Saturday 21 December 2013

THE MIND DE-CODER PSYCHEDELIC CHRISTMAS SPECIAL!!!

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             “You  know, if you stop and think about it, Christmas is really the most                                                         psychedelic time of the year”
                                                                                   James Lowe


HER     PSYCHEDELIC CHRISTMAS


 Strictly speaking, this is more groovy than psychedelic but it’s not a distinction I particularly wish to labour. HER are one of those bands that don’t seem to exist enough for anyone to know about. This track appears on the very fine WORLD IN WINTER: EL CHRISTMAS, (2002), a fantastic collection of sugary Christmas songs from the now sadly defunct EL record label that once upon a time brought us the brilliantly realised albums by Death By Chocolate and The Lollipop Train that I’m so fond of; as well as other candy coated pop confectionaries from the 70’s and 80’s, and which acts as the perfect example of what you can expect to find on the rest of the album.


THE ELECTRIC PRUNES     JINGLES BELLS


 “You  know, if you stop and think about it, Christmas is really the most psychedelic time of the year”, so says singer James Lowe, and you must admit he has a point, what with “all those coloured lights, a guy flying around the sky with animals” and all those “elves and bells” and all.  I don’t know when they recorded this single, but I found it on the album CHRISTMAS A-GO-GO, released in 2011.


CORPORAL BLOSSOM     WHITE CHRISTMAS


 CORPORAL BLOSSOM is the sampler based moniker of Layng Martin III. White Christmas can be found on the album A MUTATED CHRISTMAS, released in 2001. This is the best track on it, but it is a very good track indeed.

Which is followed by what I’m choosing to call a gentle pastiche of The Beach Boy’s Good Vibrations which I’m pretty certain isn’t anything to do with the Beach Boys at all. I expect it’s one of those mash-ups. I found it hidden away on my hard drive with no idea how it got there which is why I can’t tell you much more about it.


FANTASTIC EVERLASTING GOBSTOPPER     SCHOOLGIRL PSYCHEDELIA


 Apparently recorded when she was just 12 years old, FANTASTIC EVERLASTING GOBSTOPPER was the name by which the wonderful Angie Tillett delivered her first songs to the world in 1997. She released just four songs under this name before becoming The Lollipop Train for a short while, until releasing three marvelous albums of sugary pop perfection as Death By Chocolate. At this point she was, legendarily, a chambermaid in the faded English seaside resort town of Clacton-on-Sea which somehow made her perfect; (I wrote her a fan letter once but she didn’t reply). I think I read somewhere that her recording days are now behind her and she was trying to become a councillor or a Mayoress or something , which somehow really upset me. That may have been a different Angie Tillett, though (actually, it was) (a different Angie Tillett). You can find this track on SONGS FOR THE JET SET VOL. 1, a fantastic compilation of suave, space-age, chic psychedelic pop released in 1997, and that WORLD IN WINTER: EL CHRISTMAS album I mentioned earlier.


PLAN 9     MERRY CHRISTMAS


 Plan 9 are a neo-psychedelic band of the trance-a-delic variety who seem to have been around for the last 30 odd years or so which is surprising what with them having made no impact on me whatsoever. Merry Christmas was released as a single in 1984 and has a certain lysergic quality to it.


SCOOBY DOO AND THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING SANTA


 It is Christmas time at the Home Sweet Home Orphanage. All the kids are anxiously awaiting the annual visit from the local department store Santa, who is bringing presents for everyone. But Santa never arrives! No one knows where he is!! SANTA IS MISSING!!! What kind of a Christmas will the orphans have? Scooby-Doo and his friends go into action. Can they find Santa in time to make it a Merry Christmas for the orphans?

Taken from the album EXCITING CHRISTMAS STORIES WITH SCOOBY DOO AND FRIENDS, released in 1978, this story features the voices of the original cast, so I’ve given you the whole 14 minutes. Best of all, there’s not a Scrappy-Doo in sight.


