I’m painfully fully aware that I’ve been shirking my self-imposed responsibilities in terms of sharing mixes and radio shows here over the past year or so. The crushingly tedious explanation for this involves new computers, out of date software and conflicting file formats etc etc, and, given that finding solutions to such infernal issues is not exactly my idea of fun, I’ve only just got around to it.

How better to celebrate my return to ersatz DJing then than by unleashing a new instalment of Mystery Ships, my long-dormant series of global psychedelia mixes. (The last instalment was over five years ago at this point, unbelievably. Happy to re-up any of ‘em upon request, by the way.)

Working from home has naturally given me plenty of opportunity to huddle over my beloved circa-2006 iTunes and throw these things together, and in keeping with the effects if lockdown stasis, the theme of this one is HARDCORE PSYCH. By which I mean that, whilst earlier volumes in this series might have veered quite a long way off their stated remit, the cuts included here (excluding the fairly sedate intro and outro numbers) are full-steam-ahead, no nonsense psychedelia – overwhelming, full spectrum beautific sound to zone out to and get lost within. Not all rock-based by any means, but suffice to say, if you’re not in the mood for out of control fuzz guitar, smeary distorted organ textures, backward-masked blather, oversaturated tape sound and roiling, tempestuous rhythmic freakouts, well – just keep on walking ‘cross that quarantine seaweed, fella. It’ll still all be here for you on the way back.

A second mix on a somewhat more laidback / meditative tip will hopefully follow shortly.

Sample/stream via the embed below, or alternatively, the traditional mp3 download link follows the track list. Featured bands and artists who are still a going concern and deserve your support have been linked accordingly.



00:00 The Clean - Are You Really On Drugs?
02:35 H. Tical - Distillation
06:20 Kim Sun - The Man Who Must Leave
14:01 Erkin Koray - Mesafeler
17:42 The Bevis Frond - Window Eye
23:13 Masahiko Sato - Take It Easy
28:31 Oblivion Reptilian - Alien Shit
36:24 Don Cherry - Isla (The Sapphic Sleep)
38:45 The Insect Trust - The Skin Game
42:49 Taras Bulba - The Neon Midnight
48:00 Don Cherry & Terry Riley - Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector [Köln, 1975]
56:26 Headroom - New Heaven
1:02:25 Alice Coltrane - Hare Krishna
1:10:36 Shooting Guns - Feelings (Dub)
1:23:04 Brigadune - I’ll Cry Out From My Grave (God I’m Sorry)
1:25:54 Demon Fuzz - Message to Mankind

(Download link.)

(If you’d like me to re-up the file, or send it to you directly or whatever, just drop me a line in the comments - it’d be a pleasure.)

Labels: mixcloud, mixtapes, Psychedelia

Time I think for yet another psychedelic mix-tape, and the general theme that emerged whilst I was putting this one together is a that of a kinda period spent in stasis (whether good or bad), a visit to limbo… y'know, that sort of thing; a journey across ‘the endless plain’. Interpret as you will.

The title comes from a John Cale song, and thus we finish with a selection from his damaged masterpiece ‘Music For a New Society’ (1983), a record that seems to sound more ominously relevant than ever today… if you’re in the mood, and I wouldn’t blame you if you’re not.

Labels: mixtapes, Psychedelia

It’s been a little while since I’ve done one of these, so let’s sing loud and stand proud for a border-demolishing comp of world-spanning psych-rock delirium, featuring contributions from India, Turkey, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Brazil, Australia, Yugoslavia and Iran (with plenty of room left over for US / UK business too), all united by the international language of fuzz, smoke and the mysteries of the Fender bass. Beyond that, no real concept at work here really, so, in the words of the Captain: JUST DIG IT.

Labels: mixtapes, Psychedelia

Part nine in my ever on-going series of expanded-definition psyche mixes, I thought for this one we’d get back to basis to some extent by front-loading some hefty chunks of no-bullshit psychedelic rock, leavened as ever with occasional excursions into other realms altogether. Worryingly, a bit of a Charles Manson type theme seemed to be developing mid-way through, so I thought we might as well go all out with it.

Along the way, we’ve got welcome returns from such Msytery Ships/Planes regulars as Angus Maclise, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Delia Derbyshire and the mighty Rallizes, alongside debut appearances from Colosseum, Chuck Cowen, the mysterious Religious Girls, and a young lad called Neil, heard here bumming out a cheery East Coast bar crowd with some seriously heavy vibes. He could far with the right management.

Labels: mixtapes, Psychedelia

Mys-Ships # 8.

Back by popular demand (well, one person expressed an interest), here’s another volume of my on-going psychedelicish compilation series.

Another Britain-centric edition (insofar as it can be whilst incorporating contributions from Zambia, India, Germany and the Pacific North-West), this playlist is in part a kinda weird, extremely vague, instinctive response to the current cultural lockdown being experienced by London as the olympics summer grinds on. But that aside, just another bunch of really good tracks that fitted together nicely.

A low track count this time round, cos some of them are pretty long burners.

Hope you get somethin’ out of it.

1. Intro / Mount Vernon Arts Lab – While London Sleeps
2. Blood Ceremony – The Hermit
3. Hype Williams – Untitled # 7
4. RLLRBLL – Coffee With Donnie
5. Skullflower – Evel Knievel
6. Mi Ami – Horns
7. Wicked Lady – Out of the Dark
8. Can – True Story
9. Witch – Like a Chicken
10. John Fahey – A Raga Called Pat: Part 2
11. The Black Beats – The Mod Trade
12. Marianne Faithfull – Working Class Hero
13. Epic Soundtracks – Waiting for the Train Again

Link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?jg8a2l51uf7b5nq

Previously on the show:

Volume # 1 (originally written up here)
Volume # 2 (originally written up here)
Volume # 3 (originally written up here)
Volume # 4 (originally written up here)
Volume # 5 (originally written up here)
Volume # 6 (originally written up here)
Volume # 7 (originally written up here)

Labels: mixtapes, Psychedelia

M.T. VII: Mystery Ships.

Sorry as ever for the recent posting lapse. What can I say? Life, y’know – what a pain in the ass. If only I could skulk in a crypt and review 7”s all day long. But how would I get them, when the sunlight hurts my ossified limbs? Have you ever tried to get decent broadband connected in a cemetery? So you see my dilemma.

Anyway, to keep things hoppin’ whilst I try in vain to coax some words on this year’s Hot New Acts from their mental hiding place, here’s another hogshead of quasi-psychedelia to liven up a drab and greasy February.

I dunno much what anyone thinks of these comps, but I certainly enjoy making them, and their gradual formation as I plough through hours of random play, selectively dragging & dropping, has become a big part of my listening routine.

I fear that by this stage, the mixes that emerge are tending to get a tad predictable – some 60s/70s fuzz guitar obscurities, a token African track, one or two Japanese tracks, a bit of Italian film soundtrack stuff, post-New Thing hippie jazz interlude, some weird noise collage and something a bit post-punky just to mix it up a bit, a bit of basement genius from one of those lost mid-west rustbelt savant type characters (three for the price of one this time round, with Tommy Jay, Mike Rep AND Michael Yonkers), something a bit Witch House-y to show I’m hip to the exciting new rhythm-type musics of today, and bob’s yr uncle.

Never mind. I still like it all. It still makes for a pretty representative sample of the kind of stuff I like listening to beyond the realms of new-ish punk/pop/rock, and I'd like to think that the open-minded listener should be able to find at least one or two flat out killers to suit their particular tastes on each of these. I mean, don’t even get me started on that Marsha Hunt track – oh MAN, it’s like all the good stuff on that biker-rock comp I made a while back compressed into three minutes of pure carnage – maybe even beats Betty Harris’s ‘Break in the Road’ for the coveted ‘best feedback soul song ever’ title. And if you’re unfamiliar with D.R. Hooker’s ‘Forge Your Own Chains’, well… better get on that! Approach the reissue of his album in your local record shop in a slow yet forceful manner, and put your money on the counter. Oh, and yeah, there’s a near-ten year old Dead Meadow track on there too, of course. Say what you like, I’m still digging it.

Hopefully on the next instalment we’ll shake things up a bit. I mean, it’ll probably still have Ennio Morricone and Serge Gainsbourg and Don Cherry on it – let’s not go nuts, right? – but in-between hopefully I’ll come up with some stuff to plunder new realms, frighten the horses etc too.

