Tag: psychedelic

Delicate, Like A Psychedelicat

What is a psychedelicat, a tin of magic mushroom flavoured Felix?! His picture on the tin certainly displays some suspiciously dilated pupils, but this exaggeration maybe just artistic licence for commercial purposes. In any case, they’re not as dilated as the kitty on the cover of a new album by Marvin B Naylor and Rebsie Fairholm, a Gloucestershire-Hants duo who operate under the pseudonym Psychedelicat; justice sufficient to take a listen……bring out the lava lamp……

Because, a kindly Manchester chap who was always sending me seriously outrageous noises he dubbed “psychedelic” has finally got the message. I don’t mean to be unfair, but music, whether it be as described, a mess of every known subgenre since rock n roll, or not, it must have harmony and melody, or it is borderline industrial noise. Seriously, listen to it under the influence of a single aspirin will likely find you gripping onto the sofa suffering a psychotic episode!

I felt he lacked the concept of psychedelia, for it is surely supposed to be benign, calming and mellowed, inducing a positive karma, rather than a full-blown Cheech and Chong fashioned freak out. On the other hand, when Marvin sent us the opening track of this album, Like a Delicate Psychedelicat, called Ark, as a submission for our Julia’s House compilation, while I was impressed, I wouldn’t have branded it psychedelic; mellowed and beautiful, but nothing particularly Sgt Pepper about it.

So, in the dark wee hours in a village on my milk round, I wedged the air-pods in with the illusion it wouldn’t be half as psychedelic as it said on the tin, especially with this Anthony Burgess approved cat on the cover, the pet of Alex or his droogs. But the glorious Mike Oldfield chimes and reeling soft vocals of Marvin and Rebsie of Ark are merely characteristics of the anticipation of an LSD trip, and before long I was beginning to suspect another milkman had dropped some liberty caps into my travel-mug of tea!

By track two, Steer by the Stars, you begin to obtain the illusion that you might not be in total control of your own mind, as you would if indulging in hallucinogens, without actually having to. That’s the exquisiteness of this, it’s a beautiful journey, to Itchycoo Park. Unlike the excruciating juxtaposition of random noises of our Manchester friend, this just flows gorgeously, like the perfect mellowed trip. If I go AWOL now, they’ll likely find me swaying cross-legged on the village green with flowers in my hair like it was some 1969 San Francisco love-in! “Oi, where’s my pint of semi-skimmed?”

“Like, hey, man, just, like swirling among the milky way, tee-hee; come, sit, can you see it?!”

A pipes and acoustic guitar instrumental flows for the next couple of minutes, then the soothing vocals of Rebsie returns for Green Adieu, to make The Byrds sound like death metal! “Don’t be deceived by the opening track-Ark,” Marvin messaged me far too late, I’m horizontal now, “there are several different styles!”

With a delicate beating drum, Icy Window is trippy, as we move positively from beatnik to hippy, to the sounds of the renaissance. It’s the little chimes and swirly effects amidst the tunes which exhales this impression of underground counter culture of yore, yet still there’s more going on. Sixteenth century triple-time dance shanty unexpectedly comes into play, with a version of John Dowland’s Captain Digorie Piper His Galliard, which Marvin describes as “complete with a psychedelic freak-out, and lots of harmony singing throughout,” akin to what The Horses of the Gods are putting out.

This is an accomplished eleven track strong album in which Marvin and Rebsie are clear on their approach, and if it’s lost in time against everything since the rise of punk, I suspect that is precisely the aim. As Like a Delicate Psychedelicat settles to a conclusion, you are immersed in its gorgeous portrayals of pliable soundscapes, lost in its forest of musical delights. Of harpsichords, twanging guitar on Promenading to the ambient finale, Bright Hucclecote, the only issue with this superb album for the counterculture bohemian of yore, is what to listen to afterwards.

Drained of inspiration, there’s a comedown on the horizon; abruptly you cannot connect the dots of your modest explanation for the meaning of life involving a dreamcatcher and some leftover twigs, and hey, who dumped that milk-float in the middle of Stonehenge?!

