Mind De-coder

MIND DE-CODER 19

(Originally broadcast 15-07-10)

"Hey ho, Here we go, Ever so high..."

FRANK ZAPPA     ARE YOU HUNG UP?

It's almost lost amongst all the little threads I pulled together for the introduction to tonight's show, but there it is, lasting no longer than one minute and twenty four seconds, Are You Hung Up is the opening track on the 1968 album WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY by frank Zappa And The Mother's Of Invention, who, it must be said, I really can't be doing with (Memo: be sure to insert reasons here once you've actually formulated them)*. The track features, within the musique concrete, a stuttering performance by Eric Clapton, and the album itself, of course, is a satirical attack on flower power, conservative fundamentalism and The Beatles' Sgt. Peppers’, which was released the year before. Generally regarded as one of the best rock albums of all time, not by me though - I'm a fan of its cut-and-paste weirdness more than its songs.

*(Can't be arsed).

LOVE     ALONE AGAIN OR

Alone Again Or is the opening track from Love's third album, FOREVER CHANGES,  and this really, really is one of the greatest rock albums of all time, despite being more or less disregarded at the time of its release in 1968. Lushly orchestrated, with shades of Tijuana trumpets thrown into the mix, the album flows with an almost narcotic consistency that, whilst deceptively pretty, mixes psychedelic mind expansion with paranoia, hippie idealism with nihilism, and romance with despair. And it still manages to sound gorgeous and life-affirming.

DUKES OF STRATOSPHEAR     25 O'CLOCK

25 O'Clock is the title track from the debut album by XTC’s alter-egos The Dukes Of Stratosphear, released in 1987, the side-project that was better than the main event. 25 O'Clock is a giddy, exuberant romp through the fields of psychedelia by a band who couldn't quite believe how much fun they were having now they didn't have to be XTC for the time being.

PINK FLOYD     FLAMING

From Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, of course, Pink Floyd's 1967 debut and one of my favourite albums of all time. Contains the lines: "Hey ho, Here we go, Ever so high". Nuff said.

PORT OF NOTES     DUET WITH BIRDS

Wistful loveliness from Japanese retro-duo Port Of Notes, with the title track from their 2001 album DUET WITH BIRDS. This is all I or anyone else in the non-Japanese reading world can ever know about them. Unless you know better.

CATE LE BON     BURN UNTIL THE END  

Cate Le Bon's debut album (no relation, by the way), ME OH MY, was released on Gruff Rhys's Irony Board label last year. It's full of sweetly sad acid-folk ballads, with the odd touch of electronic weirdness thrown in every now and then, that deal, specifically, with the impossibility of existence. She writes in the dark and sounds a little like Nico, but whereas Nico was finally swallowed by the darkness, Cate Le Bon seems to wear it like a cloak. There’s a part towards the end of Burn Until The End where the guitars get turned up to 11 that I love - I just have to wait until I'm alone in the house before I can play it.

JIMI HENDRIX     ...AND THE GODS MADE LOVE

The opening track from Hendrix's ELECTRIC LADYLAND, of course, released in 1968. I once listened to this album whilst tripping, just so I could hear it how it was, you know, supposed to sound, and you know what this track sounded like? It sounded like gods making love. Or Hendrix making love to his guitar. Or his cock. Jimi Hendrix played his cock.

IN GOWAN RING     BEAT OF THE MOON

Now, I'm quite a fan of In Gowan Ring's particularly medieval take on traditional folk songs but I'll be the first to admit that he also has a tendency to produce music that wouldn't sound out of place in the sort of gift shop that you'd find at, ooh, The Chalice Well Gardens in Glastonbury, say. It comes as something of a pleasant surprise, therefore, to hear him have a go at a proper song, Beat Of The Moon, from the TIME IS A SPIRAL EP, released in 2007. What you get, when he puts his mind to it, is an otherworldly collection of  acid-folk songs laced throughout with those gorgeous medieval elements he's so fond of but this time all wrapped up in a pastoral psychedelic vibe. Marvelous.

NANCY ELIZABETH     WINTER BABY

Desolate post-folk from Nancy Elizabeth, whose haunting Winter Baby, from 2009's WROUGHT IRON, contains the chill of a child's frozen nursery room. Her voice, however, is absolutely mesmerising; delicate, cracked and pure, and not unlike Julee Cruise in her role of The Broken Hearted Woman, it speaks of heart-ache and loss but also of the strength that can be found in knowing, too, that winter will someday pass and that springtime, with all its numbed-out promises, will eventually arrive just in time to save you. So it's only fitting that I have it drift off into...