In the meantime, enjoy this one. Here’s the link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?4wh4825gya7jcss


1. John Fahey - We Would Be Building
2. Fallen Angels - Something New You Can Hide In
3. Marsha Hunt - Red Hot Poppa
4. Stark Reality - Rocket Ship
5. Houghas Sorowonko - Enuanom Adofo
6. Papa Celestin's New Orleans Band - Marie Le Veau
7. D.R. Hooker - Forge Your Own Chains
8. Golau Glau - Soft Silver Young
9. Swell Maps - Big Empty Field
10. Serge Gainsbourg -
Je N'avais pas Qu-un Seul Mot a Lul Dire
11. Ennio Morricone - Svolta Definitiva
12. Kangaroo Paw - Osusowake
13. Tommy Jay & Mike Rep - Learn to Ride
14. Don Cherry & The Jazz Composers Orchestra - The Queen of Tung Ting Lake
15. Dead Meadow - Babbling Forever
16. OKOK Research Bureau - The Sinister Pearl (remix)
17. White Ring - Suffocation (Haunted by Unison remix)
18. Michael Yonkers - Will It Be
19. Cheater Slicks - Mystery Ship

PS – I’m changing the name from this # onwards too. That ‘Mystery Train-ing’ tag seemed like a good idea at the time, what with the train pun, the whole ‘underground journey cross the world’ notion etc., but detached from that it sounds pretty pompous and it’s been bugging me, so – Mystery Ships. I like that phrase. I like that concept. (Try googling it for some fun stuff.) Let’s go with it. Bon voyage!


Prior instalments:

Volume # 1 (originally written up here)
Volume # 2 (originally written up here)
Volume # 3 (originally written up here)
Volume # 4 (originally written up here)
Volume # 5 (originally written up here)
Volume # 6 (originally written up here)

Labels: mixtapes, Psychedelia

Mystery Train#ing# - Part the Sixth

Yet another addition to my ongoing set of widest-possible-definition psychedelia compendiums, and again, there’s no fixed theme here, although I detect a strain of warped memories, distorted time and eerie futuristic travel running through this one… kind of a sense of ‘Solaris’-like haunted serenity maybe, if that’s not way too much of a pretentious claim to make with regard to yr own damn mixtape?

As usual, no additional info about these tracks enclosed (gotta maintain the whole MYSTERY conceit), but if you wanna find out where any of these came from, google away and exciting discoveries may or may not await.

Oh, and appropriately enough perhaps, I don’t know where the artwork for this one originated. I just found the image knocking about on my hard drive the other day and thought “damn, that would make a great album cover”. Possibly someone else already thought that and it already IS an album cover – if that’s the case, please let me know and I’ll replace it with something else before I embarrass myself further.

Anyway, enjoy.

1. Katie Paterson – Ice Record
2. Grouper – Alien Observer
3. Maquiladora – So Far Away
4. Maria Minerva – Sad Serenade (Bedroom Rock n’ Roll)
5. The Litter – Codine
6. Motion Sickness of Time Travel – Mental Projection
7. Solid Space – Tenth Planet
8. Schizo – Telstar
9. Bruno Nicolai – Funeral Striptease
10. Pocahaunted – The Weight
11. Bobbi Humphrey – Chicago, Damn
12. Metal Boys – Tokio Airport
13. Hexenjagd – Twin Peaks theme
14. Michael Yonkers – Don’t Wait Until Tomorrow
15. Music de Wolfe – Forgotten Memories
16. Rameses III – No Water, No Moon
17. Morita Doji - 今日は奇蹟の朝です (Today is the Miracle Morning)
18. Joel Mathis – Time Machine

Download.


Previous editions:

Volume # 1 (originally written up here)
Volume # 2 (originally written up here)
Volume # 3 (originally written up here)
Volume # 4 (originally written up here)
Volume # 5 (originally written up here)

Labels: mixtapes, Psychedelia

Another Intermission:
Mystery Training, Chapter # 5

Before I get back to the Comet Gaining (it’s coming), it occurred to that I haven’t posted a volume of my ongoing psychedelic mix CD project thing for quite a while, so here we go.

No particular theme to this one, but it’s a track-list that I’ve been kicking around for a while and I really like it.

So schedule an eighty minute walk in the woods, hit this up on the headphones, and I believe you’ll have a fine time.

Tracklist:

1. Louise Huebner – Introduction
2. Witch – Introduction
3. J.D. Blackfoot – Prophesy
4. The Aquarian Age – 10,000 Words in a Cardboard Box
5. Bruno Nicolai – Una Vergine Tra I Morti Viventi: Sequence # 1
6. The Twinkeyz – Aliens in Our Midst
7. Hype Williams – Dolo
8. Linda Perhacs – Cimacum Rain
9. The Jacks – Marriane
10. Jeffrey Lewis & Peter Stampfel – I Spent the Night in the Wax Museum
11. The Ventures – The Bat
12. Inca Ore – Shine On from the Heaven Above
13. Nudge Squidfish – Part Cherokee
14. People of the North – The Vastest Island
15. Meiko Kaji – Hitori Kaze
16. The Top Drawers – Song of a Sinner
17. Pärson Sound – Blåslåten
18. Parson-Smith – The Letter

DOWNLOAD.

Oh, and whilst I’m at it, here some new links I put up recently to the previous volumes;

Volume # 1 (originally written up here)
Volume # 2 (originally written up here)
Volume # 3 (originally written up here)
Volume # 4 (originally written up here)

Labels: mixtapes, Psychedelia

A Pleasant Evening.. and a few surprises.

It’s been a while since I posted any downloadable mixes on Stereo Sanctity, but now that I have a working CD burner and a reliable home broadband connection for the first time in a few months, it seems like a good time to catch up with some of the homemade compilations I’ve been pottering about with recently.

This one here for instance is the latest instalment in my reality capsizing, galaxy-spanning (well, iTunes spanning at least) overview of my favourite examples of psychedelic music.

A themed edition (y’know, like the Pebbles ‘Surf’ volume or something), this ‘Psychedelic Dancefloor’ one gives me a nigh on endless opportunity to beat my chops (that means talk, in case you were wondering) about the inherently mind-altering nature of dance, and thus how odd it is the psychedelia is often primarily associated with lying around in a heap listening to some hippies wig out at a glacial pace. Or about how my upbringing and cultural circumstances meant I never really got the chance to engage with dance-music-as-genre. Or hey, how about that whole thing recently with people claiming that one of the best ways for avant/psyche/drone/noise etc music to find new purpose is to reconnect itself with repetitive dancebeats to form some kinda planet-smashing form of ultimate hypnogogic disco whatever that we’d all listen to exclusively for eternity..?

I’m not sure how that’s all coming along (I’ve not read The Wire in years), but hey, I’m sure I could find an opinion on it, and if the monged out club bits on that great Blues Control album from last year or thousands of kinds going nuts at Animal Collective concerts are a stumble in that general direction, you can surely count me in.

ANYWAY, I’m NOT gonna talk about any of that stuff or try to explain/expand on any of my selections here. Let’s just say this is a collection of great, mind-bending fuzzy tunes that you could actually dance to, in the idyllic imaginary nightclub environment of your dreams, should you wish.

Sorry the cover’s not up to much – my photoshop skills leave something to be desired, and I’ve not had the time or desk space to knock anything together on paper. The original comic book panel comes courtesy of no less a personage than Gentleman Jack Kirby though, so that should more than make up for my artistic failings!

Enjoy!

1. Peter Wyngarde – Come In
2. The Index – Shock Waves
3. Ros Sereysothea - [title unknown]
4. Ennio Morricone – Nightclub Scene from ‘Danger: Diabolik!’
5. L’Oeil – Bernadette
6. Ruth – Mots
7. Paula Sheppard – Me & My Rhythm Box
8. Black Devil Disco Club – Follow Me
9. Ellen Allien & Apparat – Way Out
10. Arthur Russell – In the Light Of The Miracle
11. Betty Davis – Git In There
12. The Group – The Feedback
13. The Science Fiction Corporation – The Whistling Astronaut
14. Francesco de Masi – New York: One More Day
15. Land of Giants – Cannibal Dolls
16. Baby Huey – Running
17. Sparks – The Number One Song in Heaven
18. Peter Wyngarde – April

DOWNLOAD
(93mb zip file / 78 minutes)

(If the link’s not working for you for whatever reason don’t suffer in silence – drop me a line and I’ll get it to you some other way.)

Labels: dancing, mixtapes, Psychedelia

HOLD A DESERT, FEEL ITS HAND:
Mystery TRAINing Volume # 3

With the heat of the summer already comin’ on etc., it’s convenient that the third instalment of my vaguely thematic psychedelic compilation series concerns itself with THE DESERT.

Truth be told, I’ve never spent much time in the desert. I’m told it can get pretty psychedelic though. If I were in the desert, I think I would probably want to listen to some lengthy passages of really bad-ass heavy rock, so verily you will find some of them within. The more obvious inclusions aside, I particularly commend Northwest Company’s ‘Grey Skies’ to you – proof that, whilst the vast majority of early ‘70s open air festival blues jams may have sucked ass, there is much to be said for the 5% that went TOTALLY RIGHT. Nod those heads!

And I’d want some eerie, beatific drones too. They’re good for the desert. Yes, definitely some of those. Keijo comes from Finland, so I don’t know what the hell he knows of the desert, but…. he seems to fit in nicely.