LITTLE CINDY     HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESUS


 I was going to play around with this track a little bit but decided that it’s actually messed up enough as it is. This was released as a single back in 1959 when Christmas really meant something. Sadly I’ve not been able to discover who Little Cindy was or who she grew up to be; or how much therapy she required.


THE VIRGINEERS    CHRISTMAS IN MY MIND


 Another tripped out Christmas track from The Virgineers, released in 2003 as a download from their web-site.


THE BEATLES     1968 CHRISTMAS RECORD


 Pretty much does what it says on the label – this is the full 7.48 minutes of the fan club flexi-disc which also features a notable rendition of Nowhere Man played by Tiny Tim for no good reason at all, as far as I can see. Produced by Kenny Everett, trivia fans.


MISTY’S BIG ADVENTURE     HAVE YOURSELF A PSYCHEDELIC CHRISTMAS


 Misty’s Big Adventure are an 8-piece band from Birmingham who specialize in an eclectic, if not exhausting, mix of jazz, lounge, psychedelia,  2-tone, pop and punk, but for this, the B-side to their 2005 single release Where Do Jam Jars Go At Christmas Time, they set the phasers firmly on psychedelia and knock out a wonderful little Christmas stocking filler.


TURQUOISE     1968 CHRISTMAS RECORD


 Turquoise were one of those cult psych-pop acts who produced two highly regarded psychedelic singles and then disappeared back into the 60’s never to be heard from again. Despite never actually cutting an album, I came across this track as a bonus track on their album THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF FLOSSIE FILLETT, which collects together every thing the ever recorded for fans of that sort of thing, released in 2006.


CHEECH AND CHONG     SANTA CLAUS AND HIS OLD LADY


Released as a single in 1971, would you believe? And if you are as high as they were when they made it then you no doubt would agree that is an hilarious holiday skit.


HE5     AULD LANG SYNE


 K-pop doesn’t start with Gangnam Style, you know. In 1969 Korean guitarist Kim Hong Tak’s band HE5 were one of the most popular groups of the decade, playing a heavy psychedelic sound to a pleasingly bemused audience. Auld lang Syne is to be found on their far out and gone Christmas LP MERRY CHRISTMAS PSYCHEDLEIC SOUND, released in 1969, which is just as good as it sounds.


THREE WISE MEN     THANKS FOR CHRISTMAS


 A pseudonymous Christmas release from The Three Wise Men, otherwise known as XTC, who released this cheerily poptastic single in 1983. Sadly it failed to chart otherwise you’d be hearing it all over the place come Yuletide. It’s almost impossible to find, but it appears on the XTC album RAG AND BONE BUFFET, released in 1990.


This was followed by a short promo for the Toys For Tots foundation from some time in the late 1950’s, I’d think. (Can I just say if I had a radio voice like Nat King Cole’s I wouldn’t be such a fan of the speed-it-up-and-slow-it-down button). Toys For Tots, of course, is a program which distributes toys to children whose parents can’t afford to buy them toys for Christmas. When I found out it was run by the United States Marine Corps I naturaly started thinking about napalm and little children running in terror through the early morning mist with their skin falling off behind them, so I had it segue into:


MR FAB     I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS


Mr Fab is the man behind the RIAA, a sound collage project heavily involved in the mash-up scene. I’ll Be Home For Christmas can be found on the download album MR FAB AND HIS BAG O’ TOYS, released 2004. Check out his other albums here


PINK FLOYD     MERRY CHRISTMAS SONG



A rare recording written for a one-off performance on BBC radio in 1969, during the Zabriskie Point soundtrack sessions. It is notable as the last of only five Pink Floyd songs to feature Mason on vocals (go on then - Syd Barrett's Scream Thy Last Scream, also unreleased; Corporal Clegg; Atom Heart Mother; and One of These Days - somehow, you learn this sort of thing and then you can’t forget it).


THE BEATLES     CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE AGAIN



This is actually the second half of the 1967 Beatles fan club disc, which was recorded to sound like a number of groups auditioning for a BBC radio show. It’s not unlike their great un-released track You Know My Name, Look Up The Number which they’d recorded earlier that year.