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Captain Rico’s Forgotten Memory of The Beaches

As much as I enjoyed Django Unchained, I’ve not seen the other Tarantino spaghetti western pastiche yet, but I think I should cap it until such a time ol’ QT hires Captain Rico and the Ghost Band to score it.

Echoes of a gothic Ennio Morricone in his darkest hour shudder through this epic instrumental album, transporting you to an alternate reality where The Shadows came after Hawkwind.

A realm where rock history is suffering the same fate as Benjamin Button, created as Britpop, slowly working its way back to rock n roll, and we’re about halfway; USA in the mid-sixties, hardcore surfing with the Beach Boys. Indeed, the sound of ‘The Forgotten Memory of The Beaches,’ which was unleashed last Friday on Spider Music, is inspired by the classic surf-rock sound, pioneered by the likes of The Shadows, The Beach Boys, and The Ventures, yet it’s heavier, man, like vintage psychedelia heavier.

For this, I have to say, amidst sonic blasts, flares of garage fuzz and dark post-punk drumming undertones, there’s nothing really definable as in-your-face heavy metal here, more Chuck Berry’s Gibson ES-355 taken for a journey by Dave Murray, and for this it’s completely unique; a warlock’s cauldron in which he adds a tablespoonful of Duane Eddy and a pinch of The Cramps.

This incredible sound of sixties Southern California has been recaptured and reshaped by a trio based in the South of France, guitarist Damien Ricaud, Yves Manceau on percussion, and bassist Ludovic Timoteo, and it’s a breathless race. Given the psychedelic swirls of space rock at the beginning, you assume you’re in for a mellow trip, assume as Pink Floyd, there will be peaks and troughs, but through a magnitude of twelve relentless three-to-four-minute tracks, it rarely comes up for air.

Neither does it poke a standalone track at you, given it’s completely instrumental, without the hint of sampled spoken word, it flows right through as one masterpiece of mind-blowing nuanced mayhem, causing you wonder what the heck to listen to, or even do next. But for me, makes it tricky to nail a few direct words about it, to pick it apart, reason enough to love it.

On our local circuit, guitar heroes Innes Sibun jamming with Ruzz Evans might come somewhere close to capturing something similar. Should they choose to, because despite these sixties’ surfer influences cited in its press release, The Rivieras, for example, would’ve reacted like the crowd at the Under the Sea Dance scene in Back to the Future, when Marty blasts Johnny B Goode, or in reality, the impact Hendrix had on music. Captain Rico and the Ghost Band really are, this exciting.

Brainiac 5’s Other Dimension

And it is precisely that. Cornish psych-punkers The Brainiac 5 release this mind-blowing album of both reflective new tunes and lost archived tracks, today. Another Time Another Dimension bursts the cliché term genre-breaking to compose scattered influences, with this kind of low-fi garage style, which while loans to punk, even reggae, has the nod to acid rock of a previous psychedelia era. Most befitting a title, this is a tricky nugget to nail down, but it’s grower.

The band stress this is not a lockdown album, the impetus came from two other sources, namely a digging through the archives for unreleased material, and secondly, the passing of a long-time friend of the band, Martin Griffin. A supportive engineering assistant to the band in its earliest days, allowing them extensive use of his Roach Recording studio. Both reasons sparked the writing of some new songs, in this fifteen-track bundle of era-spanning and mind-expanding goodness.

I confess I was dubious at first, it’s as if The Beatles came after punk, but still recorded in a garage. It made me ponder the Clash singing “phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust,” and in turn the target audience, presumably a fairly eclectic bunch. As I said, it’s a grower, and I suspect I’ll be digging bits of “oh yeah, I get it now,” for many listens to come. But time has got the best of me, got to get this review out tonight.