Similarly, Jamaica’s no bloody desert, but nonetheless it seems like high time we introduced some dub into this series, so take it away King Tubby. What an astounding record! Same can be said of Haiti, but that hasn’t stopped me throwing in an OMGFamazing slice of horror movie voodoun psychedelic soul/folk/other from Exuma The Obeah Man. Hopefully by the time you get to that point in the comp though, you’ll be stumbling ‘round death valley after dark searching for the hole leading to the centre of the earth to sit out the forthcoming apocalypse, so who cares.

West Africa now - that’s the place for desert! So I couldn’t resist the opportunity to throw in a tune from everybody’s favourite Saharan outlaws Tinariwen, lying down some shit with a couple of guitars and hand percussion to make everyone else in the world who’d claim to be ‘funky’ go weak at the knees. I’ve actually been burned recently on a couple of ‘60s/’70s African reissues that were recommended to me as fuzzed out, psychedelic masterpieces but were actually pretty dreary. As with British/American ‘60s stuff though, it’s often the one-off mystery singles that come through where the album artists fail, and as such, OH MAN - Ofo The Black Company! I don’t know who they were or what they thought they were doing, but… OH MAN - Ofo The Black Company! What more can I say.

The Country Joe & The Fish track by the way is from the soundtrack to the counter-culture western ‘Zachariah’, in which they play an outlaw gang called The Crackers. The bit where they play this song is the best thing in the whole movie. No, scratch that, the best bit is where Elvin Jones shoots three guys with the same bullet and then plays a four minute drum solo. But CJ Fish definitely come in second. The James Gang rocking out in the middle of the desert with big amp stacks comes in third, and, sadly, everything else in the film is pretty crap.

Anyway, I seem to be straying from the point a bit, so let’s wrap this up:

I think everything on this compilation is awesome. Burn it onto a disc, put it on somewhere as you stare into a vast open sky and feel your toes sink into the sand or whatever, and I hope you’ll agree.

Tracklist:

1. Grouper – hold a desert, feel it’s hand
2. Country Joe & The Fish – we’re the crackers
3. The 13th Floor Elevators – livin’ on
4. “The Happening” radio spot
5. King Tubby & The Aggravators – I trim the barber
6. Tinariwen – dualahila ar tesninam
7. Ofo The Black Company – allah wakbarr
8. John Fahey – the portland cement factory at monolith, ca.
9. Charalambides – the good life
10. Northwest Company – grey skies
11. The Grateful Dead, Merry Pranksters & Friends – peggy the pistol
12. Keijo – stellar wind
13. Bhagavad Gita – long hair soulful
14. “Satan’s Sadists” radio spot
15. The Jesters of Newport – stormy
16. Exuma – mama loi papa loi
17. Dead Meadow – beyond the fields we know (live)
18. Moe Tucker – blue, all the way to canada
19. Greg Ashley – apple pie & genocide

Download:

Here.

(90mb .zip file)

Labels: mixtapes, Psychedelia

Never Underestimate Little Corners.


Slumber Party – That’s Why I’m Not Sad

I love Slumber Party. I think they’re one of the great, under-rated bands of the early ‘00s, and it is rare that I should spent a long period of time alone without at some point feeling the urge to put on one of their three wonderful albums of dreamy, Velvetsy psychedelic pop. (They re-emerged a few years ago with a new, synth heavy line up to record a disappointing fourth album, a circumstance which we still find it painful to talk about ‘round these parts).

Oh, to be the rhythm guitar player in Slumber Party, I used to opine to myself on long winter evenings shortly after I bought my first guitar. So much beauty for such little effort! Sadly main singer/songwriter Alicia Berg already fulfilled that job perfectly though, so it was not to be. Just a few downstrokes on a few open chords, set all the knobs on the amplifier just right and…. how does she make sound so lovely? Lead guitarist Gretchen Gonzalez is my real hero in the band though, unafraid as she is to inject some real gutsy psyche into the brew, pulling things back from the gates of whimsy with some plain fuckin’ beautiful lead lines, rich, fuzzy tones and real subtle and inventive use of effects. ‘Church Key Gonzalez’, they shoulda called her. The band’s minimal bassing and one drum drumming too should serve as a model of restraint for all groups approaching this kind of music, and OH MY, what’s the use in continuing: Slumber Party were just real real good, that’s what I’m trying to say. You just cannot go wrong with those three albums.

(I’ll give you a bonus song actually, to demonstrate all this in case for any Slumber Party neophytes in the audience: opener off their self-titled album: Sooner or Later.)

I guess some folk may be apt to accuse Slumber Party’s music of being samey, predictable, unadventurous, ‘pretty’. But phooey to them, I say! That’s like approaching someone who’s experiencing some kinda idyllic whirlwind romance, and saying, oh come on now - running through the park with your new love in the blazing sunshine, crying tears of laughter and joy ‘pon his/her shoulder as the sun sets? Everyone’s seen that shit before; what a bunch of boring crap! Start stabbing each other or something, or I’m just not interested!

Slumber Party is comfort music, perfect for settling into new surroundings, establishing a sense of continuity and contentedness in changeable circumstances. ‘Comfort music’ may sound like some kinda fuzzy, questionable notion, like ‘chill out time’ or obsessive concern with interior decorating or white wine or something – just the sort of girly nonsense you’d expect a group called “Slumber Party” to indulge in. But phooey to that too! Comfort music is very important. Black Sabbath is comfort music too, just at the masculine end of the scale. In fact, if we’re talking vague n’ nebulous binary gender divisions, I’d contest that Slumber Party were ‘girly’ in very much the same way that Black Sabbath were ‘boy-y’. Eg, the best possible way.

And, it is in the process of squaring such weird notions that we reach ‘That’s Why I’m Not Sad’, from Slumber Party’s debut LP ‘Psychedelicate’ (and, according to iTunes, my most played Slumber Party song). A simple, beautiful, psychedelic lament of self-explanatory, universal loss, return and reassurance, done to spidery, slow-burning ballroom perfection. I love it. I know it’s a winner in the long song stakes because it’s 6+ minutes always seem to pass by in about 90 seconds, leaving me thinking “what, it can’t end yet, surely?” In fact, such is the hazy, low-key bliss conjured by the song’s cyclical melody and basic, hypnotic chord changes, I think it could work very effectively as the ‘Louie Louie’ of plaintive, minor key jam band songs. (I guess ‘Down By The River’ must be a distant relation.)

Altogether now: “I was sitting by this river, feeling very sad…”

I was thinking I’d like to hear some other bands revive the song in precisely that fashion – rooms full of stoners, crying into their cider. But it never occurred to me it already WAS a cover version. Imagine my surprise then when I threw on ‘Artefacts From The Black Museum’, second record from mysterioso ‘70s private press heavy-psyche godheads Dark, (quite an UN-girly outfit, one would assume), and there it was, just sitting there fully formed, track # 5.

It felt weird, but good. Slumber Party, you were just too cool for school.

Labels: Psychedelia, Slumber Party, song reviews

I Like Thee Oh Sees.

Although it passed me by when it first appeared last year, ‘The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In’, debut LP from Thee Oh Sees, John Dwyer’s latest assault on the world’s sensibilities, has recently come back outta nowhere (or “the internet” as we call it these days) to claim a place as one of my, like, totally favourite things of recent months.

(I know they’ve got a new album out on (where else?) In The Red soon and/or now, but I’ve not heard it yet, so for now I’ll keep on talking about their old one if that’s alright with everyone.)

Like many others I suspect, I’ve been a bit hot/cold on Dwyer’s previous bands, as experienced via the garage/noise of The Coachwhips and the noise/noise of Pink & Brown. Listening to both of those groups, I felt a mixture of respect for Dwyer’s pure energy in honing in on exactly the kind of demented, unconventional sound he was after, and disappointment that the results were often so chaotic, inconsistent and self-sabotaging. With Thee Oh Sees though, he’s shifted focus quite a bit, playing to his sonic strengths and really hitting the jackpot, letting loose a beautifully skewed mess of jangling psychedelic rock n’ roll, resurrecting the spirit of the earliest 13th Floor Elevators material and splicing in strains of mutant rockabilly and contemporary noise-rock thunder, equal parts melody and chaos over a relentless party-time backbeat, nailing an absolute killer sound.

Perhaps ironically for a band with it’s roots in San Francisco, Thee Oh Sees sometimes seem to be aiming at an ideal of psychedelia that draws a direct line between basic, backwoods rock n’ roll and total whacked out strangeness, writing the unnecessary baggage of the British invasion, folk-rock and hippie blues-jam phases out of history entirely. The sound of weird, sub-beatnik kids sticking forks in their third eyes back when everybody else was still wearing matching stripy shirts and playing ‘Louie Louie’. Barring the odd Townshend-derived riff, tambourine and some faint ‘we-listened-to-Dylan-on-acid-and-it-was-awesome’ Elevators-esque folk vibes, a lot of these Oh Sees songs sound like some kinda freaky thing that might have been birthed had the boys down at Link’s three-track shack just thrown caution to the wind and got waaaay out there one night.

