Allow me to present it to you in all its splendour:

The genesis of Brainticket was a collective of Belgian, German and Swiss musicians, headed by multi-instrumentalist Joel – wait for it – Vandroogenbroeck, who pedalled a strain of experimental Krautrock, for the delectation of anybody willing to listen.

There, worth the wait, wasn’t it?

Brainticket’s second album Psychonaut, released in 1972 and recorded by a completely different line-up to that of their debut Cottonwoodhill (Vandroogenbroeck aside), eschewed the overt electronic experimentation of the first album for a more grounded (something of a misnomer perhaps) psychedelic approach. So what we have is an album of psychedelic progressive rock that looks back three or so years and borrows heavily from the sound that was prevalent then. No bad thing, at all.

The nationalities of the artists enlisted to record Psychonaut are unbeknownst to me (Vandroogenbroeck aside), nor do their names give anything away. There’s Jane Free on lead vocals and assorted percussion; Rolf Hug on vocals, guitars and Sam Gopal’s very own weapon of choice, the tabla; Martin Sacher on bass and flute; the wonderfully named Barney Palm on drums, percussion and “strange sounds”; Carole Muriel on spoken bits and “ooohh….ooohhs”; and plain old Peter(!), apparently the Witch Doctor providing good vibes!!!

Then, of course, there’s the Belgian himself, Vandroogenbroeck playing basically anything that came to hand and providing all the arrangements. Such is the life of a creative dynamo and multi-instrumentalist.

But nationality matters not, for all lyrics are written and sung in English, meaning even a committed xenoglossophobic (look it up) such as myself can enjoy. And believe me, there’s plenty here to enjoy… Well, six tracks anyway. But it’s not the quantity, my friend, but the quality that matters.

Psychonaut is resplendent in late sixties vibes and seventies prog sensibilities. It’s a quite often dark collection that though lumped in the Krautrock stable, doesn’t boast the overt electronic strangeness of that particular musical genre.

‘Radagacuca’, which begins at the beginning, is a dreamily ethereal number, laced with otherworldly flutes and sitars, which explodes into a cacophony of spectral cries and Hammond organ exuberance in its final minute. Like Arthur Brown gatecrashing the recording of Pentangle’s Basket of Light.

The standout, however, has to be the progressive sixties throwback ‘Like a Place in the Sun’, the chorus of which evokes the spirit of Grace Slick heralding in a new dawn from a makeshift stage somewhere in Golden Gate Park. Contrast this with the spoken word verses, which languish on a far darker level – somewhere between the acid trip turning bad and the heroin flooding the veins of the once beautiful flower children of Haight-Ashbury – and you have the uneasy alliance of light and shade that ‘Like a Place in the Sun’ represents.

One could go on, but time permits and all that, plus I don’t think my spellchecker could handle too many more uses of the name Vandroogenbroeck. Suffice to say this review has not only broken the mould with its opening gambit: that now legendary line, which will be talked about for years to come; but it has also broken all known records for the number of times Vandroogenbroeck has appeared on a single webpage.

As for Brainticket’s Psychonaut. Well, do you really need me to reiterate what a fine album this is? Is that wonderful album cover alone not enough to convince you? … No? Well, it is indeed a fine album, fit for the collection of anybody partial to the occasional helping of psych/prog wonder mix. One that comes with a liberal dusting of continental oddness for good measure.

Psychonaut by Brainticket is reissued on Reactive and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Brainticket – Psychonaut

Bone idle stereotyping aside, maybe the answer is three portly blokes banging out their very own brand of psychedelia and prog? If this be the case then we’re on the same wavelength. Welcome to the club.

Yes, Aphrodite’s Child features a pre-Chariots of Fire Vangelis, flexing his musically inventive muscles on keyboards and whatever else comes to hand, and Demis Roussos in the days before he took to wearing a glittery dress and became a global superstar. There’s also some bloke called Loukas Sideras on drums, but he must’ve drawn the short straw when it came to divvy up the post-Aphrodite success.

Their 1968 debut, End of the World, is a splendid piece of often eerie psychedelia, which hints at the progressive road down which they’d soon be travelling.