OM MANTRA TO OPEN THE HEART CHAKRA

BLACK SHEEP     LEILA KHALED

This goes on forever, I know, but it can, if you let it, grow to fill the room you are in, until you, the room and the music become as one. Indeed, you could argue, that once heard, the music never actually stops and becomes, on some inner level, literally a part of your unconsciousness, which, on some outer level, has a transformative effect on the way you continue to deal with the world. Or that just might be me. Leila Khaled has long been one of Julian Cope's obsessions, mine too, so when I learnt that the Black Sheep, Cope's leathery-clad part new band and part free-spirited action group, had recorded a 15-minute version of Just Like Leila Khaled Said for their new album KISS MY SWEET APOCALYPSE 2  I became unreasonably excited. You can imagine my concern, then, when I discovered that this album was, unfortunately, available to 'Motherfuckers and the children of Motherfuckers only'. Was I Motherfucker-ish enough to get my hands on a copy, I wondered? As it happens, I was; it took a while, but I was, eventually, Motherfucker-ish enough to track down a copy of the album, and very pleased with myself I was too. So what you get is a very rare Julian Cope track, all 15-minutes of it, in fact, available for the first time for the non-Motherfuckers amongst you - may it help you achieve full psychic meltdown. Enjoy.

9BACH     PONTYPRIDD

9Bach specialize in creating new arrangements for Welsh folk songs which they then sing in their native language. These songs then transport you somewhere wild and magical, Lisa Jen's spell-binding vocals painting word-pictures inside your head. Pontypridd is taken from their debut album 9BACH, released last year; it's a compellingly lovely album.

MARK VIDLER     FLASHBACK (VISITATION)

Some pretty messed up vibes from Mark Vidler (otherwise known as mash-up legend Go Home Productions) with a track from his debut album proper THE FUTURE, THE PAST, AND THE PRESENT TENSION, released last year and available as a free download from his site www.gohomeproductions.co.uk

BROADCAST AND THE FOCUS GROUP     DRUGS PARTY

Broadcast and The Focus Groups album INVESTIGATE WITCH CULTS OF THE RADIO AGE, also released last year, is verily a trip unto itself. I'm almost tempted to say you that you no longer need Mind De-Coder, you simply need to get your hands on this album, and it will take you some place deep inside your mind and give you something to play around with. The album is intoxicating and lovely, and yet sounds like a three-legged kitten let loose in a china shop; songs are stumbled upon out of the static of a shortwave radio, they loop themselves around demented nursery rhymes before disappearing once again into a toytown world where there are glimpses of a song round every corner. Obviously I'm only allowed to play it when everyone else has gone out.

FAUST     GIGGY SMILE

This song actually sounds like a flashback, and is, indeed, a flahback to Picnic On A Frozen River, from their second album, SO FAR. Taken from their fourth album, FAUST IV, released in 1973 and kind of regarded as their most conventional album, Giggy Smile nevertheless remains a krautrock classic. If I tell you that this was one of the most traditional rock songs they ever made, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

THE SHAGGS     YESTERDAY ONCE MORE

There's a story about a remote Tibetan village that makes pizzas for the few tourists who manage to make it that far, despite no one in the village ever having actually tasted a pizza before. Their only idea of a pizza came from photographs. Using the photo as their starting point they proceeded to make a pizza using local ingredients without any overall idea of what the resulting product should actually taste like. In some ways, this story is similar to how The Shaggs came to record an album; it was as if they'd  seen pictures of rock bands before but had no idea about what they actually sounded like or how their instruments were actually played. The resulting album, PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD, released in 1969 by three sisters who really couldn't play their instruments but who were nevertheless encouraged by their father to cut a rock album, is generally regarded as the worst album ever recorded and yet, crucially, it is always an album that people speak well of. Frank Zappa went so far as to say that The Shaggs were more important than The Beatles, but as I've mentioned before, I really can't be doing with him.

Yesterday Once More isn't actually taken from PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD as such, rather from one of the many re-issues that comes out every now and then with bonus tracks. By this time they were obviously starting to get more or less competent and had they continued to do so they would have perhaps lost their charm. Nevertheless, I think this version of The Carpenter's Yesterday Once More has just the right amount of hopeful naivety that they brought to their earlier recordings and is included here because it never fails to raise a smile round my house (people being in notwithstanding).