A good dose of Dwyer’s lunatic-with-a-megaphone distorted vocals have survived from Coachwhips, but here they’re translated for the human race by co-vocalist Brigid Dawson, the two voices more often than not coalescing into an uncanny, genderless alien howl, framing a seemingly endless series of deliciously strange psych-pop readymades and surfy Monks/Seeds groove-stomps. You probably won’t get any terribly deep lyrical sartori from this Oh Sees album, but the odd snatch of vocab and titles like “Ghost In The Trees” and “Graveyard Drug Party” combine with the juggernaut of sound to tell you everything you need to know about the kind of scene being explored here.

Everything in Thee Oh Sees world comes served via an overdriven tube amp roar, slathered in slapback echo and tremolo. Almost every song jumps into life from a swamp of murky, delayed clatter, a ubiquitous “1,2,3,4!” sounding like it’s being beamed in from a distant ham radio, before the frantic rhythm section lays down the law and Dwyer’s applaudably demented, wild man guitar-playing proceeds to steal the show, slicing his way through Troggs-worthy hulk riffs, twangy jack-in-the-box rock n’ roll leads, pure destructo noise and endless fried solos with all the restraint of a kid on xmas morning.

For all the nerve-rattling racket though, these tracks are always accompanied by a tune to write home about, a pre-verbal yellalong chorus and the kind of honest-to-god crowd-pleasing hooks that most straight-laced garage bands would die for. Opener “Block Of Ice” and definitive dilated pupil girl-ode “Maria Stacks” present the band at their pop-est, like some inexplicably amazing two minute epiphanies you might find buried deep on a ‘Psychedelic Experience’ comp or ‘Pebbles Vol#36’, and proceed to obsess over for years. Longer groove-based cuts like “Two Drummers Disappear” sound like they have their root in some absolute killer rehearsal jams - ones that were WORTH KEEPING, would you believe - and even the more abstract items, such as the perplexing “Visit Colonel”, featuring as it does a roar of sound that makes me fear I’m about to be run down by a train every time I play in on my earphones, still rope in a melody I could probably hum for you, had I not let all the other competing Oh Sees melodies bounce happily around my brain for so long.

Across this album’s whole forty something minutes, only penultimate track “Quadrospazzed” begins to lose focus and run out of steam, and the closing “Koka Kola Jingle” makes up for it, a beautifully wasted, barely there lament, hinting at an entirely different aspect to the band’s music, before ending proceedings, as is only right & proper, with a resigned, echo-wrecked guitar drop/plug pull. Sadly you’ll have to add in the closing footsteps leaving the recording booth yourself, but no matter, ‘The Master’s Bedroom..’ still evidences a plain fantastic hit-rate for music this essentially spontaneous and crazed.

Thee Oh Sees is timeless, damaged freak music of a kind that’ll have 70 year old weirdos chortling for joy and 20 year old squares turning pale and reaching for the pause button. This one stands alongside those Greg Ashley solo discs, Oneida, Dead Meadow, Animal Collective and The Heads ‘Undersided’ on the long-list of my favourite psych-rock albums of the decade.

Mp3s>

Maria Stacks
Two Drummers Disappear


Thee Oh Sees myspace.

Buy this album from Norman.

Download some rare Oh Sees singles from the increasingly unbeatable Pukekos.

Labels: garage, I like, Psychedelia, punk, Thee Oh Sees

Easter Everywhere.

Sorry as ever for the lack of recent posts. General busy-ness, lack of internet access, etc. It's seems though that we've hit Easter - always one of my favourite times of the year. Sacrifice, rebirth, resurrection, winter into spring, blah blah blah - good stuff. As such, rest assured I've got some new posts coming up later this week. And, in the meantime, why not pay oblique tribute to the 13th Floor Elevators' easter-tastic 2nd LP by enjoying my new 8 Track full of choice Texas garage band madness:

Labels: 8 Tracks, lameness, Psychedelia, punk, Texas

A CATHEDRAL OF EYES:
Mystery TRAINing Volume # 2

For anyone who enjoyed my first wide-ranging type psychedelia mix CD a few months back, here’s volume two. As before, the overriding theme of this disc didn’t become clear until I started listening back to all the tunes I’d thrown together and saw a pattern emerging, proceeding to tweak accordingly.

So basically: this edition focuses mainly, though not exclusively, on exploring various strains of peculiarly British weirdness. Not the more garish, colourful brand of British weirdness defined by the ‘60s cultural explosion though, mark you. More like the murky, forbidding, timeless kind of British weirdness that always seems to emerge when you scratch away the surface of our nation’s (counter)culture, offering a path into the blackened psyches of our island nation’s more… peculiar.. inmates.

Aside from a few bigger cult names, there are a wealth of awesome private press / below-the-radar finds represented here, so I offer my thanks to blogs like Mutant Sounds and Lost In Tyme for slinging them into my path. Of particular interest to some will be The Fates, an all-female wiccan collective led by Una Baines, ex of The Fall, whose album ‘Furia’ offers a fascinating mixture of mysterioso pagan folk and feminist new wave pop (one for the ‘REISSUE NOW PLEASE’ file). Another favourite of mine are The Left Handed Marriage, a trio of talented kids who spent the late ‘60s stuck well away from the action in far North London, but who nonetheless recorded an album’s worth of startlingly strong, characterful acoustic pop-folk tunes that help reveal a very different England to the one in which The ‘Stones and Jimi Hendrix were strutting their stuff in but a few miles away. Dark (I keep wanting to call them The Dark) were an early ‘70s combo whose two private press albums are quite well known amongst psyche/prog fans and have subsequently been reissued etc, but, man, ‘Maypole’ never gets any more normal. As to the likes of The Lazily Spun and The Chemistry Set… well I don’t know a damn thing about them I’m afraid, although I’m quite happy with that state of affairs, being a fan of mystery and such.

Of course, that aside, we’ve also got contributions here from South Africa (Super-Eagles), Japan (OOIOO), what is now Iraq (Said El Kurdi), and the USA (Pearls Before Swine); maybe a few of these could serve to add a nice frission of post-Imperial guilt to proceedings, if you want to carry on the British theme? Or simply some incredible music, if you don’t. That Super Eagles track is so purely wonderful, it’s hard to justify the existence of any mixtape that fails to include it.

The other presumptuous, unintentional synchronicity that seem to crop up across these songs concerns the hermetic nature of love, and the need to protect it from worldly cynicism. Make of that what you will.

Oh, and I guess some people (who like their genres cut n’ dried) may question the inclusion of The Slits on a psychedelia compilation. So answers on a postcard if you’ve got a better guess at where the hell a track like ‘Life On Earth’ is supposed to be filed.

To get you in mood, here’s the video to The Troggs ‘Night of Long Grass’, which I think exemplifies the atmosphere I’m going for with this one better than any amount of talkin’:



Now, enjoy!

Tracklist:

1. Bermuda Triangle – Nights in White Satin
2. Super Eagles – Love is a Real Thing
3. OOIOO – Be Sure to Loop
4. The Troggs – Night of the Long Grass
5. Television Personalities – Scream Quietly
6. Belbury Poly – Caermaen
7. The Lazily Spun – The Rock
8. The Lazily Spun – The Whole
9. The Fates – Sheila / She Beats My Heart
10. The Chemistry Set – Under The Valley
11. The Caretaker – From Out Of Nowhere
12. The Deviants – Billy The Monster
13. The Left Handed Marriage – Civil Servile
14. Dark – Maypole
15. Said El Kurdi – Kassem Miro
16. The Slits – Life On Earth
17. John Cage – Experiences No.2 (vocal: Robert Wyatt)
18. Delia Derbyshire – Blue Veils and Golden Sands
19. Pearls Before Swine – Guardian Angels

Download:

Here

(97mb .zip file)

Labels: mixtapes, Psychedelia

THREE EYED MEN ARE NOT COMPLAININ'...

Regular readers will be aware that, regardless of whatever else I’ve been into at one time or another, I’ve always maintained an interest in exploring the myriad mysteries of psychedelic music, in the widest possible sense of the term.

And, as the nights draw in, the shadows climb the walls by mid-afternoon and the marvels of the internet allow me previously undreamed of access to information on, downloads of, and even affordable legit sources for, all manner of esoteric recordings both hallowed and unheralded, you’d better believe that PSYCHE has been back on the menu in a big way recently.

So, here is the first volume of what will perhaps be an irregular series of compilations charting some of the high points of my ear-explorations, featuring some stuff I’ve only just discovered mixed alongside tracks I’ve been digging for years.

Some of the artists and tracks represented will probably be familiar to psyche-fiends, others hopefully less so. I was tempted to use this space to run down some explanatory notes on these songs, but on balance I think it’s probably more appropriate to keep things mysterious. And, should you wish to find out more about any of the artists represented, a fascinating session of google-aided research is surely guaranteed. I’ve also tended to avoid the inclusion of any lengthy drone tracks or side-long freakouts, simply in order to be able to represent a wider variety of music within 80 minutes (yeah, you can put this fucker on a CD), whilst still providing some (what I hope will be) tantilizing tasters of pure sound and cosmic jazz in amongst more song-based material.