“The four albums released during our second coming have all garnered many reviews noting our continuing desire to experiment and expand while still maintaining the basic psych/punk ethos,” they say, “Indeed, the three new tracks here do continue this tradition of experimentation. However, although it is clear that the band has grown and developed over the years it is remarkable just how much we were experimenting right from the band’s inception.”

The bulk of Another Time Another Dimension, then, are memoirs, lost archives from 1976-1980, in what the band name “our initial Cornwall period.” Taking John D. Loudermilk’s Tobacco Road to Hendrix proportions, yep, sure is blues to be found here, and the rough and ready cover of Move’s Do Ya revels in low-fi garage rock.

But it’s loud, proud and sonic trialling, denoting a path through dubby seventies roots reggae, with a few tracks which offbeat, such as I Call Your Name and though Our Devils is another, it reeks of avant-garde, a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band-come post-punk Talking Heads. Then I return to thinking, definitely punk, I Feel Good a prime example. And then, wham, there’s freaky drunken Jim Morrison weirdness in tracks like Khazi Persona.

Though the ground here is bumpy at the best of times, your head doesn’t smash on the top; it may be raw, but blends with a flowing refinement of proficiency. “There is a lot of ground covered here,” they rightly explain, “hang on and enjoy the ride.” And there’s the very thing; once you’ve found your footing, it’s a fantastic, adventurous ride, just lacks suspension!

But, with the third eye being squeegeed so succulently as this, suspension is for losers, anyway. Another Time Another Dimension encompasses a past with a present, as if neither really happened, and that’s refreshingly effective against pigeonholing.

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Eighties Mod Revival Lost Gem: The Direct Hits

If I waffle positively here, and yes, I do waffle, about retrospection and a trend in sounds trying to be authentically from a time of yore, this one doesn’t need to try. The Broadway Recording Sessions thrusts you rearward into the eighty’s mod revival scene, whether you want to go there or not.

Battersea trio, The Direct Hits may only be remembered by the connoisseur of mod, having one-shot at charting in ’82, when TV presenter Dan Treacy released their song, Modesty Blaise on his Whamm! imprint. The music press hailed this as not just another Jam, crash-bang-wallop mod revivalist tune, and their explosive live shows avowed them pioneers of a “Battersea Beat.”

Whamm were financially struggling to fund an album, so the band pooled their limited resources and booked the cheapest studio time they could find, Tooting’s Broadway Sounds. By the afternoon they had knocked out nine songs, the other three on this album were recorded a fortnight later. It would be two years later when they re-recorded some of these songs for their debut album “Blow Up.”

Now remastered, these lost recordings have surfaced finally, and, with warts and all, show the uncooked spirit of a hopeful mod garage band. I’ve had this playing for a few weeks since it’s late February release, and it heralds the hallmarks of a post-punk return to the basics, which sixties groups like The Kinks and The Small Faces mastered. To expect this yardstick is pushing it, but through all its rawness there’s some beguilingly adroit songs to make you wonder why they wasn’t as their namesake suggests, direct hits!

Perhaps it was that bit too retrospective for the progressive eighties. Because, elements capture neo-psychedelia, rather than soulful eighties mod assigned via The Spencer Davis Group and into bands like The Merton Parkas. That era where the beatnik style was teetering on influencing the pop sound, but Merseybeat was still riding the high ground. There’s a delicate balance here, avoiding things getting too cliché Mamas & Papas, these upbeat three-minute-heroes never fails to kick ass.

Consistently high-spirted and energetic garage sound, yet psychedelically enhanced; think if Syd Barrett’s days spent at Pink Floyd would’ve been spent with The Who instead, and you get the idea. There’s even a bike song, just like on Relics. Lyrically there’s unassuming stories with clear narratives and characters to challenge the Beatles.

A polished rerecording of a track from the album.

Overall, though, you’ve got twelve mind-blowing rarities which perfectly capture a raw moment of youthful optimism for an inspiring band, in an era where everyone felt encouraged to pick up an instrument and give it bash; and they’re good, really good. In a funny kind of way, I see similarities to the now; the forgone passing of DJ culture in a rave new world and tasteless manufactured pop, to an imminent inclination of online DIY indie, I see hopefuls taking to a guitar and giving it a go. Perhaps then, there’s no time like the present for this to resurface.