And at some point round abouts here Napolean XIV's They're Coming To Take Me Away, as messed up by MP3J, kept coming in and out of focus in a pleasingly psychedelic manner, and yes, that was some Bill Hicks too,  before...

THE EVOLUTIONARY CONTROL COMMITTEE     THE FUCKING MOON

I wish it really had been like this. Available from  http://evolution-control.com/

And that was Mind De-Coder 19. I thank you.

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MIND DE-CODER 17

"In the lazy water meadow I lay me down..."

(Originally broadcast  24-06-10)

THE DUKES OF STRATOSPHEAR     MY LOVE EXPLODES

What a marvelous way to get the show started - XTC's alter-egos, The Dukes Of Stratosphear and my favourite track from their brilliant little debut album 25 O'CLOCK, released back in 1987. It has actually just received a well-deserved re-release in a sumptuous gate-fold cover and extra disc featuring demos and extra tracks that deliver up a dizzyingly exuberant rush of dainty kaleidoscopic pop that is whimsical, bright and full of trippy psychedelic gems such as this one. It's one of my favourite trip albums and is absolutely worth saving up your pocket money for.

McGOUGH AND McGEAR     SO MUCH IN LOVE

Ah, a genuine 60's curio - Mike McGear and Roger McGough were part of the Liverpool comedy-poetry-music group The Scaffold, who found fame and fortune with such hits as Lily The Pink, say. In 1968 McGear and Mcgough released McGOUGH AND McGEAR as a duo and, legend has it, got Paul McCartney, McGear's brother, into produce it and possibly jam on a few tracks (McGear having changed his surname to avoid trading in on his brother's name). McCartney also brought along his mate Jimi Hendrix to play guitar and therefore, according to legend, it's the only collaboration between Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix officially released on record. Other guests include Dave Mason, Spencer Davis, John Mayall, Noel Redding, Mitch Mitchell and Jack Bruce - so when it grooved it did so quite nicely; unfortunately, there were only four songs on the album, the rest being taken up with Roger McGough's poems. You can see why it must have a seemed like a good idea at the time, but if So Much In Love is anything to go by, you just wish that Roger had spent more time making the tea, leaving everyone else to get on with it. A semi-legendary classic.

THE TOKENS     HOW NICE    

And speaking of 60's curio's - The Tokens are most famous for their chart-topping 1961 hit The Lion Sleeps Tonight and pretty much remained a doo-wop group for their next six albums until the 60's finally caught up with them and they released a groovy album in 1967 called IT'S A HAPPENING WORLD from which this track is taken - a fine example of psychedelic pop that, sadly, what with The Beatles having just released Sgt. Pepper's and the rest of the world kinda caught up in the Summer Of Love, nobody was listening to - which is a pity, really, because this track is really rather delightful.

AMORPHOUS ANDROGYNOUS     THE PEPPERMINT TREE

More trippy beats from Amorphous Androgynous and yet another track I've plucked from their 2008 recording THE PEPPERMINT TREE AND THE SEEDS OF SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS - a psychedelic soul audio collage ethnic blues mash up of an album.

PETER BRODERICK     GAMES

HOME is the name of the debut album by 21 year old Peter Broderick, which he released in 2008, who records songs of often stunning choral majesty using his two favourite instruments - the voice and the guitar, although he's not opposed to the odd harmonium, glockenspiel organ, vibraphone, banjo and celeste joining the mix, although never all at the same time. Games is a multi-harmonic affair that sets the tone for the rest of the album and comes over like a beautiful vocal benediction. Exquisite.

IN GOWAN RING     ONCE TRUE LOVE

Games floats away and does its thing, so I have a little vocal track by In Gowan Ring drift gently in over it, the lovely Once True Love which seems to be a traditional re-working of Scarborough Fair. It doesn't hang around too long, just let's you recognise the tune and then fades away again. It can be found on COMPENDIUM: 1994-2000, released in 2000. In Gowan Ring, otherwise known as B'eirth (or possibly Bobin Jon Michael Eirth to his mum), makes music that is sublimely peaceful, vaguely medieval and generally unorthodox - there is more than a touch of the troubadour about him, yet despite releasing something like 22 albums a year he remains largely untouched by the world, and indeed, the world remains largely untouched by him.

THE TIME AND SPACE MACHINE     THE TRIP

Richard Norris is one half of Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, and formerly of The Grid, I think, but with The Time And Space Machine he satisfies his itch for cosmic psyche, mind-bending krautrock, lysergic acid folk and warped middle eastern freak beats so, as you can imagine, I think quite highly of him. The Trip is full of middle eastern vibes and can be found on the album VOL. 2, released in 2009.

