play it at dinner parties without upsetting anyone – but it only features two self-penned songs, one of which is the lovely Can You Travel In The Dark Alone, the rest are an interesting selection of cover versions, including Nature Boy by Eden Ahbez.  They were badly let down by their record company, however, who released the album some two years after it was recorded in 1967, with the wrong record in the sleeve. After the album was recalled any interest in the band was long gone and that was pretty much that - these days, of course, GANDALF is a much sought after psychedelic artifact.

 

 

SAVAGE RESURRECTION     SOMEONE’S CHANGING

 

The Savage Resurrection were formed in 1967 in San Francisco, in the midst of the summer of love. Possibly the most remarkable thing about them was the age of their lead guitarist, who was only 16 at the time. They only released the one album, the self-titled SAVAGE RESURRECTION, released in 1968 – a punky, raw bluesy affair characterized by two guitarists whose duels would spew out fuzz and feedback; but they were also capable of spacier, folkier songs such as Someone’s Changing. As is often the case, the band split after one album before they could develop some of their ideas further, so we’ll never know just how good they could have been.

 

 

THE CHURCHILLS     SO ALONE TODAY

 

Now here’s something you don’t come across everyday: an Israeli psychedelic rock band that started in 1965 and lasted well into the 1970’s, head starting a nascent Israeli rock scene. The madly psychedelic So Alone Today is from their debut album CHURCHILLS, released in 1969. Can’t honestly say I know that much more about them.

 

 

HOUSE OF NIMROD     SLIGHTLY-DELIC

 

At long last, a New Zealand psychedelic group finally joins Mind De-Coder, though arguably they barely hung around long enough to be called a group. The semi-legendary House Of Nimrod formed in Auckland in 1967, began rehearsing a couple of songs by guitarist Bryce Petersen and released the slightly wonderful Slightly-delic as their first single a couple of weeks later. It garnered some radio play but the band were unable to tour because that song, and the B-side, were the only two songs they knew how to play, and Petersen was having way too much fun enjoying the gifts of the 60’s (as it were) to write anymore, so the band went in to semi-retirement.  Petersen eventually wrote a few more songs and the band released a second single in 1968 but it didn’t sell well and that was pretty that. Shortly after Petersen wrote the song Gracious Lady (Alice Dee) for NZ pop sensation Lew Pryme but it was banned on the radio for its suggestible references to LSD.  THE HOUSE OF NIMROD EP collected all four of their songs and was released in 2000. The A-side runout quite rightly reads: “Acid is good for the mind?!!”

 

 

WHITE NOISE     HERE COME THE FLEAS

 

I’m a big fan of experimental noise band White Noise, especially their first album, which included Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop in the line-up, but I’m usually drawn to their fractured pop songs on which they gleefully overlay musique concrète effects, weird bits of radio theatre, and long stretches of gothic horror which nowadays could be mistaken for a sort of proto-Hauntological approach to music making; so I thought I’d play Here Comes The Fleas, instead - the bizarrely ‘playful’ track from their 1969 debut AN ELECTRIC STORM.

 

 

THE LEFT BANKE     PRETTY BALLERINA

 

 The Left Banke are more or less known for two tracks these days – Walk Away Renée and Pretty Ballerina, both of which made the charts in 1966, and resulted in the band releasing their debut album, the daringly titled WALK AWAY RENÉE/PRETTY BALLERINA in 1967. It was an album that pioneered a more artful use of strings in pop music, incorporating a small string section, harpsichord, and woodwinds to give their songs a light yet dramatic Baroque flavor that was unique in rock at the time, but internal divisions soon got the better of them and before too long they fell apart leaving little more than the two great singles, and the term ‘baroque ‘n’ roll’, to account for their ever being here.

 

 

LOVE     SHE COMES IN COLORS

 

I’m not a great fan of Love’s second album, DA CAPO, released in 1967, but really like She Comes In Colors, one of Arthur Lee’s loveliest songs (if you’ll pardon the unintended pun) - possibly because it points the way to the sound they were to fully explore on their next album, the gorgeous Forever Changes, which they would release later that year.