One of the best things about making psychedelic comps is the unexpected themes and synchronicities that can arise from your seemingly random track choices as you listen back after a few glasses of wine, providing the mix with it’s own unique atmosphere… if that doesn’t sound too pretentious.

For instance, whilst they’re not featured directly, the strange legacy of Roky Erickson, Tommy Hall and the other 13th Floor Elevators hangs heavy over this comp. Obviously I took the title from one of the final verses of their immortal ‘Slip Inside This House’ (“two-eyed men with mystery training / finally feel the power of thule”), and in addition to Oneida’s punk rock resurrection of that particular reality-defying classic (although they leave out the lyrics I’ve just quoted, maybe just through exhaustion), the spirit of Texas’s weirder underbelly lives on via the unique observations of Roky collaborator and electric autoharp entrepreneur Billy Miller, with his band Cold Sun, and also in the strangely similar latter-day psyche-drift of Houston’s own Christina Carter.

Journeying outward from there, it appears that, despite contributions from as far afield as Peru and New Zealand, the majority of tracks here are American, and, taken together, they could almost be seen to represent some kinda journey through a woozy, hallucinogenic alternate USA… a USA you could perhaps travel via the ‘underground railroad’ that a young Fred Cole seems so desperate to board in The Lollipop Shoppe’s song…? MYSTERY TRAIN(ing)!

So - slightly to the East of the Lone Star State, The Surrealistic Pillow give us a wonderfully naive glimpse of that strange moment when Jefferson Airplane and Doors records started to hit Louisiana’s high schools, whilst Tommy Jay keeps things in the confederacy with his account of the Battle of Fredericksburg, and teenage genius and WCPAEB alumnus Michael Lloyd gives us a Hollywood superbrat’s skewed take on the conquest of the West, via his ‘68 studio project The Smoke. Up the coast a little in ‘Frisco, the recording that opens proceedings gives us a rare early ’66 account of psychedelia’s ground zero. Alice C. provides the New York connection (via Bombay, the centre of the universe, and the eternity of her own soul), and, hey, even the UK’s Stone Angel chime in to take us on a mist-shrouded cliff walk through H.P. Lovecraft’s Other New England. Then all that’s left is for Philadelphia’s Fursaxa to issue her ultimatum to the city of angels, and we fade out on the spectre of Gary Higgins, trawling the back roads of Litchfield County, CT for his lost love as the cops – and reality - close in….

And imagine, some people say I overthink these things.

Enjoy.

Tracklist:

1. The Merry Pranksters, Grateful Dead & friends - acid test recording
2. The Smoke [U.S.] - Cowboys & Indians
3. Oneida - Slip Inside This House
4. Greg Ashley - Legs Coca Cola
5. Cold Sun - South Texas
6. Alice Coltrane - The Sun
7. Vibracathedral Orchestra - He Play All Day
8. El Polen - Mi Cueva
9. Tommy Jay - I Was There
10. Christina Carter - Blind Eye
11. The Left Handed Marriage - Limousine
12. Anthony Davis - Section 2 (Sustained Tones)
13. The Lollipop Shoppe - Underground Railroad
14. The Surrealistic Pillow - I Like Girls
15. Tall Dwarfs - Lurlene Bayliss
16. Stone Angel - The Bells of Dunwich
17. Fursaxa - Surrender, LA
18. Gary Higgins - Looking For June

Download:

Here.

(95mb .zip file)

Labels: 1960s, mixtapes, Psychedelia

Greg Ashley – Painted Garden
(Birdman, 2007)

This is a solo album from the guy behind the band The Gris Gris, from a couple of years back. I only picked up a copy recently though, and a few listens in, it’s pretty amazing stuff; a rare and wonderful example of how to make a modern day psychedelic folk album that neatly side-steps the universe of bullshit clichés and retro referencing that the term ‘psychedelic folk’ implies, and instead concentrates on getting down a real weird, unique sound, centred around some pretty solid and captivating strange/dark/witty songwriting. An all-round perfect listening experience, in fact, to keep you on your toes for 45 minutes, preferably when the lights are low and the winds are a-howling in the midst of some phantasmagorical swampland mansion of the soul.

Stylistically it’s all over the shop, incorporating dour Leonard Cohen / Tim Buckley type brooding songsmithery, early ‘Lips/’Rev acid-punk chaos, ‘Highway 61’ styled lysergic boogie, Gary Higgins/Skip Spence stoner revelations and, on the extraordinary ‘Sailing With Bobby’, what I can only describe as a surreal, Japanese folk-influenced girl group song, somewhat akin to Moondog collaborating with Phil Spector. Rather than some headache-inducing, tribute-paying mash-up though, all of these elements seem to grow together organically in Greg's garden, all dwelling in harmony and trucking on toward a unifying mellow/sinister groove, rising and falling with loping grace from an eerie and imaginative backdrop of found sound atmospherics, garbled dictaphone conversation, deep, droning fuzz and woozy string arrangements reiterating strange, melodious themes in the distant background. Proper psyche, if you will.

Sounds potentially groan-worthy I realise, but importantly, ‘Panted Garden’ has the good grace to remain totally FUN throughout, with none of that laborious “I know this is boring but PAY ATTENTION” stuff you’re liable to get from certain other contemporary psych-folk chancers. From beginning to end, this record is nectar to the trained weirdness-ear, calculated to raise a “wow…. who’d you say this guy was again..?” from even the most shellshocked record nerd.

Unbottling the spirit of some of your favourite ‘60s cult classics, but having the good sense never to consciously riff off them and consign itself to becoming a head shop museum piece, ‘Painted Garden’ has a great feeling to it that suggests a guy who heard EXACTLY the sound he was looking for chattering away in the back of his mind, went out with his microphones, mixing board, instruments and musicianly pals, and didn't rest until he’d succeeded in nailing down every aspect of it.

To describe a guy who’s already helmed at least one masterpiece album (this one) and nearly a decade’s worth of pretty good ones with The Gris Gris and The Mirrors as ‘worth keeping an eye on’ seems a little patronising, but Ashley still seems to be labouring well beneath the indie-rock radar. Both of his myspaces show little sign of recent activity, and it seems unclear whether or not Gris Gris are still operational, whilst Greg seems to be concentrating more on offering up his services as a producer.

The depth of ambition and sonic expertise revealed within ‘Painted Garden’s soundworld is vast though, and I’d like to think Mr. Ashley is merely keeping a low profile whilst working up material for an imminent return that’s REALLY going to start blowing some minds. But in the meantime, apparently he’ll charge a modest $1200 to do your album for ya. I don't know about you, but I'm certainly tempted.

Mp3s>
Pretty Belladonna
Caroline And The Orange Tree

http://www.myspace.com/medicinefuckdream

Update: Since I started writing this review, I’ve done a bit of internet-aided retrospective research, and acquired Greg’s first solo album, 2002's unpromisingly titled ‘Medicine Fuck Dream’. And on first impressions, it’s astonishing. Obviously home-recorded, it's sparse, loose and lo-fi in comparison to ‘Painted Garden’, but more fragile and open in it’s execution too, and I think I like it even better. As a collection of loopy, insular suburban teenager weird-love songs, it owns my heart from the word go. In fact I think I dig this guy so much, I’m going to have to buy him a Christmas present. Amazing.

Labels: album reviews, Greg Ashley, Psychedelia

Charalambides / Pocahaunted – Bored Fortress split 7” (Not Not Fun)

(DISCLAIMER: I don’t actually own a hard copy of this - I came across it on thee interweb. I won’t post the tracks, as giving away the entirety of a recently released record seems like poor form. But, as is inevitably the way with this sort of nonsense, it was issued as part of a monthly singles club scheme to which entry is now closed, thus already rendering it unavailable for us mere mortals to legitimately purchase, so if you’re interested in hearing it, drop me a line.)

As you may have gathered, I’ve been pretty down on the whole noise/psyche/drone/“kneel-core” (gotta love that phrase) world over the past year or two. As the initial euphoria surrounding the discovery of such goings-on wore off and my priorities in life and music began to change, I have gradually come to the conclusion that a lot of this stuff is lazy, self-regarding, emotionally deadening or actively negative, often relying on phony mystique and audience projection to disguise a dire lack of content, and, well, basically it does nothing for me, a few key artists aside. On paper, the bits of info I’ve picked up on Pocahaunted would seem to suggest that they are a textbook example of a shitty, arrogant psyche-noise band. Witness a reliance on ‘primitive’, pedal-based electronics jams, a goofy name and thoughtless adoption of Native American imagery, a bewildering array of limited-to-nothing self-released tapes and ‘artyfacts’ cut with guest appearances by everyone under the sun of this particular scene, obligatory schmoozing with Thurston, subsequent hype from all the usual subterranean suspects, and so forth.

