psychedelia
Barney Harsent
Ride guitarist Andy Bell has clearly been busy since the release of his solo debut, 2020’s The View From Halfway Down. As well as getting his Space Station instrumental touring show up and running, he’s found time to record a sprawling, 18-track follow-up, Flicker, also released on Sonic Cathedral.Bell’s “other life”, as a DJ and producer of immersive electronica under his Glok moniker has, for some time, been an indicator of his willingness – and ability – to veer from the playbook and embrace other forms. On Flicker, however, this impulse is supersized. From shoegaze movers to krautrock Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Animal Collective were getting themselves back to Joni Mitchell’s Edenic Woodstock garden right from the start – musically evoking the natural high of a 5-year-old’s wide-open wonder, in their case heightened by hippie schooling in rural Maryland. Since rejecting the regal indie status offered by their avant-pop breakthrough Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009), the very idea of career peaks and troughs has been ignored as an ego-trip dead-end, replaced by wandering, often fractured progress, as when a duo version of the Collective’s quartet made last year’s trippy Crestone soundtrack. As the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Electric Prunes could feel happy at the end of January 1968. Since landing in London in late November 1967, they’d hung out with Jimi Hendrix and had a photo session with Rolling Stones-favoured photographer Gered Mankowitz. They also met The Beatles at Abbey Road as Magical Mystery Tour was being mixed.How hot they were live during this brush with Europe is attested to by a French TV appearance, viewable via the internet, and from the recording of a Swedish radio concert included on Disc Six of Then Came The Dawn Complete Recordings 1966-1969 (the show was first legally released in 1997 Read more ...
joe.muggs
This is just boggling. The Japanese rock trio Boris have been together in the same lineup for over a quarter of a century – and it’s longer still since their original formation – but they’re outdoing themselves record by record. Their last record, NO, was the most energetic record they’ve ever made. Where they’re best known for floaty dream pop and sludgy, doomy, lava-flow-like noise churning, NO is a 1000mph fusion of thrash, punk and classic metal, a glorious rage against a world of fear and torpor in the COVID age. And now, only six months later, comes another album, and in dramatic Read more ...
Barney Harsent
If ever there were a year to cherish new music, 2021 was it. Lockdown v3.0 came with unwelcome updates (shit weather, structured home-schooling) and the only end in sight was of the nation’s collective tether.With passports rendered next to useless, the arts offered an escape like never before, and music was no exception. In March, Jane Weaver’s phenomenal album Flock arrived full of psychedelic swagger and propulsive momentum. Retaining the melodic sensibilities and esoteric influences that defined her previous records, most notably 2017’s Modern Kosmology and 2015’s The Silver Globe, Weaver Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The archive release which had the greatest impact, and still does, was Linda Smith’s Till Another Time 1988-1996. After it turned up, the reaction to a first play was instant. How could this have escaped attention? The compilation opened the door on a brilliant artist, one previously known to a particular audience.Till Another Time raises the point that it’s impossible to keep on top of everything, to know about everything. Even though she issued new releases until relatively recently, Smith had slipped through a personal knowledge crack. Thankfully, that’s now rectified.That’s one aspect of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As we ride towards the holiday break on our magic reindeer, it’s time for one last theartsdesk on Vinyl, a seasonal special that, if you scroll down, contains all the usual up-to-date music reviews but, before that, takes a look at Yuletide-themed releases, reissues and heritage fare that might make great presents. As ever, all musical life newly pressed to plastic is here. Dive in.VINYL OF THE FESTIVE SEASONPatrik Fitzgerald featuring Lemur No Santa Clauses (Crispin Glover)This year’s VINYL OF THE FESTIVE SEASON top pick is by long lost new wave troubadour Patrik Fitzgerald. It’s only his Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
At the beginning of November 1964, a form of changing of the guard was evident in the UK’s singles chart. The Dave Clark Five sat at number 25 with “Anyway You Want it,” the highest placing for their follow-up to “Thinking of You Baby.” Although they were four places lower at 29, The Pretty Things would have been happy as “Don’t Bring me Down,” their second single, was rising up the charts. One band represented a primal interpretation of the recently popular R&B sound, the other an uncomplicated take on Beat Boom tropes.The DC5 wouldn’t have been bothered by their relatively poor UK chart Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Signs of irrevocable change materialised in December 1965. On Wednesday the 8th, a new band named The 13th Floor Elevators debuted live at The Jade Room in Austin, Texas. Band members prepared for the experience by taking LSD in the run-up to the booking. Within a couple of weeks, they had a business card describing them as playing “psychedelic rock.”Three days later, on the 11th, another new band was seen by a paying audience for the first time. The Velvet Underground played in a support slot at Summit High School in New Jersey. Two numbers in their set were titled “Heroin” and “Venus in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any compilation with a track credited to “Unknown Artist” is always going to entice, especially when it’s one which goes the full way by digging into original master tapes to find the best audio sources and previously unearthed nuggets. In this case, it’s not known who recorded “To Make a Lie”, a dark, menacing cut where a disembodied voice intones about the threat of a giant willow tree (“it’s coming!”), evil, pain and walking into eternity over a doomy organ, spiralling guitar and draggy drums. As it ends – a female scream. Bad trip vibes.“To Make a Lie” was found in the archives associated Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bergen’s Electric Eye’s pithy description of themselves is “psych-space-drone-rock from Norway.” They also say they “play droned out psych-rock inspired by the blues, India and the ever-more expanding universe.” Horizons is their fourth studio album.They’ve been honing what they do for just short of a decade. Their drummer Øyvind Hegg-Lunde has also regularly played with folk and jazz individualists Building Instrument and Erlend Apneseth Trio. Guitarist and keyboard player Njål Clementsen has been in post-rock/psych-rock bands The Low Frequency In Stereo and The Megaphonic Thrift. Amongst Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Between August 1966 and November 1967, The Syn played 36 shows at London’s high-profile Marquee Club. In June and September 1967 they issued two singles on the happening Decca subsidiary Deram, an imprint scoring hits with releases by Cat Stevens, The Move and Procol Harum. The Syn’s singles were voguish: tracks included the flower-power referencing “Flowerman” and “14 Hour Technicolour Dream,” its title borrowed from the recent underground event at Alexandra Palace. Amongst The Syn’s members were Peter Banks and Chris Squire, who went on to Yes. Regardless of all this, The Syn did not click Read more ...