 

 

MESMERIZING EYE     SIDE 1

 

PSYCHEDELIA: A MUSICAL LIGHT SHOW, released in 1967 by The Mesmerizing Eye, is as about far out as it gets, or as one reviewer put it: “It’s a brain frying mindfuck – searing acid guitar, air raid sirens, crying babies, thunderstorms, telephones ringing and ringing, detuned marching bands staggering past…and all of that in the first few minutes”. 

 

It was created by two producers and a few studio freak musicians who played what tunes there are to fit around the sound effects, of which there are plenty. It’s a very short album; it barely last 25 minutes, and all the tracks run into each other: and I like it so much, I thought I’d play all of Side One which runs like this: 1)Birth Of A Nation, 2) Rain Of Terror,

 3) Tempus Fugit, 4) Opus 71, 5) Twenty-First Century Express.

 

 

THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION    THE RETURN OF THE SON OF MONSTER MAGNET

 

…and speaking of brain frying mindfucks, here’s Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention with a proper 13-minute freak out, taking up all of Side 4 of their debut album FREAK OUT!, released in 1967. The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet is an experiment in musique concrète, amelodic dissonance, shifting time signatures, and studio effects that broke new ground in just what a rock LP could be capable of; introduced the world to the legendary Suzie Creamcheese, and was the first double album ever released, to boot.

 

 

THE FORMLESS DREAMER     PRAIRIE DOG

 

A bit of filler, really, from The Formless dreamer, a psychedelic act about which the internet is deafeningly silent. I came across him (for I believe it to be a he) on You Tube where he seems to have provided the music for a 45-minute psychedelic head trip of a video called PSYCHEDELIC SALVIA TRIP MUSIC IV: THE BREAD OF GOD, which you can find at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpnuqJUmUN8  and you really ought check it out, not only is it very good, I suspect it’s the future).  So, I’m guessing this track is called Prairie Dog by The Formless Dreamer from the album THE BREAD OF GOD, which may have been made in 2011. Unless it’s made by Sage Bodisattva.

 

Or Both.

 

 

FRIENDSOUND     LOST ANGEL PROPER STREET

 

Friendsound seems to be at least three members of Paul Revere and the Raiders and a bunch of friends who got together for a pretty cosmic sounding jam session which they released as JOYRIDE in 1969. It largely taken up with instrumentals, but they’re full of studio experimentation, including backwards tapes,  sound effects and lsd-inspired ramblings of which Lost Angel Proper Street is a very good example.

 

 

BOEING DUVEEN AND THE BEAUTIFUL SOUP     JABBERWOCK

 

Boeing Duveen and the Beautiful Soup only made the one single, the 1968 release Jabberwock, which remains one of the oddest psychedelic obscurities of that time. A slightly menacing and yet playful re-telling of the Lewis Carroll poem, it was backed by a gentle acid-folk recording that was completely at odds with the A-side (see Mind De-Coder 16). 

 

Boeing Duveen, of course (he said, for those of you that remember Mind De-Coder 16) was Sam Hutt, known to the British '60s counterculture as a "rock & roll doctor" who administered to rock musicians and practiced homeopathy and holistic medicine, as well as dealing with drug casualties at festivals. If this still isn’t ringing any bells, then you probably know him as Hank Wangford, who enjoyed a successful career playing Country and Western throughout the 80’s, and for all I know, still does.

 

And if that doesn’t ring any bells – then just enjoy the single.

 

 

LORD BUCKLEY    THE NAZ (excerpt)

 

I play around with some  backwards psychedelia and while that’s going on include the legendary Lord Buckley in the mix – Lord of Flip Manor, Royal Holiness of the Far out, and prophet of the Hip (as one obituary sung of him) , a 50’s cat whose improvised jazz wordplay defined cool as having ‘the sweet fragrance of serenity’ and referred to Jesus as The Naz, calls him a ‘carpenter kittie’ who heals ‘a little cat with a bent frame’ and who implored us all to Dig Infinity, and we dug it.  This is just an excerpt from perhaps his most famous monologue, but if you’ve never come across this hipster saint and tongue dancer before, then check out, at the very least, LORD BUCKLEY IN CONCERT (1964), which was originally released as WAY OUT HUMOR in 1959, a year before his death, and prepare to be blown away.