PINK FLOYD     GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS

Classic Pink Floyd at their dreamiest and most pastoral, although strictly speaking, of course, it's performed entirely by Roger Walters and his contribution to the second disc of the UMMAGUMMA album, released in 1969, whereon each member of the band had half a side each to play with. Grantchester Meadows, in Cambridge, is where Syd Barrett lived and was no doubt the home of the odd acid trip. The track, like the meadows themselves, creates a blank canvas for the idle mind to explore. They've probably built a housing estate on it now.

THE COCTEAU TWINS     LAZY CALM

Remembering, out of the blue, the other day, how I used to spend a lot of evening's at home listening to The Cocteau Twins in my bedsit days, I recently re-discovered them and allowed myself to be seduced once again by their frankly irresistible charms. Lazy  Calm is taken from the album VICTORIALAND, released in 1986; an album made of snow and ghostly blank spaces so filled with beauty and wonder that it makes the heart ache to listen to them, which is why I listened to them so much in my bed-sit days, I imagine - and why I finally had to move on.

THE JOKER'S DAUGHTER     JESSE THE GOAT

At first glance Joker's Daughter are an unlikely pairing that, on paper at least, you wouldn't expect to work - Helena Costas, a bucolic half-Greek folky with a head full of Fotheringay, Pentangle and Vashti Bunyan, and hip-hop producer Danger Mouse, the studio mastermind behind The Grey Album, Gnarls Barkley and the Gorillaz' Demon days - although from the moment I read about them I became unreasonably excited. It turns out I was right to be - between them they've created an album that sounds like a spacey, pastoral mushroom trip through misty Arthurian meadows. Danger Mouse's production is as light as a feather and never dominates the songs, whilst Costas's haunting fair-maiden delivery has the quality of a fresh folk-pop excursion to a Victorian fayre, although I have no idea what she's singing about on Jesse The Goat, or even in what language she's singing, but it sounds just right. The album, THE LAST LAUGH, released in 2009, has a beguiling, haunting charm - a rich harvest from a broad psychic landscape that's a sparkling debut for her, and one of his most interesting collaborations. I'm something of a fan, can you tell?

MARISSA NADLER     MEXICAN SUMMER

Or, the lovely Marissa Nadler as she's known round Mind De-Coder central. Mexican Summer is taken from her 2007 album SONGS III: BIRD ON THE WATER, an album that details her pensive loneliness and gorgeous isolation with songs that shiver with acoustic wonderment. She's joined by Mind De-Coder favourites Espers, who augment her acoustic vision with cello, percussion, mandolin and electric guitars - overall the effect is one of heart-broken desolation and soul-aching beauty, with the odd breath-taking desert sunset thrown in. Lovely, indeed.

SAINT ETIENNE     AVENUE

St. Etienne's finest seven and a half minutes, the giddily psychedelic, ambitious and elegant, lemon-flavoured kiss of a song that comes over like a bright hazy morning captured on disc. This was St. Etienne's attempt at the perfect pop record and indeed it would have been were it not for the aforementioned seven and a half minutes of it, which resulted in it getting zero air play on the nation's radio waves. The album SO TOUGH, released in 1993, from which it is taken, shimmers like an faded English sea-side town, a wispy maze of memories coloured in with day-glo crayons - it is in many ways the pinnacle of pop perfection and 18 albums or so down the track, it's still the one I'm waiting for them to beat.

KELLI ALI     ONE DAY AT A TIME

ROCKING HORSE, Kelli Ali's third release, is an elongated lullaby of an album; steeped in medieval melodies and awash with bucolic charm and whispered, wispy wonder. One Day at a time is the sound of someone simply lost in bliss. In a year that saw Goldfrapp release The Seventh Tree and The Joker's Daughter introduce themselves to the world, this album is my favourite.

CHIITRA NEOGY     KRISHNA AND THE LOVELY COWGIRLS

Aah,  THE PERFUMED GARDEN, released in 1968, on which the mysterious and frankly sexy-as-nobody's-business Chiitra Neogy intones  "Advice For The Lovelorn", reveals that "Woman Is Like A Fruit", and offers the "Encouragement Of The Lusty Wife", all in a sultry and erotic voice awash with hints of a forbidden, oriental knowledge. The album itself is a spoken-word translation of Shaykh Umar ibn Muhammed al-Nefzawi's famous Arabic 15th century manual of erotic love, with added exotic string arrangements that lend an aura of depth and mystical allure to the pieces. An album absolutely of its time, it also features four classic Indian poems of a sensual and unabashed nature from which Krishna and The Lovely Cowgirls is taken.  We listen to this album all the time round our house.