THE CHESTERFIELD KINGS     CANNONBALLS FOR CHRISTMAS



There’s an argument to be made for The Chesterfield Kings being responsible for launching the 1980’s garage band revival, but beings I was never a big fan of the scene, it’s not one I’m prepared to go into – but that’s the sort of band they were. Cannonballs For Christmas can found on their 1994 album LET’S GO GET STONED, a suitably festive sentiment, I’m sure you’ll agree; as would, no doubt, the astronaut Frank Borman, the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the moon in the last 10,000 years or so (if certain arcane texts are to be believed) whose seasonal message to earth I played towards the end of the track.




SIMON AND GARFUNKEL     7 O’CLOCK NEWS/SILENT NIGHT



I’m sure when I had the first inklings of what to play on this Mind de-Coder Christmas Special, I had a really ‘up’ track to go out on. However, whatever that no doubt inspirational track was, I’ve forgotten it. Instead, I thought I’d go out with this, 7 O’clock News/Silent Night, by Simon and Garfunkel, which still, after all this time, has the ability to send shivers down, and, indeed, even up, the spine. It’s from their album PARSLEY, SAGE, ROSEMARY AND THYME, of course, released in 1966, but what not everyone knows is that the news bulletin contained therein is actually taken from the night of August 3rd 1966 and not, as one might have hoped, from the actual Christmas Eve of that year. That shouldn’t, however, detract from the chilling power of the song (although it does a bit, let’s face it).


XTC     PSYCHEDELIC CHRISTMAS



Some wise parting words from XTC’s Andy Partridge that I’m sure we all share at this time of year. Taken from the album HOLIDAY GREETINGS FROM GEFFEN RECORDS, released 1991, just before they no doubt threw the band off the label. Bastards.




Have a yourselves a happy psychedelic Christmas from Mind De-Coder!

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Tuesday 17 December 2013

MIND DE-CODER 22

MIND DE-CODER 22

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''Jimi Hendrix played his cock"
                                                   Bill Hicks

AMON DÜÜL 1     LOVE IS PEACE


This track is taken from the album PARADIESWÄRTS DÜÜL released in 1970 as the fourth album from the politico-musical commune known as Amon Düül. This track actually turns into a massive Teutonic folk-groove freak-out that takes up the whole of side 1 of the album, but we leave it after the opening minutes as I wonder about what all those dots actually do; especially those two over the A – that doesn’t look right at all.

MOUNT VERNON ARTS LAB     BROADCASTING


Experimental goings-on of a hauntological nature from The Mount Vernon Arts Lab, the musical project of Scottish avant-garde musician Drew Mulholland, whose spooky noodlings are said to have been the inspiration for the Ghost Box music label, home for all things hauntological. Broadcasting is taken from the album ‘E’ FOR EXPERIMENTAL, released 1999, a compilation album that collects together all his work up to that date. These days he works under the name Mount Vernon Astral Temple and continues his psycho-geographic journey to where ever his muse takes him.

VASHTI BUNYAN     WINDOW OVER THE BAY


Taken from her now semi-legendary debut album, JUST ANOTHER DIAMOND DAY, released in 1969. The story goes that she wrote the songs for this album while travelling by horse and cart from London to join a commune in the Isle Of Skye. This lovely and fragile song makes me wish that I lived over a bay too.

STEALING SHEEP     THE GARDEN


Stealing Sheep do a very fine line in experimental folk played through a psychedelic time machine and are big on dextrous three-part vocal harmonies, but that’s only half the story – on their debut album, INTO THE DIAMOND SUN, released 2012, they also throw Warpaint vocals, Kills garage licks, Stereolab synths, Doors-y psychedelia, and some Animal Collective apocalypto-tribalism into the mix, too. Quite simply marvellous.