But the proof is in the pudding as they say, and thus I’m delighted to report that the Pocahaunted side of this single is actually really, really good, and a great reminder of the essential qualities that this kind of music can embody when it puts in the effort. Entitled ‘Time Fist’, it’s built around some genuinely eerie Double Leopards-esque cosmic horror atmospherics, looped vocal echo and and slooooow, carefully orchestrated knob-twisting, backed by a thick mist of warm fuzz hovering across the horizon. Then, a couple of minutes in, crisp bass and drums enter, playing a straight up space-rock groove that could have been sampled off a Loop record. It’s a daring decision for a band like this to add such a linear rhythm to their strictly chaotic proceedings, but it turns out to be an inspired one, as the two elements fuse perfectly into a mighty fine exercise in enveloping hypnosis. So congrats to Pocahaunted for taking a chance and hitting the psychedelic bullseye, this time at least. In fact I wish it went on for longer, and how many recent free-form pedal-murk excursions can you honestly say that about? Top stuff indeed, and it was nice of them to give my shitty preconceptions a good kicking too.

Charalambides were of course the act that suckered me into listening to this thing though, and whilst their tune here is very much the slighter contribution, we always enjoy a nice bit of understatement around here, so that’s no criticism. Maybe this is though, in part: ‘Memory’ is another brittle, anxious folk mutation much in the spirit of last year’s ‘Likeness’ album, hanging more toward the chilly, formal end of currently hip British folk than the multi-faceted expression allowed by American traditions. So you know what to expect by now, I’m sure: a web of minimal post-Garcia/Connors guitar figures from both Carters, and a brittle, lonesome, perfectly pitched vocal from Christina – this one is heavily echoed and near wordless. Lovely on a musical level, but in the emotional stakes, it’s cold, so cold…. I guess the power of Charalambides at their best (eg, live) has always leaned heavily on the tension between repression/release, but at the moment they seem to be making music that’s keeping it all inside, y’know…? It’s music a bit like being given the brush-off by someone you used to tell your troubles to, a connection severed, and I don’t know if that’s really a feeling I enjoy having piped out of my speakers all that often, to be honest.

Labels: Charalambides, drone, Pocahaunted, Psychedelia, singles reviews

Michael Yonkers Band – Microminiature Love
(Recorded 1968 / Released by Sub-Pop, 2003)

Recorded by the exceptional Mr. Yonkers in 1968, and now available to the masses for the first time via the auspices of Sub-Pop, this is an album which pretty much exemplifies the narrative of the “lost underground freak-rock classic” archetype. I’m sure you can turn to google etc. if you want the full story.

The first thing that enters my head when I put this one on is the bit in the sleevenotes about how Sire records were planning to release the album and to try and market Yonkers as a ‘new Hendrix’ figure, but the deal fell through at the last minute. So I ponder that, and I listen to the sound emerging from my speakers, and I think, c’mon man, I don’t know who told what to whom when, but *no fucking way* would a major record label in the 1960s come within a thousand miles of releasing… THIS… even in the glory days of the cash-in psychedelia boom.

I’m still undecided as to whether ‘Microminiature Love’ is actually a good or bad record, or whether such terms even have any meaning with regard to an artefact this far off the accepted cultural map, but I am certain that it is genuinely deranged – as damaged a document of musical fucked-ness any connoisseur of such things could ever hope to find.

Yonkers is perhaps best known (amongst the kind of people likely to know of him at all) as the guy who combined his love for DIY electronics with rock n’ roll, sawing up his guitars and reassembling them as a weirdly tuned, doublenecked Frankenstein creation incorporating a theremin, at the same time as building his own fuzzboxes and echo units from scratch. Which all sounds pretty intriguing I’m sure you’ll agree, but it must be said that this sonic invention is certainly not as much in evidence on the LP as might be wished.

Yonkers and his band play a kind of nightmarish, claustrophobic garage-blues of a distinctly primitive caste, the guitar slowly navigating it’s way through wobbly, repetitive riffs that tend to sound like perverse variations on the Batman theme (so much for the new Hendrix!). Listening closer, it often sounds as if two or more guitars have been layered on top of each other, sometimes clean, echoed and jangly, sometimes deep, rumbling and fuzzed out, but always ever so slightly wonky and out of tempo/key, creating weird droning / overtone effects that hover in the background, occasionally emerging in the mix like rotor blades or croaking frogs. Interesting! Meanwhile, a rhythm section flounder around somewhere, stoned in the far background. Rendered in the kind of low fidelity you’d expect from a ‘60s basement tape, the whole thing has a weird Joe Meek kind of vibe about it, baked in wanton echo and reverb, and a certain, indefinable sense that nothing is quite the way it should be. The simplistic wrong-ness of the compositions, combined with the murk and slipshod violence of their execution, actually begins to sound quite post-punky after a while, perhaps recalling early stuff by The Fall or Butthole Surfers…. which I guess renders it ‘ahead of its time’ by default, by way of gloriously lolling in the same primordial waters of incompetence somewhere BEHIND everybody else’s musicianly time.

Yonkers’ nasal croon of a voice, utterly earnest and uncomfortably bellow-y at all times, is pushed to the forefront of the mix, where he proceeds to let rip on what some will consider a treasure trove of cracked outsider poetics, holding forth via cack-handed, childish rhyme schemes and lunatic repeated fragments on subjects such as depression, despair, escape from reality into odd personal dream worlds, and above all the horrors of war and governmental indoctrination. Songs such as ‘Smile Awhile’ seem almost obsessive in their bleakness, prefiguring the brute cosmic nihilism of Black Sabbath, whilst ‘Kill The Enemy’ sounds like a monotonous forced march straight to the cemetery, ending a blood-curdling shriek and disorientating tape echo.

Yonkers manages to sound deadly serious and deeply unhappy at all times, even then singing stuff like “Navigate your boat / keeping it afloat / round and round and round and round / round and round the moat”. You get the feeling that he has taken up the ‘60s counter-culture baton of free expression for all and naively run with it, although I suspect the San Fran tastemakers and hirsute folkies weren’t really counting on getting hit full in the face with the soul-baring of a paranoid, suburban shut-in like Yonkers when they told the world to let it all hang out.

Track 3, ‘Boy In The Sandbox’ is perhaps the album’s most astonishing moment, as Yonkers sings the story of a boy being indoctrinated from childhood into life as a soldier (fairly corny protest song stuff were it not for his insane delivery), slowly building up the tension and anger and culminating with the image of his young wife crying over the letter announcing his grisly death by bayonet in Vietnam as his baby son sits in the sandbox playing with toy soldiers. And only then does Yonkers let loose and deploy his homemade distortion pedal for the first time. You can actually hear the click of his foot hitting the switch, and then…. whoa! Holy hell! You can have a listen to the results below.

Modern day noise-freaks will relish this bit for sure, and patiently wait through the rest of the album for him to do it again, but in 1968 it must have knocked people out of their seats – a completely unprecedented flying leap into the jaws of oblivion.

So if all this sounds like your chosen pint of wine – well, it’s out there, go get it. Yonkers certainly lends a completely unique and genuine feeling to everything he does here, and I know I’ll be playing this at least a few more times trying to make sense of it all. But at the same time I wouldn’t blame you for reacting to this stuff the same way I suspect some bigwig at Sire probably did when faced with an eager young A&R brandishing a tape recorder: “Get the hell out of my office”.

Mp3> Boy In The Sandbox

Buy link> Amazon

Labels: 1960s, album reviews, Michael Yonkers Band, Proto-Punk, Psychedelia, weirdness

RAISE THE SAILS!
Dead Meadow, London Cargo, August 9th

Well there’s all only so many times one can say such a thing before it lose all meaning, but man alive, Dead Meadow are GREAT. That’s the long and short of it really.

Dead Meadow are a band I feel like approaching not with hyperbolic blog-crit, but via the kind of Wordless Rock Dude Awe Moment that, issued with appropriate solemnity, speaks with more than authority than a thousand over-analytical reviewers ever could…

“Dead fucking MEADOW, man..”

(Respectful silence and nodding of long-haired heads.)

Sadly, Dead Meadow rarely seem to achieve these moments of awe-recognition that they so richly deserve, often seeming instead to fall frustratingly between the cracks dividing current music/fashion cults. Too drugged and riff-heavy for run of the mill indie kids, yet too nuanced and starry-eyed (read: wimpy) for the metal/noise-heads, they nonetheless hold the fort of a certain unique position on the musical landscape, a fort wherein they stand guard over my personal conception of Thee Perfect Psychedelic Rock.

Whole swathes of the musical landscape are now of course occupied by those trading off various sub-genre-designated permutations of ‘churning riffage’, ‘heaviosity’ and the like, as stoner guitar-dude culture and unashamed ‘70s metal worship bleed carelessly across into indie-rock crit respectability, avant-noise envelope-pushing, ambient texture worship and god only knows what else. Chances are you could throw a brick somewhere in the vicinity of the Camden Underworld of an average evening and hit a member of some band who are - on a practical, measurable level - heavier, or slower, or gnarlier, or more intense, or more spaced out, or more bad-ass or whatever than Dead Meadow.