THE MONKEES     AS WE GO ALONG

One of the great lost songs by The Monkees, hidden away on the much unloved HEAD album, released in 1968 to accompany the surrealistic, psychedelic and the largely plotless mobius strip of a film that nobody went to see - needless to say it's a big favourite of mine. The album is a trip in itself, edited and produced by Jack Nicholson, it includes six new songs and a collage of film dialogue and effects, and this particular track - one of Dolenz's finest moments.

And that was Mind De-Coder 17. Please mind your head on the way out.

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MIND DE-CODER 15

(Originally broadcast 10-06-10)

''Get us some more of those funny mushrooms, boys, you're dad likes them on his pizza!"

THE ROLLING STONES     WE LOVE YOU

The Rolling Stones at their psychedelic best; released in the aftermath of the draconian prison sentences handed out to Jagger and Richards following the Redlands home invasion by Metropolitan police in the summer of 1967 - defiant and angry, cheeky and ironic, a slap in the face for the establishment forces that were hounding them at the time, and an absolute gift of a single, featuring a psychedelic catalogue of gaol sounds, mellotron, Moroccan beats, otherworldly taped vocal effects and, of course, John and Paul on backing vocals. Marvelous record.

THE EARLIES     BREAKING POINT

Sitar-driven, Krautrock space raga from The Earlies, the half-Manchester, half Texan quartet, a band who transcend their prog influences for their second album THE ENEMY CHORUS, released in 2007, and instead bring some Stereolab to the mix. Works for me.

THE ALIENS     HEY LEANNE

I love this track - it's taken from their debut release the ALIENOID STARMONICA EP, from 2006. It features this brilliant, woozy country and western psychedelic classic Hey Leanne, which don't half sound like 'alien' when pronounced slowly, or indeed, fastly - it took me ages to figure that one out. I mean, I'm a fan of the band anyway, but this track is jaw-droppingly good.

AMORPHOUS ANDROGYNOUS     GIVEN THAT WE'VE GIVEN

Taken from the album THE PEPPERMINT TREE AND THE SEEDS OF SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS, released in 2008, this is a trippy little number from an album that is not unlike a Syd-era Pink Floyd relic covered by Faust and produced by Can. This is Future Sound Of London under their psychedelic guise that is both mystical and inventive, and comes across as a psychedelic-soul-sitar-tastic mash-up of eastern vibes and sonic landscapes of hyper-sound - with the odd tune thrown in.

MAGIC WORMS     GREEN MELLO HILL

Acid-soaked toy town charm and whimsy from a band that seemed to have released just this one song before disappearing into the fairy mists of time without leaving so much as a whisper of the themselves on the internet, or a word on the back of an old record sleeve, or a footnote in Kaleidoscope Eyes: Planet L's Bumper Book of Psychedelic Music From The 60's to the 90's (a trusty reference book in the days before the internet). It's as if they never existed - all that remains is this one record, the cheerfully lysergic Green Mello Hill (correct spelling, by the way, for a song that has left such little trace of its own existence), released in 1969, and one of those songs that you delight to chance upon every now and then.

ASSOCIATION     PANDORA'S GOLDEN HEEBIE JEEBIES

This band, however, seem to have made loads of albums (and might even still be touring in one form or other), but regrettably, after a couple of #1 singles in the mid-60's, people stopped buying them. This track, complete with Byrds-type harmonies come from their second album RENAISSANCE, released in 1967, and is the psychedelic confection on a record that otherwise featured a kind of jazz-folk-rock-bubblegum-pop approach to album making that eventually went out of style. Strangely, Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies sounds better now than it did then. Enjoy.

THE SMALL FACES     JOURNEY

From side two of the classic 1968 album, OGDENS' NUT GONE FLAKE, of course, in which the great Stanley Unwin narrates the story of Happiness Stan and his search for the other half of the moon. Widely regarded as one of the first concept albums, although only side two really counts, this is The Small Faces at their most groovy and psychedelic.

PUMAJAW     SPANGLER

Lovely pastoral melancholy from Pumajaw, who's 2008 album CURIOSITY BOX creates a mysterious, beguiling tapestry of folky sounds hidden within swathes of lush noise and beats.