THE END     SHADES OF ORANGE


Destiny only allowed 60’s psych-pop also-rans The End two singles, but as is so often the case, their second, Shades Of Orange, released 1968, is quite rightly considered something of a psychedelic classic these days. It was produced by Bill Wyman (who also managed them) during the Stone’s sessions for their Satanic Majesties Request, so there was a lot of free time available – that’s Charlie Watts on tabla, who was also at a loose end.

THE FOCUS GROUP     THE BOHM SITE


Cool name for a track, taken from the album WE ARE ALL PAN’S PEOPLE, released 2007, featuring oddly assembled sampledelic collages, stitched together from fragments of library records and forgotten soundtracks from the hauntological school of perception. A beautiful, unhinged stream of consciousness that seems to prod at buried memories.  

LAVENDER DIAMOND      DANCE UNTIL IT'S TOMORROW


The almost unbearably lovely Dance Until It’s Tomorrow, by Lavender Diamond, taken from the album IMAGINE OUR LOVE, released in 2007.  Despite being known for their largely winsome and sometimes ethereal psych-folk sound, singer Becky Stark’s voice can also knock your socks off at 20 paces when she gets going. I remain a fan.
  
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS     II. ANDANTE SOSTENUTO



The sublime Spurn Point from Vaughan William's pastoral composition SIX STUDIES IN ENGLISH FOLK SONG, written in 1926, and performed here by the Nash Ensemble, one of England's finest chamber music groups, in 2001.

FLYING WHITE DOTS     THERE IS HOPE


The only mash-up to appear in today's show, this mashes Mazzy Stars' Hope Sandoval's ghostly vocals over Primal Scream's towering Higher Than The Sun to mesmerising effect. The album from which it's taken, 3D, released in 2008, is available for free download here 

JULIAN COPE     KNOW (CUT MY FRIENDS DOWN)


The mighty Julian Cope from his heathen-folk masterpiece, 1992's JEHOVAKILL. This track is a stark and thrilling charge to the head.

JIMI HENDRIX     1983 (...IF A MERMAN I TURN TO BE)


This is Hendrix in truly experimental form, taken from side three of ELECTRIC LADYLAND. I wish he'd lived long enough to explore this direction because he was never this psychedelic again. I let it segue into in Moon, Turn The Tides...Gently, Gently Away and lay some Bill Hick's underneath it. I think they'd both approve.



BEYOND THE WIZARD'S SLEEVE - SUNDAY MORNING SUN-G


From the 2009 release, GEORGE, Sunday Morning Sun-g is a trippy psychedelic edit of the surprisingly over-looked cult-classic DREAMIES by Bill Holt, given the treatment by Erol Alkan and Richard Norris.

THE SOFT MACHINE     HOPE FOR HAPPINESS, JOY OF A TOY, HOPE FOR 
    HAPPINESS (REPRISE)


The opening suite from the debut album by The Soft Machine featuring a minute and a half long intro designed, no doubt, to ensure the uncommerciality of the project. The album was recorded in new York whilst supporting Jimi Hendrix on tour, but despite this, the record retains a quintessentially English psychedelic feel and is now considered a classic of the extraordinarily creative post-psychedelic, pre-progressive, period of the late 60’s. Trivia fans will be thrilled to learn that Joy Of A Toy is one of the first compositions to feature a bass guitar melody played through a Wah-wah pedal.

WOLF PEOPLE     TINY CIRCLE



In the spirit of English psychedelic bands getting it together in the countryside, Wolf People recorded their second album, STEEPLE, released 2010, in a converted chicken barn on the grounds of a 17th century Welsh mansion. It’s full of arabesque electric guitars; groove-laden drums; entrancing folk-song; smoke-fogged, riff-stoked jams; ethereal vocals and on Tiny Circles, stuttering flutes on an album that cheerfully treads the lines between revivalism and timelessness.