But….. who fucking cares, frankly. Guys the world over can decamp to the nearest desert with enough ampage to decimate a football stadium and grind out variations on ‘Iron Man’ till they’re blue of face and black of lungs, but it won’t achieve much. It’ll all sound a bit forced, a bit constipated, a bit pointless. It won’t change the essential fact that, every generation, the holy hand reaches down from on high and appoints one – maybe two, or three if we’re lucky – groups as custodians of The Riff.

Black Sabbath had it through most of the ‘70s, obviously.

Sleep and Electric Wizard were standing guard over some serious Riff during the ‘90s, if I’m any judge.

And now, Dead Meadow have The Riff. Scoff all you like metalheads, I don’t care, it’s fact.

The Riff is impossible to define in terms of the notes, guitar sounds etc. you’d imagine would be relevant to such discussion – try all you like, you won’t get it that way. The Riff is the reason why the first side of 2003’s definitive “Shivering King and Others” doesn’t sound like an album by a Lovecraft-referencing heavy psyche band, and instead sounds like PURE SEX. No fooling!


Summarised biogs often seem to peg Dead Meadow as a “70s retro” band, which must annoy the hell out of them. I can see where the label originates of course – a sanctified reverence for vintage equipment and recording techniques and a knowledge of how to use them properly to achieve the perfect expression of THAT particular expansive, slightly disembodied fuzzy-round-the-edges-with-the-bass-knob-on-max dusty vinyl guitar thrum, dredging up ancestral memory of a thousand suburban evenings with the joints aflame and the headphones on, in thrall to “Led Zep IV” and “Master Of Reality”. You know what I mean? But, god only knows, there was nobody around in the ’70s actually making records that sounded much like Dead Meadow! If there had been, their artifacts would be going for $thousands$, effortlessly eclipsing the killer rep of comparatively puny collector-cults like Flower Travellin’ Band or what have you.

Far from being a mere “retro” concern, ‘Meadow take a similar – if more consistently successful – approach to their musical heritage as bands like Oakley Hall and Espers; carefully internalizing the distinctive sounds and atmospheres of their deepest influences and blasting them back outward in new permutations to essentially create the music they think SHOULD have existed during their teenhood.

But Ok, I’m supposed to be talking about the gig here, so let’s get on with it:

Perfect, pre-meditated textures and general heftiness of sound are obviously a significant part of Dead Meadow’s collective whack, and as such I find myself demanding every ‘Meadow gig be a perfect, hermetically-sealed entity beyond the messy and inconsistent reality of yr average rock gig set-up. And predictably enough some element of the experience is usually found wanting; last time I caught a headline set from the band, in Nottingham back in… Christ, it must have been 2005 I think… their performance was superb, but proceedings were muffled throughout by shitty, jerry-rigged, TOO SMALL amps. I know, I know… but with a band like this, these things are paramount.

No such problems are in evidence at Cargo thankfully, as bassist Steve Kille plugs into the kind of Ampeg you could bury a gorilla in and Jason Simon fiddles with an elaborate set-up incorporating a full-size Orange cabinet and head, a Fender Twin, a vintage tape echo and some kind of electronic drone machine.

Things still aren’t perfect; the vocals are waaay low for one thing, and from my position at the front of the stage I think I’m getting a lot of direct blare from the guitar amps that’s drowning out the bass and drums to some extent, but shouldn’t really complain because oh my god, that guitar blare was PERFECTION. Simon has perhaps my favourite tone/sound/etc of any modern day guitarist, with sustained low-end fuzz-notes echoing in the air for mini-eternities, throwing out ghosts of overtones more rarefied and beautiful than anything you’d ever expect to hear beaten out of sweaty electric guitar strings, and his wah-wah divebombing conjuring THE exact audio equivalent of a pupil dilating in slow motion. And so forth.

Having my senses almost entirely consumed at close quarters by this guy’s blare for an hour was….. too fucking good. Like I was saying: Dead fuckin’ MEADOW, man.

(silence.)

(You can buy a print of this poster from Chris S.)

What else to say? Well there’s a hell of a lot more excitement to this band’s live incarnation than just waxing lyrical about guitar tone, and when they really hit their stride halfway through this set, I swear, Stephen McCarty is drumming like the ocean and Kille is bassing like the goddamn whale. Form is streeetching, fuzz is flying, groove is in the collective heart in the best possible heavy-rock-band way, and it’s only the lack of a second guitarist for Simon to bounce stuff off (whatever happened to that other guy who played on ‘Feathers’?) that stops the whole thing taking off into the kind of astral projectin’ improvisational nirvana so often promised by psychedelic rock, and so rarely delivered. It’s a great show!

The crowd is dense, sub-culturally diverse, enthusiastic, and it is MOVING, which is a real kick to see, because I didn’t think Dead Meadow were actually very popular in the world at large. Clearing the hair from my eyes for a minute or two, I can see a gang of girls on the other side of the stage, dancing. Not head-banging or mock-belly dancing or anything you might deem aesthetically appropriate, but locked into a slowed down, tranced out, joyful nightclub grind.

A gang of girls, dancing. To Dead Meadow. Who are playing in front of my face.

God I love being in the world.

------------------------------

Dead Meadow’s Peel Session, recorded March 2001:

Dusty Nothing

Drifting Downstream

Good Moanin'

Rolling Thunder

Labels: Dead Meadow, live reviews, Psychedelia

FUZZBOX MELTDOWN: Episode # 1

Ok, new feature here, but a pretty simple concept to grasp. Lately I’ve been listening to an absolute TON of garage/psych compilations, pursuing an increasingly obsessive dream of becoming familiar which each and every single genuinely wild n’ tripped out ‘60s gem amid the masses of entirely unremarkable obscurities that cackling collectors and compilers seem to rejoice in flooding the world with via a seemingly endless stream of outrageously packaged, randomly assembled compilations.

Perhaps they do this in order to satisfy some quasi-sadistic urge to inflict some of the same “needle in a haystack” style hard labour upon the casual listening public that they themselves have suffered through a lifetime of stockpiling warped garage-sale 45s, bidding outrageous sums for unheard acetate obscurities at record fairs and so on. Or maybe they just realize they’ll make more cash to keep their own excavation/reissue operations going if they release 17 volumes of “Blinding Yellow Bicycle Rings: Prime Scandinavian Pop-Sike Fizz 1968-72” than if they behave like sensible human beings and cut it down to, say, three good ones.

Either way, getting the most out of this particular musical infatuation inevitably involves breaking out the machete and cutting through some serious sugar-coated undergrowth to get to the good stuff. So to make things a bit more interesting, I’m going to throw on a compilation disc for the first time, and throw down my thoughts into MS Word as I listen, so that you can, um, take the journey with me so to speak. Be warned: it might get ugly, it might get geeky, but it might just be… amazing.

So, starting in relatively shallow waters, we shall begin, for no particular reason, with Disc Three of Rhino’s Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond: 1965 – 69 box-set. Let’s go!