The title track immediately lets you know what they’re all about. Expect lightly accented (though completely English) vocals, delivered in a near-operatic warble by Roussos. Expect psychedelic effects to be heavily interwoven throughout, giving it an altogether eerier edge. And expect a very faint, but slightly disconcerting, feel of 1970′s Eurovision.

‘Mister Thomas’ is the Aphrodite’s Child take on the very English sub-genre of baroque Toytown-psych, and a fine one at that. If it wasn’t for the Eurovision accent it could easily pass for a lost recording from the likes of the Idle Race or Tomorrow.

‘Rain and Tears’, the band’s biggest success, becoming a hit in a host of countries across Europe, is a bit of a sappy ballad, but one that’s lifted by the Vangelis sonic arrangement, which excuses the insipid lyrics and hoists what could’ve been a painful listen out of the murky trough of mundanity.

And so it goes on. Some great, some good, and a wee bit of the not so good psychedelic rock, which taken as a whole is more than the doctor ordered. There’s a certain darkness entwined along the seam of End of the World, as demonstrated on songs such as the aforementioned title-track, ‘The Grass is no Green’ and the histrionically enhanced, near-terrifying ‘Day of the Fool’, which, incidentally, features the bizarre couplet “… she knows what’s up in my mind, she smells like a tree …”

Very much so. It’s more common than you think. But enough of that. From top to tail End of the World is good stuff. Slightly off-kilter, creepy psychedelic rock, with a hint of the continental thrown in for good measure.

The 2010 reissue of End of the World offers two bonus tracks, the single ‘Plastics Nevermore’ and its B-side ‘The Other People’.

End of the World by Aphrodite’s Child is reissued by Esoteric and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Aphrodite’s Child – End of the World

Like Samson, the hair maketh the man, bestowing its bearer with superhuman powers and the ability to extract the most vindictive of riffs from a Fender Strat, while simultaneously protecting them from the ravages of hard drugs, hard booze and even harder women.

It’s widely known that Edgar Broughton used his barnet to avert the destruction of California, when nuclear rockets were fired into the San Andreas Fault by a rogue businessman. That Mick Farren managed to stop the nefarious actions of an alien emperor, determined to obliterate the earth through a series of seemingly natural disasters. And who can forget certain members of The Pink Fairies foiling a fearsome foursome who’d dehydrated and kidnapped members of the United World Organisation’s Security Council?

Happy days. And you’ll be pleased to hear that the aforementioned left-leaning, heroes of hirsute hedonism are all represented on Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78, along with a roll call of similarly tuned hairy heathens. All of whom inhabited this enclave of the English counterculture back when it was acceptable for “the fuzz” to unleash their truncheons upon anybody merely suspected of growing their hair in public.

A glance at those assembled herein is enough to flood the sensory receptors with the pungent scent of hashish and the herbal aroma of gently smouldering sweat. Hawkwind, Quintessence, Arthur Brown, The Deviants, Stray, The Pretty Things and Peter Bardens are all present and correct, unleashing an arsenal of psychedelic and progressive rock upon those that mean to do the world harm. But there are also some fine excursions from lesser known acts.

‘Children of the Sun’ is a suitably energetic spaced out romp, courtesy of Misunderstood, as is ‘Man in the Moon’ by The Village. With the sun and the moon accommodated for what else is there?

Worthy of mention is The Action’s ‘A Saying for Today’, Skin Alley’s ‘Bad Words, Evil People’ and, former Pretty Things and Pink Fairies drummer, Twink’s ‘Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box’.

Add to this the acid-infused growl from the darkness that is Sam Gopal’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and Mighty Baby’s ‘House Without Windows’, and the fact you’re onto a good thing goes without saying. High Tide’s ‘Death Warmed Up’ and Robert Calvert’s ‘Ejection’ shakes hands on the deal without even having to mention what line of excellence the Broughtons, Hawkwind or Quintessence have to offer.

With 32 tracks of the psychedelic, the progressive and the proto-punk, Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78 is a compilation well worth paying on the door for. There may be one or two duds peppered along the way (for example, Tomorrow’s ‘Revolution’ will always be ruined for me by the embarrassing intro), but one can only assume that the artists in question had had the shears taken to their barnets prior to entering the studio, thus draining them of their far-out abilities. But for the vast majority of Cries From the Midnight Circus the hair has triumphed, ensuring this world remains a safer place to live. Thank you, collective hairies*, how can we ever repay you?