THE SEE SEE     AUTOMOBILE



If you’ve ever wondered, like I have, whatever happened to acid-folk band The Eighteenth Day Of May after they split (two of them went on the form The Left Outsides, by the way), then you’ll be pleased to learn that former frontman Richard Olson now leads The See See, a band steeped in its love for sun dappled West Coast psych-folk played through a Krautrock sensibility. The deceptively simple yet incredibly catchy Automobile, taken from their second album FOUNTAYNE MOUNTAIN, released 2012, with its slinky, hypnotic rhythm and jangling guitars captures the spirit of a summer day in all of its Byrds-ian psychedelic glory. (Now whatever happened to The Left Outsides, that’s what I want to know?).

THE FLAMING GNOMES     LOVE SONG WITH FLUTE



The fairly wonderful Flaming Gnomes with a cover of Caravan’s Love Song With Flute, recorded as the b-side to their only single Care Of cell 44, for the excellent Fruits De Mer record label (check them out here), which specializes in releasing psychedelia, prog rock, krautrock, r ‘n’ b, acid-folk and spacerock on vinyl. There is little more to say about The Flaming Gnomes. They haven’t really made their minds up about recording anything else.

MOON WIRING CLUB     MARMALADE SUN



Ian Hodgson’s The Moon Wiring Club turns a perfectly pleasant but half-remembered light tea served one summer’s afternoon in an English country garden into slightly disturbing yet quietly absorbing flash-back sequence that lasts exactly one minute and twenty one seconds. Taken from his third album, STRIPED PAINT FOR THE LAST POST, released 2009, the whole album sounds like one of the scary bits from an episode of Sapphire and Steel.

THE TIME AND SPACE MACHINE     THE COSMIC COWBOYS RIDES AGAIN



The Cosmic Cowboy rides again! Hear him on VOLUME 3, released 2010.


THE LUCID DREAM        DEVIL RIDES OUT (TIME AND SPACE MACHINE REMIX)



Richard Norris is everyone’s go to guy for a stripped down motorik remix, but to be honest, the The Lucid Dream were always there – the band’s name perfectly reflects their sound. Devil Rides Out is the b-side to their 2011 single Love In My Veins, but this heavily hallucinogenic version by Norris' The Time and Space Machine can be found on his album THE TIME AND SPACE MACHINE PRESENTS 'THE WAY OUT SOUND FROM IN', a 2014 release of heaveny psychedelic remixes by Norris of some of the most cosmically oriented groops around.  

THE MOONFLOWERS     GET DUBBER



And speaking of band’s whose name reflects their sound, these are The Moonflowers - possibly the funkiest bunch of hippies of the magic mushroom eating variety ever to take the indie charts by storm in the late 80’s, by which time your average indie-fan wasn’t as in to your punk-funk-reggae-rock-jazz-disco-psychedelic fusions as you’d think (for which I, possibly unfairly, blame the likes of The Wedding Present). The b-side to their debut single Get Higher, released 1992, simply called Get Dubber, ticked all my boxes, though, and has been one of my favourite tripped out dance tracks ever since.


Tuesday 10 December 2013

MIND DE-CODER 43



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



MIND DE-CODER 43

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience
   Emily Dickinson


LOVE LIVE LIFE + ONE     RUNNIN’ FREE


The reason many of the astral wig-outs produced by Japanese psych-rock bands of the early 70’s have a tripped-out free-jazz element to them is that jazz musicians of the day were free to experiment with their sound in true Miles Davies and Sun Ra style in a way that their pop contemporaries weren’t - their popularity in the charts heavily dependent upon rigid restrictions placed upon them by label bosses who knew exactly what sold and didn’t want any of its acts rocking the apple cart with anything so troublesome as artistic growth. When producer Ikuzo Orita was looking for a band to fulfil his vision for a project he wanted to name Love Live Life he looked to jazz musicians to translate the sounds he had in his head. Crucially, he also employed the Japanese equivalent of Tom Jones, Japan’s most popular star of light entertainment Akira Fuse, to front his band (kind of like getting Robbie Williams in to front a version of Primal Scream going through a Sun Ra Arkestra phase), and between them they created one of the all-time classics of far-out Japanese psychedelia, LOVE WILL MAKE A BETTER YOU, released in 1971, and a big favourite of mine here at Mind De-Coder.