1. Cuby & The Blizzards - Your Body Not Your Soul
I think I saw a picture of these guys on the internet somewhere; they looked pretty gnarly. This record is a fairly ok fuzz-garage stomper; “I want your body baby / I don’t want your soul!” Nice one Cuby, that’s sure to win her over.
2. The Twilights - Cathy, Come Home
Hmm… don’t like this much at all. Sounds like a sugary, low-budget British studio-bound affair.
3. Les Fleur De Lys - Circles
This is a fairly rockin’ bit of British fare. Fleur De Lys did quite a few good tunes within that whole Shel Talmy mod/psych crossover thing. This is a Who cover, and I think I actually like it better than their version (better vocalist), although it’s no “Can’t Explain” or “Substitute” obviously.
4. The Matadors - Get Down From The Tree
The Matadors huh? I wonder where these guys were from… would be dumb of me to assume Spain, but wherever they call home, these guys have a definite Latin-imitating –American thing in the vocals. Good octopus-drummin’ freakbeat stomper anyway – I could do the twist to this, except where it goes all slow at the end…hmm.
5. Q65 - Cry In The Night
Ho yeah! Q65! This is more like it! Holland’s premier garage-punk nutters with another short, sharp blast of straight-up r’n’b/punk. Rough-ass production, really ragged, energetic playing, great lyrics, good tune and good times all round! Party on, Q65!
6. Los Chijuas - Changing The Colors Of Life
Los Chijuas..? From a Spanish-speaking country I’m assuming..? Mexico at a guess? But, I mean, “Les Fleur De Lys” are English, so who knows. Great Standells-esque organ-driven sound here anyway, but with far more melodic vocals. I’m sure this would go down a storm on any '60s-focused dancefloor – it’s got a real nice swing to it.
7. The Bluestars - Social End Product
Man, this is fucking furious!! – Totally vicious, juvenile delinquent ranting song in the vein of The Seeds or The Lyrics ‘So What?’, but with totally harsh, headbanging instrumental bludgeoning, ala The Sparkles ‘No Friend of Mine’; “I cop a label as an angry young man / because I don’t fit into the masterplan / Under society’s microscope / I may look funny, but it’s no joke!” The next time some sausagehead starts insisting punk rock began in the ‘70s, whack this one on for them. Seriously, replace the organ with another guitar, make the beat about 50% less ‘oom-pah’ and this could be, like, The Dead Boys or The Exploited or something. Plus the singer makes with a great kinda leaking-gas-pipe “ssssssssss” noise throughout, and that always gets me excited. Best song on this comp so far!
8. The Syndicate - Crawdaddy Simone
This is pretty great too – sounds like it should be a John Lee Hooker style tough-boogie number, but the band have this kinda noisy, arrhythmic, proto-industrial thing going on that completely murders the blues. Plus some seriously damaged no wave guitarwork! It seems the Simone of the title isn’t the hot chick one might expect, but actually some mysterious, menacing cat ala Roy Orbison’s “Domino”. Holy shit, that’s the most cracked solo I’ve heard in months! Great, unusual, sleazy un-groove going on here and… oh my god, culminates in a load of just totally out-there atonal, space noise! Magnificent!
9. The Sound Magics - Don't You Remember?
I listened to this about 30 seconds ago and can’t think of a damned thing to say about it, so… yeah, guess I don’t. Has a kind of a melodramatic, slightly Latin-tinged thing going on.
10. The Guess Who - It's My Pride
Sounds much like you’d expect an early Guess Who single to I suppose – a boozy, leery Doors knock-off, somewhat in the spirit of a fat man on LSD being pushed down some stairs. Pretty solid stuff maybe, but, sorry folks, The Guess Who have never really floated my boat.
11. The Open Mind - Magic Potion
Nice ‘Magic Bus’ era Who stylings here, with a classic ‘we don’t actually know anything about drugs, but doing a thinly-veiled song about ‘em seems to be the done thing’ lyrics. Occasional outbreaks of Ron Ashton-worthy distortion/wah-wah abuse are the highlight for me.
12. The Missing Links - You're Driving Me Insane
The Missing Links have a reputation as Australia’s wildest / most notorious ‘60s group, and on the basis of this barely coherent chunk of sexually frustrated menace, I can believe it. The guitarist flings around some huge, Townshend-esque windmilling licks before launching into a totally ripping skronk solo that don’t give a damn for nobody, whilst the rhythm section sound like they are actually being physically attacked – maybe by the singer? – as they valiantly try to keep time. “When you kiss my lips / you’re driving me insane!!”; I have a feeling the citizens of Melbourne or wherever would have slept a lot safer at night if these guys’ girlfriends had loosened up a little and just, y’know, seen to their needs once in a while.
13. The Jury - Who Dat?
More knuckleheaded freakbeat raunch for us here, with real levels-in-the-red compressed production. The guitarist just repeats the first six notes of the “Have Love Will Travel” riff ALL THE WAY THROUGH. I ask you! This one’s very ‘Back From The Grave’ I guess.
14. John's Children - A Midsummer's Night Scene
I fucking love John’s Children! They did loads of great stuff besides their all-time weird-rock classic ‘Desdemona’ (included on another disc of this box-set), and can always be relied upon for a good bit of totally OTT brit-psych freakout, with a sense of humour and enough of their mod roots intact to resist complete dissolution by the sugar-lumps-and-afternoon-tea brigade. Not to mention Marc Bolan popping in to do his whole rock n’ roll gnome thing every now and then. Anyway, this one’s a great slab of thugs-takin’-acid Summer Of Love euphoria – “..In the park/getting dark/eating the heat/there’s an eye/in the sky/ melting your feet..”. As usual it sounds like they were going bonkers in the studio, with insane reverb, looped, echoed vocal chants, reversed bits, random noises, boinging trampoline guitar notes… you name it.
15. The Sands - Listen To The Sky
More ambitious than your average Nugget, this starts out like a mid-period Beatles character song and builds into a soaring pop melodrama about a doomed Spitfire pilot that sounds SO SO SO like it should have been stuck in the middle of The Pretty Things ‘SF Sorrow’. Has an outro consisting of air-raid sirens and machine gun noises that just goes on and on and, hey wow, it wasn’t the outro after all, the song’s come back in for some more dynamic guitar action!
16. The Mockingbirds - How To Find A Lover
I suppose a good first step toward finding a lover might be to NOT spend all day talking jive about obscure trash-psychedelia records and then publishing the results on the internet, but sadly The Mockingbirds have no such down to earth advice to offer on this unremarkable bit of baroque-pop fluff, so I’ll just carry on.
17. The Idle Race - Days Of The Broken Arrows
Never really been a huge fan of The Idle Race, despite their high critical standing amongst fans of this-sort-of-thing. They’re more imaginative than most admittedly, but a bit…. irritating, no? This is one of their better tunes though, I guess. Pleasantly crazy, but y’know, early Floyd and Soft Machine existed at this point, so…. why would you, really?
18. The Elois - By My Side
‘The Elois’? I wonder where these guys were from? Pretty uneventful tune anyway, in the context of the whacked out fare on this disc at least. Meh.
19. The Factory - Path Through The Forest
Oh, now this is fantastic. A British psyche classic of the first order I reckon. Strips away all that stupid post-Sgt. Pepper gloop for a simple lesson is true, dark psychedelic romanticism; an urgent ‘chase-scene’ rhythm, a great, subtle vocal performance sounding like it’s being beamed in via a transistor radio and drifting shards of feedback guitar imitating owl-hooting, growls and sharpened knives. Wordlessly weird and ineffably fascinating and atmospheric, like the musical equivalent of emerging from technicolour brambles to see the sole light in the gable window a derelict Victorian parsonage silhouetted against depth-defying blue-black sky…. THIS is what it’s all about!
20. Episode 6 - Love Hate Revenge
Oh my god! Opening verse: “I bought a dog from an old bearded lady / I called it Tanya and it looks just like you / and although it might sound kind of crazy / I can make you feel anything I want you to” – GENIUS! Musically quite interesting, with a faint raga vibe and some “Mother’s Little Helper” sitar-y bits, but man, these lyrics are absolutely whacko! I’m really not sure how to best respond to an upbeat pop song about a guy who tortures a dog because he thinks the pain will be magically transferred to his ex-girlfriend. Kudos to whoever dug this one up, but, um, moving swiftly on…
21. The Status Quo - Pictures Of Matchstick Men
..AAGH! No denim or misguided ponytails in evidence in the early twee-psyche incarnation of The Quo of course, but on the basis of this their penchant for mind-numbing repetition of simplistic themes was already well-established. A lot of people seem to really dig this record. Gimme ‘Sweet Caroline’ any day.
22. The Voice - The Train To Disaster
Top drawer bit of flailing, chaotic fuzz-punk. The vocal melody is a bit weak, but makes up for it with great ‘Eve of Destruction’ style apocalyptic lyrics. Nice!
23. The (Australian) Playboys - Sad
I like the “(Australian)”. Do you think there was a lawsuit with some other Playboys from a different country? Musically this one’s a bit so-so anyway. If I’m interpreting the lyrics right, the singer appears to be in a deserted seaside town, looking for a guy named “Sad”, which is an… odd lyrical theme.
24. The Slaves - Slave Time
Hmm, doesn’t have quite the same appeal as “MONK TIME!” does it? Don’t really know what the hell is supposed to be going on here, but it’s a bit fucking rubbish to be honest. I wonder if they dressed up as slaves or something? Who knows, who cares.
25. The Red Squares - You Can Be My Baby
More Who/Creation chops. Christ, the drummer’s going to get a hernia if he’s not careful!
26. Scrugg - I Wish I Was Five
‘Scrugg’? What kind of a name is that? – the kind of thing you call your band when you wish you were five presumably. Makes me wish I was 80 and listening to Ralph McTell, and that all this horrid electrified madness would just GO AWAY.
27. The Downliners Sect - Glendora
Ah, let’s end things on a high-note! Hopefully The Downliners Sect need no introduction, neither as primo Billy Childish inspirations nor as one of Britain’s rawest, most eccentric and generally bestest ‘60s bands. ‘Glendora’ isn’t anywhere near my favourite song by them, but I guess it’s fuzz/tremolo guitar and funny, psyched out lyrics render it more in the Nuggets spirit than their more characteristic blues and country rave-ups. Great, untutored girly backing vocals too! Cracking!

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED:

1.Generally speaking, this disc reinforces my belief that whilst European bands in the ‘60s were more imaginative and open-minded than their American counterparts, particularly in regards to production values and guitar pyrotechnics, they were nevertheless * less rocking * in an indefinable but very important sense.

2.The Who have got a lot to answer for.

3. Ten of the tracks here are over three minutes! They’d never have stood for it in the States, I tell you. Bloody Beatles.

4. My head hurts and NO WAY do I want to hear any fuzz guitar or vox organ for…ooh, at least 12 hours.

TOP 3 TRACKS:

1. The Factory – Path Through The Forest
2. The Bluestars – Social End Product
3. The Syndicate – Crawdaddy Simone

(If you’re thus inclined, buy Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond here.)

Labels: 1960s, fuzzbox meltdown, Nuggets, Psychedelia