PULP    WEEDS II (ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES)

Pulp's WE LOVE LIFE, released in 2001, is best seen as the comedown album following the giddy highs of Britpop and all that media exposure that eventually messed the band up. On Weeds II, a tired and cynical Jarvis whispers witheringly about life on the margins of society, revealed in the scornful: "Come on, Do your dance, Do your funny little dance". The thing is, it's also incredibly trippy. The album was produced by Scott Walker, the first time he'd ever produced anyone other than himself (one feels almost duty-bound to include this sort of factoid), and he gives the album moments of grandiose musical wonder, and an air of snarling dinner table intimacy. I wonder if anyone bought it?  

VOICE OF THE SEVEN WOODS     THE JOURNEY

Voice Of The Seven Woods is Rick Tomlinson, a guitar virtuoso who’s EP, THE JOURNEY, released in 2008, carves beautiful, spacious melodies using the sparest of components. Stately and elegiac.

UNKNOWN     GENTLY, JOHNNY, MY JINGALO

Taken from WILLOW'S SONGS, an album that presents a number of traditional recordings of songs that pop up in one form or another in The Wicker Man, the soundtrack to which is a big Mind De-Coder favourite.  Gently, Johnny, My Jingalo speaks of moonlit going's-on amongst the corn riggs as sung by a charmingly prim but horny nursery school teacher whose pants you definitely want to get into (but that may be just me, The Wicker Man tend to has that kind of effect on me).

FOTHERINGAY     TWO WEEKS LAST SUMMER

No one really expected FOTHERINGAY 2  to appear out of nowhere, 38 years after the band abandoned the project following Sandy Denny's departure to pursue a solo career, but suddenly in 2008 there it was, in the shops, and clocking up lots of column inches on the folk blog-sites. I was never really a fan of Fotheringay, but think that Two Weeks Last Summer has a haunting, hypnotic quality to it that can stop you dead in your tracks as you re-live, suddenly and unexpectedly, an incomplete perfect moment that you thought you'd managed to hide away somewhere forever in the depths of your mind, but which now completely overwhelms you as you stand helplessly in line at the post office and remember that time in the woods in the rain with the one you thought you'd be with forever when love had a sound that you can no longer recall, try as you might, but it left an echo that now, for a few moments, reverberates around your tired and useless heart and causes tears to sting inexplicably in your eyes as you stand there years later, sadder and older and queueing up to pay a rates bill with all those other people, only, you've never felt so alone. Odd how songs can do that, eh?

BRAVE CAPTAIN     TELL HER YOU WANT HER

I've always liked this song - it speaks of regret and wisdom gained through aching sadness, dislocated by noise and Beach Boys vocals. Brace Captain is Martin Carr, and this was his project after the Boo Radleys split. Tell Her You Want Her is taken from his 2004 album NOTHING LIVES LONG, HE SANG, ONLY THE EARTH AND THE MOUNTAINS which, once again, kind of speaks to that part of you that loved and lost, once, only to love again - and then have lost it again, after which it's worth retreating to somewhere in the countryside in order to take lots of drugs and otherwise give up. And maybe grow your own vegetables.

THE SHORTWAVE SET     ROADSIDE

Victorian funk from junk-shop revivalists The Shortwave Set, taken from their debut album THE DEBT COLLECTION, released in 2005.  This absolute delight of an album features a melodica here, an old zither there, an Indian shruti box, an omnichord and a strange collection of tinpot instruments, samples, textures and sounds that complement their wonky psychedelic hangover songs. One of my favourite albums, in fact.

JULIAN COPE     HOLY MOTHER OF GOD

Julian Cope and mellotron from the CD that accompanied the 2000 tour, AN AUDIENCE WITH THE COPE, an evening of rock 'n' roll stories, fluorescent mellotrons, wa-wa electric-acoustic guitars, triumphs and failures and platform boots. On the CD's spine, it reads: “You can't beat your brain for entertainment", and includes the quote by Dudley Young from his book Origins of the Sacred: “In the beginning was the holler". I've always found this song strangely affecting.

SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS     ISABELLA (KEEP RIDING THE ROAD TO THE SEA)

And in a show of fine tunes I save the finest for last. Isabella (Keep Riding the Road to the Sea) is taken from UNCANNY TALES OF THE EVERYDAY UNDERGROWTH, a collection of their first EP's, released in 2005, and rather like The Beta Band's first three EP's album, it's proving remarkably difficult to transcend. I love this album, it's a nearly flawless collection sugary psychedelic folky pop, full of great tunes with sing-a-long choruses that can me make happy or sad depending on my mood and the time of day. The seven way vocal harmony that takes up the second half of the song...well, I just think it's a wonderful thing in a world that doesn't have enough wonderful things anymore. I buy this album as presents for people. Anyway...

