MIND DE-CODER 26

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MIND DE-CODER 26

"Just relax...keep it cool..and let your head go where it really wants to."

KIM FOWLEY     THE TRIP

What a great way to start the show. What a great way to start a record: “Summertime’s here, kiddies…and it’s time to take a trip”. Released as a single in 1965, in a mere two minutes Fowley walks the line between throwaway novelty trash and pure psychotic stream-of-consciousness genius taking in and taking on Surfin’ Bird, Louie Louie, Wooly Bully and 96 Tears along the way. Marvellous.

Welcome to Mind De-Coder26 

FORTYONE      BUCKETS

Crazy-super-magical-funtime-goodness from cut-and-paste genius Fortyone. This track is taken from the CD NO MORE MAYONNAISE, which is available for free, along with 29 other CDs, simply by writing to him here. It's a bit like listening to cartoons on the radio - too much and your teeth begin to ache, but there is a whole world of Fortyone out there for you, if you but only choose.

TOMORROW      MY WHITE BICYCLE

This is one of two singles released by one of the key psychedelic pop bands of the UK underground in the 1960s, inspired by the Dutch Provos, an anarchist movement based in Amsterdam which reportedly instituted a community bicycle programme. Recorded at the EMI studios in London and produced by the legendary Joe Boyd, this is the kind of kaleidoscopic pop that was blaring out of the nation's transistors in 1967.

FAUST      FLASHBACK CARUSO

Taken from the legendary FAUST TAPES, released in 1973, an album I return to time and time again for all my trip needs. Released for 49p by a nascent Virgin Records, the story goes that Jim Kerr of Simple Minds threw his copy off the roof of a Glasgow tenement, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the Simple Minds, I think.

MOON WIRING CLUB     TIFFIN TIME

If I tell you this track can be found on Ian Hodgson’s second album SHOES OFF AND CHAIRS AWAY, released in 2008, then the title alone should tell you what to expect. Working tirelessly with his copy of Music for the Playstation 2 (seriously, what’s more hauntological than that?) Hodgson has again used the history of forgotten British television to source his banks of samples, and the results really speak for themselves. Most artists simply wouldn’t have the patience to do what Hodgson does, and the sheer attention to detail is astounding. Hauntolgical cleverness at its best.

BONGWATER      MR SOUL

A brilliant cover version of Buffalo Springfield's Mr Soul by Bongwater, not so much a band as a particularly disturbing bad dream, taken from the Neil Young tribute album THE BRIDGE, released in 1989.

NEU!      SPITZENQUALITAT

A dominant motorik beat taken from Neu!'s second album NEU! 2, released in 1973. This is the album on which they famously run out of money and had to make Side 2 by speeding up and slowing down bits of Side 1. Spitzenqualitat is from Side 1 - it's supposed to sound like this.

MELLOW      CORRIDOR

A track taken from the soundtrack to the film CQ, a retro-futuristic romp about something or other that never actually saw the light of day. But the soundtrack is fabulous - a mix of campy, sci-fi, retro spy-chase, swinging 60's mod grooves with a touch of pastoral folk and woozy psychedelia thrown in for good measure, released in 2002. The band Mellow are French and from the same stable as fellow Parisians, Air. I think they may have been in the same proto-band at some point or other, before splitting off to follow their more prog-y groove.

JULIAN COPE      SAFESURFER

The mighty Julian Cope in full-on psychedelic mode with the epic Safesurfer, taken from the extraordinary PEGGY SUICIDE, released in 1991. This particular track can take you so far out you'd be wise to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind you in order to get back home again - if you ever wish to return, that is.

PAUL WELLER      KOSMOS (LYNCH MOB BONUS BEATS REMIX)

Taken from Wellers HUNG UP EP, released in 1994, this is a big, spacey, dubbed out bit of psychedelic bliss that can, at points, take the enamel off your teeth. That's two references to the teeth in this blog. It must be a metaphor, or something.

TANGERINE DREAM      FLY AND COLLISION OF COMAS SOLA

A 13 minute drum and flute freak-out epic that sounds like there's a planet passing through your living room while you're next door making a cup of tea. As Julian Cope says in Krautrocksampler - it's as if the musicians feel each others vibrations but can't actually hear the music they're making. Brilliant, expansive, and to be found on their 1971 album ALPHA CENTAURI.

JOHN OSWALD     TRANSILENCE/POURING VELVET/

 IN REVOLVING ASH LIGHT/FOLDBACK TIME

John Oswald is the composer and sound-collage artist whose best known work is the Plunderphonics project, released in 1988, which took audio piracy as a compositional prerogative and later became the staple practice of hip-hop and indeed mash-ups. In 1993 Oswald was approached by Phil Lesh, of The Grateful Dead, to record a short version of the band’s classic Dark Star as a possible single release. What Oswald actually did was plunder the vaults and using over a hundred different live copies of the song recorded between 1965 and 1993  built, layered and folded all of them to produce one large, recomposed version spanning just sixteen minutes short of two hours. The finished project was the homophonically entitled GREYFOLDED released in 1995 and is, in essence, the only Grateful Dead or Grateful Dead-related record that features participation by every person who was ever in the group between 1965 and 1995. Obviously it divided opinion between fans of the Dead, but never having any opinions about the band myself, I think it’s great (or should that be ‘grate’?*), so I’ve included several sections of the recording to give you an idea of how the whole thing pans out. 