Buy The Broadway Recording Sessions Here

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You’ve Been Mangoed; With Mango Thomas!

Vast developments in the later days of breakbeat house saw a split in the blossoming rave scene. Techno-heads being directed away from the newfound UK sound found solace in a subgenre dubbed “happy hardcore,” whereas the trialling occurred in the dawn of drum and bass, or “jungle” as it was known at the time. Yet it was still underground and reserved for the party. No one considered a concept album, myself included, until I heard A Guy Called Gerald’s Black Secret Technology. I bought it on a memory tip-off, I loved the late eighties acid house anthem Voodoo Ray. It was like splinters of drum n bass over an ambient soundscape, and wasn’t for everyone, but while I was still gulping about it, Goldie released Timeless and the rest is history.

Creative outpourings too radical or experimental for the time are commonplace, and perhaps our necessity to pigeonhole excludes Manchester’s Mango Thomas. He emailed with a list of rejections from specific music blogs and radio shows, being if one part did, the rest of his new EP “Goes De,” out today (22nd Nov) didn’t fit their restrictive agenda. There’s part of me which says I don’t blame them, this is a hard pill to swallow, juxtaposed randomly at breakneck speed, it’s a roller-coaster alright; you have no control where it’ll take you.

Mango Thomas throws every conceivable psychedelic genre of yore into a breakcore melting pot, and pours you a jug; if you take a sip you might as well down the whole thing, for it works fast, it’s a trip and you’re in it for the duration. You have to be, if only to wonder what’s coming next. And in that, it has to be one the most interesting things I’ll review here for a while. Yeah, it uses contemporary breakcore, but at times nods back to drum n bass of yore, but it funks too, it rocks, unexpectedly, and if you thought you could be shocked no more, it even mellowly bhangras at the finale, as if Ravi Shankar wandered in.

There are so many elements to contemplate in this hedonistic frenzy of chaos, yet with crashing hi-hats, stripped down rhythms, sonic belters, echoes and reverbs, it primarily relies on dub techniques absorbing industrial metal and hardcore. Imagine an alternative universe where the Mad Professor is remixing Bootsy Collins, but in this realm Bootsy actually fronts a thrash metal band, and Frank Zappa peers over the mixing board putting his tuppence in; something like that, but more bonkers.

Picking it apart, at times you’ll contemplate Mango Thomas’ location and hear shards of the Madchester scene, other points will wobble you over to the Butthole Surfers, for if it is industrial hardcore skater, it’s done tongue-in-cheek. But it doesn’t come over dejected, as such a genre archetypically does, rather showy and egotistical like a funkmaster general. The man himself explains the effect will leave you “mangoed,” I’ve a tendency to agree.

It’s four major tracks with reprises and clippits between, often Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band fashioned, bizarre, amusing or deliberately belligerent to the mainstream, in true counter culture fashion. Do I like it, though, that’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Damn you and your demands, fuck, I don’t know. It’s always going to be something you have to be in the mood for, certainly not drifting Sunday afternoon music to take a snooze to after a roastie. A younger me would lap it up, as it twists so unexpectedly. Any psychedelia gone before doesn’t touch it for cross-genre experimentation, and for that, in my artier moods, I give it full points. A sensible somebody as I’d prefer to strive for might suggest it’s too far out there. But it entertained me for sure, so it has its place.

Can I suggest you throw caution to the wind, listen and see how long you can bear to hold out for? If you like Tim Burton, Zappa or Lee Scratch Perry you’ll be partly prepared. Try though, as the finale is something quite astounding and as an erratic mishmash it mirrors A Guy Called Gerald’s Black Secret Technology for pushing new boundaries, but it mirrors Sgt Peppers, the Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse and Bitches Brew too.