 

 

MELODY’S ECHO CHAMBER     IS THAT WHAT SHE SAID

 

I’ve unfairly, perhaps, played this track from the debut album by classically trained French chanteuse Melody Prochet because she doesn’t appear to be on it very much – what you get instead is searing backwards guitars from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker who collaborated and produced the eponymous album for her. Released in 2012, it’s an album of dreamy sonics and saccharine vocals (or the other way round – whatever you prefer) that creates a shimmering psychedelic gauze through which traces of dream-pop and shoegaze reverberate. But I played the backwards one where you can barely hear her. Oh, well, another show, perhaps.

 

 

FIFTY FOOT HOSE     GOD BLESS THE CHILD

 

 

50 Foot Hose are what we’re choosing to call an avant-psychedelic group,  whose only album CAULDRON, released in 1968, is an ambitious mix of contemporary rock sounds with electronic instruments and avant-garde compositional ideas that was never quite as good as you’d hope.  The album plays around with an intriguing fusion of jazzy psychedelic rock tunes with primitive electronic sound effects layered on top - eerie electronic swoops and jolts swam through the background and foreground of the tracks, enhanced by techniques like putting instruments through an FM transmitter. Ultimately, the jazzier and spookier tunes worked better than the bluesier hard rock items as exemplified on the Owsley-dosed coffeehousing of Billy Holliday’s “God Bless The Child.” Acoustic guitar and hissing jazz hi-hat and traps are surrounded by incongruous space whooshes and bleeps in a proto-synth, fifties sci-fi movie manner that makes the song sound as if it’s playing on an old-fashioned valve-fitted radiogram on a Russian space station.

 

 

FAR EAST FAMILY BAND     ENTERING/TIMES

 

Two tracks from the Far East Family Band that segue into each other on their 1976 album PARALLEL WORLD, released 1976. The Far East Family Band were a pleasingly obscure 1970’s Japanese psych-rock band whose sound was heavily influenced by Pink Floyd, and they specialised in long, multi-part pieces of music complete with all the trappings of the psychedelic era, up to and including crazy cosmic cover art; their nearest relatives these days would be Cranium Pie whose debut Mechanisms owes quite a lot to Parallel World, the band’s fourth album and masterpiece. It was produced by Krautrock legend and one-time Tangerine Dream member Klaus Schulze, and recorded at Manor Studios in the UK and is very much a full-on psychedelic odyssey of rare quality. Entering/Times begins with fluttering bird like sounds, drifts into a zone of cosmic ambient silence and ends with an extended acid freak-out. Marvellous.

 

 

CHEVAL SOMBRE     ONCE I HAD A SWEETHEART

 

MAD LOVE, released in 2012 by Cheval Sombre, a New Yorker by the name of Christopher Porpora, is one of the most unhurried records you will ever hear - soft acoustic guitar, organ and strings are made drowsy by a plethora of psychedelic effects, with every song slow in tempo, and generally just letting things happen. It features contributions from Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser of MGMT, Pete Kember of Spacemen 3 and Dean Wareham of Galaxie 500, all Mind De-Coder favourites and none of whom appear to make any difference at all to anything. Once I Had A Sweetheart, a well known traditional perhaps made most famous by Pentangle (see Mind De-Coder 3)is one of the loveliest songs on the album - the Cheval Sombre version is saturated in reverb yet the simplicity of this mesmerizing track shines through the haze. The distortion, however, does give it a glittering quality that permeates the whole record, elevating it to something meditative, entrancing, and gorgeously druggy. Lovely.

 

 

THE DUKES OF STRATOSPHEAR     MOLE FROM THE MINISTRY

 

XTC’s finest moment on their acid-laced homage to the psychedelic records of their past. Mole From The Ministry is the closing track on their 1985 album, 25 O’Clock, released as their alter-egos The Dukes Of Stratosphear, one of the greatest psychedelic albums ever released in its own right. Produced by the great John Leckie, 25 O’Clock plunders the psychedelic toy box and comes up with a brilliant, clever distillation of the sounds of 1967, filled with knowing allusions and outright thievery from psychedelic classics – it comes closer to pop-art than homage and is in every way a joyous celebration of everything Mind De-Coder stands for.