I Thank You

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MIND DE-CODER 13

(Originally broadcast 27-05-10)

"I can't believe you finished the show with Art Garfunkel, man!"

TRACY THORN     RAISE THE ROOF (A BEYOND THE WIZARD'S SLEEVE RE-ANIMATION)

A gentle introduction to this evening's show from Tracy Thorn's second solo album OUT OF THE WOODS from 2007. This version has been taken round the back of the bike sheds for some loving from Mind De-Coder favourite Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve. You can find this and many more of their remixes on the album BEYOND THE WIZARD'S SLEEVE RE-ANIMATIONS VOL. 1, on which they work their magic on the likes of Goldfrapp, The Chemical Brothers, Midlake and Franz Ferdinand. Always a firm favourite round these parts.

JULY     DANDELION SEEDS

July, as I've mentioned in an earlier blog, are often considered also-rans in psychedelic circles. Returning from the continent in time to find that Pink Floyd had just finished in the Abbey Road studios, they moved straight in and came out with JULY, released in 1968. It fails to capture the giddy heights of Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, but does contain a couple of stone cold classics, Dandelion Seeds being one of them. Just when it seems it's getting into an extended jam, an eerie slow passage is super-imposed over the beat in what is considered, in some circles, as one of the greatest moments in psychedelic history. On the other hand, they're also responsible for 'Hello, Who's There' (see Mind De-Coder 10).

THE EARLIES     NO LOVE IN YOUR HEART

The Earlies have a kind of folk meets prog meets krautrock meets electronica thing going on which works for me but means that their records will essentially remain unplayed on the radio, or, for the most part, anywhere else for that matter. This track, however, taken from their 2007 release THE ENEMY CHORUS, will always get them played on Mind De-Coder, which almost makes up for it, I imagine.

KOOBAS     BARRICADES

The Koobas were one of the great lost bands of the 60's. They started off all Merseybeat, even got themselves managed by Brian Epstein for a while, but produced nothing that was ever worth jumping up and down about. By 1968 they were ready to call it a day, but before they went managed to produce this sprawling psychedelic monster of a track that can be found on their only album THE KOOBAS, released in 1969. It manages to sound like no other track released in the 60's.

JULIAN COPE     THE 18 CHARMS OF ODIN

Even by Julian Cope's standards this is something of a rarity. The 18 Charms of Odin was released as part of a limited edition CD to accompany Cope's series of lectures at The British Museum in 2001. The subject of his lectures was: 'DISCOVER ODIN', in which Cope reclaimed for the warlike All-father of the Vikings his original reputation as poet, priest and nurturer of early European culture (this was the occasion in which Cope upset a few academics by illustrating Odin's role as the hanging God with a 1971 black & white TV performance of Alice Cooper). The 18 Charms of Odin is adapted, by Cope, from the Norse Myth 'The lord Of The Gallows'. The CD also contains the 18 minute Road To Yggdrasilbury, which I might save for another day.

SIMON DUPREE AND THE BIG SOUND     KITES

Apparently the band recorded something like 50 tracks in their life time and played over 300 gigs a year, but they are known essentially for this one track, the psychedelic ballad Kites. it was recorded in the Abbey Road studios at the same time The Beatles were recording Sgt. Peppers. The Beatles recorded all night and pretty much just left their instruments in the studio during the day time - which possibly explains why this track includes xylophone, mellotron, gong, wind-machine and possibly the kitchen sink. The sexy female voice-over was recorded phonetically by the actress Jacqui Chan (not Jackie Chan) - she had no idea what she ended up saying, and nor does anyone else.

MELLOW CANDLE     SHEEP SEASON

Acid folk doesn't get any more atmospheric or beautiful than this, but the record buying public disagreed and after releasing just one album in 1972, the very fine SWADDLING SONGS, the group split up. These days, of course, it's considered as something of the holy grail of folk rock albums and you can't buy the album for love nor money. That's what a spiraling two way soaring vocal harmony is supposed to sound like, just in case you wondered.

THE LILAC TIME     MORNING SUN

The thing about Stephen Duffy is that he has never really got over that whole Tin Tin business at the start of his career (not that he should ever feel that he has to apologise for Kiss Me round my house). Since those early days, however, he's gone on to make six or seven albums with his band The Lilac Time and they've all been splendid pastoral folk-pop affairs that have replaced the sugary tunes with an over-riding sense of English melancholy plus elegantly crafted melodic music that's doomed to remain under-rated by everyone who's never heard them. Morning Sun can be found on their fifth album LOOKING FOR A DAY IN THE NIGHT, released in 1999.