(*No, no it shouldn’t)

THE VIRGINEERS     FLOATING

The Virgineers, whose pastiche of the 60’s psychedelic sound is a spot-on homage to the music they so obviously love. Floating is taken from their only album, THE VIRGINEERS, released in 1999. Not much is known about the band itself, but the duo claim to have formed when they met at an art school for wayward girls in their hometown of Sydville, an Antarctic seaport built on the baby octopus trade. Another story suggests, more prosaically, that they’re from Chicago. Despite this, many of the songs reveal the more whimsical English tea-garden variety of psychedelia, but Floating sounds like The Monkees in their Head days. Whoever they are, they need to do more.

SMALL FACES     GREEN CIRCLES

This is the slightly heavier American version of the track that appeared on their album THERE ARE BUT FOUR SMALL FACES, a U.S. version of their second English LP SMALL FACES, released 1967. The band claims that with tracks like this they were merely trying to explain the images conjured up while they enjoyed themselves tripping. It works for me.

BRAINTICKET     PART ONE: CONCLUSION

Absolutely marvelous track from little known Krautrock group Brainticket, formed by the splendidly named Joel Vandroogenbroeck, whose debut album COTTONWOODHILL , released in 1971, came with the warning: “Only listen to this once a day. Your brain might be destroyed”, which immediately got in banned in America. It also adds: “After listening to this record, your friends might not know you anymore”. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

WOLF PEOPLE     INTERLUDE: COTTON FRAGMENT

TIDINGS, released 2010, the first fractured and frenzied release from Wolf people, is very much a schizophrenic affair, taking in updated versions of classic blues structures alongside half-remembered English folk songs employing the full use of hissing guitars, distorted blues harmonica, acid rock, mystical flutes and crackling tape. Many of the songs are only half finished, snippets of ideas picked over and discarded, some coming in under 30 seconds or so. It’s a diverse album, full of ideas and avenues to explore at a later date (some of which they got back to on their second album, Steeple). Featuring as many ‘real songs’ as ‘interludes’, its use of avant-garde studio trickery and tape distortion the album puts me in mind of The Faust Tapes, although I seem to be the one person to have noticed that.

STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK      RAINY DAY MUSHROOM PILLOW

West coast vibes from San Francisco's 1967 hippy scene. The song title says it all, really. Taken from the album INCENSE AND PEPPERMINTS which, once again, pretty much sums it up. Elegant, dreamy and baroque.

BRUCE AND MISS NELSON      SOUL TRANSPORTATION

One of the weirdest records in my record collection, which is saying something, this comes from the album DANCE TO THE MUSIC, one of a series of LPs released in the 1970's (this one was released in 1972) recorded for children by composer Bruce Haack and dance instructor Esther Nelson. It scares the life out of my kids so I don't play it as much as I might.

BEYOND THE WIZARD'S SLEEVE      THE FIFTH NOTE

In which Erol Alkan remixes Chitra Neogy’s The Blue Sari from her semi-legendary album THE PERFUMED GARDEN on Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve second release, the vinyl only SPRING, released in 2006. 

BROADCAST     SUCH TENDER THINGS/TERESA – LARK OF ASCENSION/

SERPENT’S SEMEN

Following the unexpected and much lamented death of Broadcast's Trish Keenan in 2011 I sadly thought that that was the last we’d hear from them, so I was delighted to discover that just before her death they’d been working on the soundtrack to an Italian horror movie set in the 1970’s which, as you can imagine, was right up their street. It features Omen-like church organs, classic horror FX, a spot of occult flute playing, and Goblin-type whispers, reminiscent of their work on Dario Argento’s Suspiria soundtrack wherein the period-precise score captures the claustrophobic dread and paranoia of the film, called BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO. I’ve included three pieces from the soundtrack, two that show off Keenan’s wonderful icy-sharp voice for the last time, and the last, called Serpent’s Semen because, well, who wouldn’t want to hear a track called Serpent’s Semen? (It last’s 6 seconds and consists of a bone-chilling scream, you'll know it when you hear it).

COMUS      THE HERALD

It wasn't all peace, love and pass the sugarcubes in the early 1970's acid/folk scene. Comus, who could have been written to feature in a Merrily Watkins mystery, seem drawn to the dark side. Their album FIRST UTTERANCE, released in 1971, evokes many feelings, but most dominant are fear, confusion and despair - check out the cover, drawn by band leader Roger Wootton, no plate-eyed hippy chicks here - the lyrics often invoke images of violence, murder, rape and mental disorder; so not an album to listen to late at night with a few joss sticks glowing and a handful of magic mushrooms, then. It's not a date album, either. It does have one moment of transcendent beauty, however, the tranquil yearning of The Herald on which I finish the show.

I thank you.