A Cracked Machine at the Gates of Keras

Don my headphones, chillax with a cider, and prepare my eardrums for a new album from our local purveyors of space-rock goodness; Cracked Machine is a wild ride….

There are few occasions when mellowed music truly suspends me in the moment, when it just exists in the air like oxygen and totally incarcerates and engulfs my psyche. Jah Shaka and ambient house rascals the Orb both achieved this a couple of dusks at Glastonbury, but the same with likewise happenings, I confess I was intoxicated on matter maturity caused me to long leave in my past!

The issue for any reborn psychedelic-head is pondering the notion, will it ever be the same again, will music and art tease my perception to quite the same degree. The sorry answer is no, unless your intransigent mate slips something in your drink. Yet it’s not all despair, with a sound as rich and absorbing as Cracked Machine, it’s doable without drugtaking shenanigans.

They proved this at the most fantastic day in Devizes last year, which was that bit more fantastic, when what was intended to be a bolt-on feature became the highlight of DOCA’s Street Festival. Funded and arranged by Pete and Jacki of Vinyl Realm, the second stage highlighted everything positive about local music; a historic occasion we’ll be harking on for some time yet. I nipped away briefly after Daydream Runaways stole the early part of the day. But where the lively indie-pop newcomers had roused the audience, I returned to witness a hypnotised crowd and a mesmerising ambience distilling the blistering summer air. Smalltalk was numbed, as if the area was suspended in time. A doubletake to confirm we were still perpendicular, sitting in deckchairs or slouching against a wall on the corner of Long Street and St Johns and not slipped through a time vortex to a Hawkwind set at a 1970 free-party love-in. I was beyond mesmerised, but not surprised.

For this is how it was with their impressive 2017 debut album, I, Cosmonaut, the soundscapes just drifted through me, as I causally drafted the review, reminding me of a smoky haze of yore, giggling in a mate’s bedroom, listening to Hawkwind’s Masters of Universe. Youth of my era though, were subjected to electronic transformation in music, which would soon engulf us. Rave culture cut our space-rock honeymoon short, though, Spaceman 3 were a precursor to the ambient house movement of the Orb, Aphex Twin and KLF, others changed their style, like Frome’s Ozric Tentacles merging into Eat Static, and a perpetually changing line-up for Hawkwind appeased the older rock diehards.

I love I, Cosmonaut, it manages to subtly borrow from electronica and trance, only enough to make it contemporary, but keep it from being classed as anything else other than space-rock. I felt their second album, The Call of the Void avoided this slice of Tangerine Dream, and submerged itself totally in the hard rock edge; bloody headbangers! Therefore, it’s a refreshing notion to note newly released Gates of Keras bonds the two albums and sits between them perfectly.

Again, there’s little to scrutinise as it rarely changes, it meanders, trundles me to a world beyond wordplay, as these completely instrumental tracks roll into one another, gorgeously. A Deep Purple styled heavy bass guitar may kick it off, yet the opening track Cold Iron Light takes me to the flipside of Floyd’s Meddle, with seven and half minutes of crashing drums and rolling guitar riffs. Temple of Zaum continues on theme, Ozrics-inspired funkier bassline, and we’re off on the drifting journey, splicing subtle influences. The Woods Demon, for example, stands out for particularly smooth almost Latino guitar riff, making it my personal fave. Yet Move 37 is heavier, upbeat, like the second album. Low Winter Sun is sublime blues-inspired, imagine Led Zeppelin created Satisfaction rather than the Stones, if you will.

Recorded back in November, this is eight lengthy soundscapes of pure bliss, and will guarantee you a safe trip. A signature album for a lonely lockdown of dark, yet emersed in a time of Tolkien-esque vibes and mandelbrot set fractal posters. If this was released in the mid-seventies-to early-eighties every spotty teenager would be inking their army surplus school bag with a biro-version of Cracked Machine’s logo. As it is, age taking its toll and all, I have no idea if this still happens, but doubt it. None of that matters, here is a matured era of the genre, only with a glimpse of how it once was. Nicely done.