THE SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS     BROTHER SISTER

This song kills me every time I hear it. I don't know whether it's the children crying when it was time for his brother to move on, or his sister and her cat in San Francisco who he wishes that he saw more often, but this song just stops me in my tracks and puts a big lump in my throat. The fact that it's also a giddy slice of playful Welsh psychedelia also helps - I swear they must put something in their tea over there. You can find it on their debut album UNCANNY TALES FROM THE EVERYDAY UNDERGROWTH, released in 2005, which collected together their first 3 EP's. It's one of my favourite albums ever - I once spent a very agreeable sunny afternoon listening to it on repeat under enhanced circumstances and wrote them a letter straight after telling them how great I thought they were. They even replied, telling me that they thought I was great, too.

ORANGE BICYCLE      A TRIP ON AN ORANGE BICYCLE

Sometimes it's all in the title - A Trip On An Orange Bicycle tells you almost everything you need to know about this track. Released in 1968, from the album ORANGE BICYCLE. Before switching onto psychedelia they toured under the name Rob Storm and the Whispers - nuff said.

GO HOME PRODUCTIONS     2000 LIGHT YEARS FROM BOLAN

The only mash-up on tonight's show, mashing up The Rolling Stones with Marc Bolan, of course. Mark Vidler is a very highly regarded remixer/mash up artist whose first album of hand-bag disco mash-ups was poorly received on account of it arriving just too late for anyone to care. For his second album he returned to his first love, psychedelic music and TV ads (anyone who's ever heard 'Wouldn't it Be Nice To Have A Finger Of fudge' won't forget it in a hurry), to create SPLICED KRISPIES which is available as free download on http://www.gohomeproduction.co.uk  2000 Light Years From Bolan is a track that simply struts around your headphones looking for something to shag.

GOLDFRAPP     HAPPINESS (BEYOND THE WIZARD'S SLEEVE REMIX)

The fact is, that if you're ever lucky enough to hear this track under euphemistically enhanced circumstances you will appreciate that Alison Goldfrapp has the voice of an angel. I have never heard anything that comes close. It is a pure, exquisite and transcendent delight, and I don't say this lightly, and in the hands of Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve you also have beautiful multilayered piece of music to explore. Marvelous. The original (which is not without its own charms), can be found on their album THE SEVENTH TREE, released in 2008. This was the album wherein they discovered a gentle vein of pastoral folk with which to delight their listeners. With their latest album they've decided to be The Pointer Sisters.

THE EIGHTEENTH DAY OF MAY     THE HIGHEST TREE

I love this track. It's probably my favourite on this evening's show - it never makes me feel less than joyful, and possibly up for a bit of dancing if someone were able to produce a fiddle from behind a convenient hay stack. The Eighteenth Day of May only made one album, THE EIGHTEENTH DAY OF MAY, released in 2007. It sounds like like they grew up listening to their parent's early Fairport Convention albums, but try as I might I can't think of anything wrong with that statement.

THE AMORPHOUS ANDROGYNOUS     OPUS OF THE BLACK SUN

Who knew? It seems Amorphous Androgynous and I are ploughing the same furrow, but having listened to both their A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind compilations, can I just say that I think Mind De-Coder is, ooh, just a tiny little bit better. That is to say, I haven't thought: "Goodness me, that's a really clever mix, I wish I'd thought of that", just yet. On the other hand, I'm not kidding myself that I'm in any sort of competition with them either, what with them being famous and able to make a living out of something that I seem to be doing as a hobby. Anyway, this track is taken from THE PEPPERMINT TREE AND THE SEEDS OF SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS, released in 2008, which pretty much does what it says on the label.

OSYMYSO     FIVER TO BIGWIG

This is a bit unfair, isn't it? If I've done my job properly I've led you up the garden path and left you there dazed in some pastoral psychedelic reverie, then I play out with this track by Osymyso which, I don't know, just seemed to fit. Anyway, you can't take these things too seriously otherwise you'll up in your arse, and not the other side of your mind, which is what I'm aiming for, of course. Just for the record, you can find this at http://osymyso.com He's also the creator of BRINGS YOU THE ART OF FLIPPING CHANNELS, which is an excellent mash up of sounds and 1970's TV show themes, so he's not entirely evil.  

And that was Mind De-coder 13. I thank you.

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