BLACK SABBATH     SWEET LEAF


If I’m honest, I have to admit that I included this for a joke – the way it comes in off that intro by Robert Gittins for the Classroom Projects album that I’ll feature later on in the show – but it’s a good joke, and as Jim DeRogatis points out in his roundup of psychedelic music from the 1960’s to the 1990’s KALEIDOSCOPE EYES (published 1996), Black Sabbath’s touching and heartfelt ode to marijuana from their 1971 album MASTER OF REALITY, is an absurdly likeable slice of blues rock combined with psychedelic atmosphere (or what came to be known as heavy metal).


MGMT     I LOVE YOU TOO, DEATH


MGMT’s third, eponymous, album, released earlier this year, is far too weird to exist on anything other than its own terms, and I think I remember reading once they weren’t even sure that they’d made an album they themselves would actually want to listen to, but there’s no denying that a track like I Love You Too, Death, is mind-bendingly psychedelic and worth the price of admission alone.  


MONA AND MARIA     VENUS


Acid-folk loveliness from Norwegian duo Mona and Maria, whose debut MY SUN, also released earlier this year, is an album of sun-dappled folk charm and ethereal loveliness, with gorgeous psychedelic flourishes thrown in all over the place. It touches the parts of me that New Mexico reaches; the most unlikely Norwegian album you could possibly imagine


THE LIMIÑANAS     AF3458


Current Mind De-Coder faves, French duo The Limiñanas, channelling their inner Velvet Underground on their marvellous 2012 release CRYSTAL ANIS, which combines a kaleidoscopic mix of Serge Gainsbourg, Stereolab and Phil Spector with a vintage production sound that summons up dimly-lit ye-ye influences with a perfect pop sensibility.


 THE VELVET UNDERGROUND     ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES


Speaking of The Velvet Underground, my first thought was to have played Venus In Furs, but it turns out I’ve never entirely got over their allowing it to be used in some advertising campaign for tyres or something a few years back (what on earth was everyone involved in that decision thinking?), so instead, I opted for the magisterial All Tomorrow’s Parties featuring the glacial Nico on vocals, and Andy Warhol’s favourite Velvet Underground track to boot, not that I let that influence me; frankly, he always gave me the willies. Taken from their seminal debut album, 1968’s THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO, of course, I pretty much wore my original vinyl copy of this record out back when I was a 16 year old bedroom fanatic (I ought to have learnt to play guitar at this point, but instead I learnt to make mix tapes instead - funny how things work out). To this day, when I think about never having attended an Exploding Plastic Inevitable show (what with being three at the time and growing up on a council estate in Essex) it still physically pains me – a lack that found no compensation in having watched them perform at a Glastonbury festival one sunny afternoon back in the 90’s which, even at the time, I knew was wrong on so many levels, but what was a boy to do?


STEVE CRADOCK     ANY WAY THE WIND BLOWS


Anyone expecting lumpen dad-rock from the former Ocean Colour Scene guitarist and Paul Weller cohort (and you would, wouldn’t you?) will be delighted to discover that Cradock’s most recent album TRAVEL WILD – TRAVEL FREE, released earlier this year, is as light as a feather, consisting of a hazy pastoral vibe that takes in early Julian Cope and XTC in a timeless journey into baroque-soaked psychedelia with added bells, organs, celeste and whistles; as exemplified by the dreamy opening track Any Way The Wind Blows. Altogether charming.


