psychedelia
joe.muggs
Natasha Khan has taken a fascinating trajectory through the music world. As Bat For Lashes she first came to public attention as part of an early-2000s wave of psychedelia, allied in particular to the furry starchild Devendra Banhart. But her high drama electropop-tinged sound was as far from Banhart's all-organic “freak folk” as it was from the fiddlier laptop-driven sound of folktronica, and she ended up occupying a space all her own. Only the similarly theatrical Marina & The Diamonds came close to her approach, although the ghastly Florence would ride an altogether crasser and Read more ...
Guy Oddy
In a way that is reminiscent of fellow Swedes and label mates Goat, Hills play a primal psychedelia that draws from a far broader spectrum of sounds than the usual garage rock and motorik grooves of their British and American fellow travellers. On Frid, their third album, vocals are largely put aside in favour of spaced-out instrumentals or chanting that suggests medieval plainsong fed into an effects box. While the guitar sounds and grooves of Tinariwen and Songhoy Blues rub up against the chemical drone of Spacemen 3 to make some serious pagan ritual music that both moves hips and flips Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Julian Cope: World Shut Your Mouth, FriedIt’s a fair assumption Julian Cope’s record label Phonogram was committed to the idea that he could be a solo commercial and critical success. Teardrop Explodes, the band he had fronted, had charted and his face regularly featured in the new crop of glossy pop magazines. The announcement of the band’s split had come in November 1982, but it took another year for “Sunshine Playroom”, the first solo single, to emerge.The record label’s faith was demonstrated by approving a £20,000 spend for the single’s promo video – it was the first that photographer Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
"This ain't the Summer of Love," sang Blue Oyster Cult in 1975. Judging by this intriguing new drama, it might not really have been the Summer of Love in 1967 either, as David Duchovny's Detective Sam Hodiak picks his way through the dope and the kaftans and finds himself on the trail of a menacing little scumbag called Charlie Manson.Looking older and chunkier, but also sleek and a trifle sleazy, Duchovny slips into the role of an LAPD veteran with a knowing shrug. Though the young undercover narcotics cop he ends up working with, Brian Shafe (Grey Damon, pictured below right), starts off Read more ...
Guy Oddy
There is something strange happening in mainland Europe at the moment. Perhaps this has been spurred on by a feeling that the old certainties of the past aren’t quite so solid, but a mind-expanding psychedelia with an eye for the dance-floor and free of navel-gazing pastoral whimsy has been springing up in all kinds of unexpected places. Bands like Goat and Sonic Jesus (from Sweden and Italy respectively) have begun to make themselves heard by peddling sonic rituals that take their cues from a far bigger world than late ‘60s California, and it is out of this miasma that Portuguese threesome Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There’s been a real sense of expectation surrounding Kevin Parker’s new offering, with rumours of a disco album from the saviour of psychedelia after a conversion to the joys of the Bee Gees while on mushrooms. That sounded an interesting proposition – one that could make the mind bogle.“Let It Happen” is a bold opening gambit – a delightfully melodic stroll over a glitchy bridge to an epic conclusion. It’s head-spinningly good, but doesn’t lead us by the hand to a dancefloor. “Nangs”, a dreamy pop vignette with heavy, hip-hop beats and wonky strings is lovely, but it’s also territory Koushik Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
An all-analogue space-rock, Krautrock-influenced, motorik-driven psychedelic ride on Saturn’s rings, Gwenno’s Y Dydd Olaf is a treat from start to end. Her sweet but dislocated vocals mesh with snappy bass guitar, bloopy synths and the otherworldly atmosphere of Ralph & Florian Kraftwerk. Apart from a track in Cornish, the Welsh-language album has its own flavour with exotic, lilting, almost-Japanese melodies, but it fits snugly with other recent-ish albums drawing from similar influences which also lean towards the conceptual by Eccentronic Research Council, Jaakko Eino Kalevi, Jane Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Vintage is word I’m not comfortable with. I make it a point of principle not to pay a 3000% mark-up on clothes someone’s already worn, and when it comes to wine, I’m more likely to shop by ABV in truth. Vintage is however, a word at the heart of The Sweet Pretty Things (Are in Bed Now, of Course . . . ), the new album by R’n’B upstarts-turned-psychedelic story tellers The Pretty Things. Recording on vintage, analogue equipment in a "let’s do the show right here" flurry of activity, the band – a going concern since 1963 – are certainly capable of producing the goods, but, going in, I'm Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Dust on the Nettles – A Journey Through the British Underground Folk Scene 1967–72It’s one of the most significant musical rediscoveries of recent years and, on its own, makes Dust on the Nettles indispensible. “The Seagulls Scream” by Christine Quayle is track 10 on the first disc of this box set of psychedelically inclined British folk or folk-inspired music. Quayle intones desolately of “a human in bed [who] is singing his prayers in his head, his mind is dead.” Eleswhere in the disconsolate lyric, a child asks his mother for love but “beneath his skin, his body is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Damned: Go! 45At the end of 1979, Britain’s first three 1976-born punk bands were in very different situations. The Sex Pistols had imploded in early 1978 and John Lydon, their front man, was back with Public Image Ltd’s challenging dub- and Krautrock-influenced multi-disc collection Metal Box. The Clash had released the epic, cross-genre double album London Calling. The Damned’s crisp Machine Gun Etiquette was in the shops on the back of that year’s hit singles “Love Song” and “Smash it up”, both of which featured on the album. No one, not even the band itself, could have predicted Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The Warlocks are a psychedelic band from LA who dress not unlike the Velvet Underground in their prime and are clearly not given to star-like behaviour. They slope onto the stage at Birmingham’s Rainbow, tune up and burst straight into “Red Camera” from their 2009 album The Mirror Explodes. A heavy, dense mediation that comes on like a deep, Spacemen 3-flavoured drone, it whacks up the volume and sets the tone for the evening. It doesn’t get the audience moving around much but it certainly grabs their attention.As the track comes to an end, singer and guitarist Bobby Hecksher announces, “That Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The psych scene is one that has never seemed to really go away since its birth in the mid-60s under the guidance of bands such as the Thirteenth Floor Elevators and Pink Floyd. It may have faded into the background from time to time, but every few years it comes back with something new and interesting added to the recognisable template. Out of the present incarnation of this crowd, which includes the likes of Swedish tribalists Goat, the hypnotic Wooden Shjips and a slew of bands that have featured on the excellent Reverb Conspiracy compilations, comes Italian duo Sonic Jesus. Their debut Read more ...