SOUNDS AND SILENCE     ALLELUIA


This lovely little track can be found on the album CLASSROOM PROJECTS: INCREDIBLE MUSIC MADE BY CHILDREN IN SCHOOLS, released early this year on the semi-legendary Trunk records. It’s a compilation of wondrous music found on LPs released by schools, all recorded between 1959 and 1977 and featuring small primary school choirs or groups singing obscure folk songs to full-blown avant-garde experiments written and performed by children still at secondary or grammar school.
Alleluia originally saw the light of day on the album SOUNDS AND SILENCE, an LP produced in 1969 by John Paynter, a keen advocate of making music available for children in schools, to act as a companion album to his book of the same name. Sadly it’s unclear which school produced this transcendentally lovely choir – the tape variations are their’s, not mine - but I thought it quite lovely, and just the sort of thing to take us into…


THE ROLLING STONES     SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL


If you think this version of the Stones classic, Sympathy For The Devil, runs a little faster than you remember then you’re quite right – in 2008 it was discovered the original mix for 1968’s BEGGARS BANQUET was mastered at a slower speed than it was recorded, meaning that for 30 years people were listening to a slightly slower version of these songs with no one at the time appearing to have noticed. I can’t imagine why. 30 years or so later and the remastered version still has the leering menace of what we thought of as the image-defining original.


TEMPLES     KEEP IN THE DARK


This is the third single from Temple, released in October and one more jewel in the self-contained universe they seem to be building for themselves. Rather sweetly, they’re taking a traditional approach to things and are drip feeding us single releases on vinyl as they work on their debut album. 


ESPERS     RIDING


Now I’m a big fan of Espers’ vocalist Meg Baird, me; her voice is almost transcendentally pretty and I’ll buy anything if she’s singing on it. However, it cannot be denied that singer-songwriter Greg Weeks’ voice is not without an understated pastoral charm of its own, as demonstrated here on lovely Riding, taken from their debut album ESPERS, released in 2005 – a album of sublime harmonic treats and avant-folk acid wig-outs. Gorgeous.


DJ FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION     THE LIGHT PLAYS TRICKS ON YOU UP HERE


DJ Female Convict Scorpion is otherwise known as Josh Pollack, of course (he says knowingly), who also plays with San Francisco based heavy psyche dudes 3 Leafs – as a turntablist, he scratches an entirely different itch, but the results are no less trippy. In fact, they’re often more mesmerizingly psychedelic and off the wall than anything the band he’s in produce. The Light Plays Tricks On You From Up Here was initially taken from his third release, WWZ, a seamless odyssey through sci-fi, zombie themes and quasi-movie soundtracks released in 2010, but I came across it on his sampler release, A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO DJ FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION, which he released in 2012 which you can check out here for free here

SIR PSYCH     GOODNIGHT ECHO


Pretty much does what it says on the label – this is a warped melting instrumental that closes the album HELLO ECHO, released earlier this year and dedicated to the art of experimenting with echo and reverb. You can download it for free here 


HINTERMASS     ARE YOU WATCHING


This absolutely gorgeous track comes to you as part of the Ghost Box Study Series, a series of 10 seven inch singles released on the Ghost Box label, showcasing their artists and other acts aligned to the hauntological aesthetic. Hintermass sees Tim Felton of Seeland (formerly of Broadcast) on vocals and guitar team up with Jon Brooks of The Advisory Circle on synthesizer, bass and percussion on STUDY SERIES 5 - THE OPEN SONGBOOK, released in 2011.


BELBURY POLY AND SPACEDOG     FIND ME



I’m on a bit of a Ghost Box roll at the moment – this track, Find Me, is from STUDY SERIES 10 - MESSAGE AND METTHOD, the last in the series and just recently released featuring Ghost Box co-founder Jim Jupp and Spacedog, effectively Sarah Angliss, someone who is becoming increasingly aligned with the Ghost Box penchant for nostalgia, cosmic horror stories, music for schools, library music, English surrealism and the dark side of psychedelia. I love this tuff, I do; it’s what the music in my head sounds like while I’m falling asleep.


BROADCAST AND THE FOCUS GROUP     SONG BEFORE



To conclude my little trip around some of the highlights of the Ghost Box Study Series, this is from STUDY SERIES 4 FAMILIAR SHAPES AND NOISES, released in 2010, and my favourite of the series, featuring Broadcast and Ghost Box co-founder Julian House who came together so brilliantly for the Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age that same year. As part of the Ghost Box aesthetic, all of the covers are designed in-house by House, a graphics designer, and another layer to their creating not so much a record label, but a whole world to explore.


ENGLISH HERETIC     RUSTIC WIDDERSHIN DERVISH



I’ve only just come across English Heretic, but they seem to be influenced by exactly the same sort of thing that inspires Ghost Box’s hauntological pursuits – their task, as they see, it, is to maintain, nurture and care for the psychohistorical environment of England. Rustic Widdershin Dervish (marvellous title, by the way) is taken from their 2005 release THE SACRED GEOGRAPHY OF BRITISH CINEMA and was recorded in the medieval village of Kersey, where the opening scene from the Hammer horror classic Witchfinder General was filmed. In fact, the CD comes with a 16 page English Heretic pocket guide dedicated to the harrowing opening scene of that very film and suggests various walks around the village where one might soak up the psychic atmosphere, as it were. This attention to detail, coupled with what amounts to a manifesto puts them up there with Julian Cope’s Black Sheep, hauntology, Adrian Corker’s accompaniment for THE WAY OF THE MORRIS, The Wickerman soundtrack, The Eccentronic Research Council’s recent album inspired by the Pendle witch trials… and The Memory Band’s most recent album ON THE CHALK (OUR NAVIGATION OF THE LINE OF THE DOWNS) and is to be absolutely celebrated for their exploration of England’s psychic landscape and its fantastic and uncanny realms. 


ACHIM REICHEL     DAS ECHO DER ZEIT



Or The Echo Of Time, I guess, from the brilliant album ECHO, released in 1971 – a timeless, cosmic trip of an album, almost transcendentally epic in a way that only a true Krautrock classic can be, revealing a sprawling inner world to explore as you float away on psychedelic tides of haunting loveliness. It’s that good.


FAUST     DER VAUM



Ah. I was just about to confidently translate Der Vaum for you, only to discover that it might actually be a made up word – which might be just about right, considering the playful spirit in which Faust released THE FAUST TAPES in 1973 without any track-listing at all. How fitting then, that, following the re-release of the album as part of a box set in 2000, and as one of the rare tracks on the album with a name at all, it means nothing. It’s something of a come down track, hidden away towards the end of the album but works perfectly in context with the show, so that’s alright.



MICK SOFTLY     EAGLE


There was always something of the bohemian minstrel spirit about Mick Softly (his father came from a long line of tinkers, his mother assisted the famous Pankhursts of the Women’s Suffragette Movement) so it comes as no surprise that he’s not as famous as Donovan, say, who he tutored in the finger-picking style, and who returned the favour by covering a couple of his songs. Softly, on the whole, would rather play for free than capitalize on his success, which is probably why he ended up living in the van featured on the front cover of his 1971 release, SUNRISE. Eagle is a chilled-out delight, featuring a light Indian touch and a yearning spirit, is almost the very embodiment of acid folk.

JULIAN COPE     SUNSPOTS


The majestic Sunspots was Julian Cope’s grandiloquent pop statement that was just too weird for the charts; the only single from his 1985 classic FRIED, it saw him written off as a washed-out acid casualty; the album’s cover, which saw him crouched naked beneath a giant turtle shell, seemed to say it all. A quick word about the album cover, if I may: It is unquestionably one of the greatest album covers of all time – when I first came across it unexpectedly in a newsagent window (don’t ask), I nearly swooned with excitement. I knew that whatever music was contained by such a sleeve, I would understand it instinctively, and that it would understand me, and in this I was not wrong. If Julian Cope had never released another album after WORLD SHUT YOUR MOUTH and FRIED, I would have been satisfied to have owned two albums that spoke to the giddy loss, terrible confusion and unspeakable exhilaration of my life – as it is I bought what must have been his 50th or so only last week. And Sunspots always reminds me of my oldest friend Juliet with whom I have remained in love since the day I met her, so that kind of makes it doubly good.