*Not to be confused with the Special Branch underground infiltrators, dubbed “the hairies”

Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78 is released as a two disc box-set by Sanctuary, and is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78

That can be the only the reason they saw fit to put out albums as though they were playing at a festival. And you could do worse than getting stoned yourself prior to listening to this. I didn’t and still enjoyed it. Imagine what it would be like having smoked half a kilo of Dutchman’s fancy, or even tripping on an acid-soaked Yellow Pages.

Heavy, man. REAL heavy.

Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology is a two disc affair, collecting together the lion’s share of these fabulous furry freak brothers’ Decca output, recorded between 1969 and 1971. I say lion’s share as there’s no inclusion of the tracks from debut album Clark-Hutchinson, which Decca refused to release on the grounds that the track ‘Make You’ was obscene. But that’s a very different sounding album and not really missed when you tot up what we’ve got here.

1969′s A=MH² – Check. 1970′s Retribution – Check. 1971′s Gestalt – Check. It’s all here, all present and correct and in the appropriate order.

Disc 1 takes the five tracks from A=MH² and also slips in the first two tracks from Retribution at the end, presumably for purposes of space.

Extensive instrumental workouts are the order of the day in the first instance, solely delivered by the two named players, Andy Clark and Mick Hutchinson. They were multi-instrumentalists and veterans of the underground scene, having played with, among others, psychedelic tabla abuser, Sam Gopal.

The opening track, the ten minute ‘Improvisation on a Modal Scale’, features a horrendously catchy hook and lays the foundations for what’s to come, in its implementation of all manner of instrumentation and heavy misuse of a guitar. Only the Eastern-influenced ‘Improvisation on an Indian Scale’ can match it for intensity, hitting the 13 minute mark and leaving you to wonder who snuffed out the joss-sticks.

For Retribution, here spread over the two discs, they kept to the five song format but hauled in a band to help out along the way. When you’re bassist’s name is Amazing Steven Amazing, you know things are going to be good. This time around they also included lyrics, which are howled in a manner that suggests somebody was stood on vocalist Andy Clark’s foot.

But this is music designed to be belted from a stage in the general direction of an audience made up of wild hair and joints the size of a Danvers carrot. ‘Free to be Stoned’ backs this assertion up and, despite the jazzy glitch of ‘After Hours’, things continue in pretty much the same vein, finishing with the Arthur Brown-esque ‘Death, the Lover’, which pummels the listener into a lysergic submission with its vocal refrain repeated over in a manner guaranteed to leave small children disturbed for the next twenty years of their lives.

Gestalt, Clark-Hutchinson’s final album is a less in your face offering (though ‘Poison’ begs to differ), but one that remains tuned to the late sixties/early seventies festival crowd. The songs are shorter but they continue the acid rock, freak out feel with the definite scent of something a little stronger than herbal tea leaking from the speakers throughout.

As said somewhere at the start of this review, what seems like a short lifetime ago, you don’t need to be hairy, a hippy, or sat in a field smoking the contents of granny’s window box to enjoy Free to be Stoned. I did say that, didn’t I?

Of course, if you’re any of the above, it may well enhance your enjoyment.

If you’re a connoisseur of the Great British underground, a place inhabited by a sterling assortment of hairies such as Arthur Brown, the Edgar Broughton Band, Mighty Baby, Quintessence, Sam Gopal and the ubiquitous Hawkwind, then this will be right up your street. Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology gets the seal of approval and is another strong release from the label that’s putting all others to shame with its prog and psychedelic reisssues, the mighty Esoteric Recordings.

Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology by Clark-Hutchinson is a two disc set, available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Clark-Hutchinson – Free to be Stoned

Sam Gopal’s Escalator, that’s what you get.

I didn’t say it was funny. I don’t think I actually said it was a joke. And neither is this album. Sam Gopal’s Escalator is serious stuff. Serious, acid-induced psychedelic rock, chiselled from a slab of blackest granite.

Travelling on a subsonic undercurrent, 1969′s Escalator menaces and petrifies in turn, and the very presence of future Hawkwind and Motorhead bassist Lemmy, should be enough to ward off the faint of heart. Probably for the best as I fear they wouldn’t survive the trip.

Firstly though, a brief history lesson. Please pay attention there at the back; I may be asking questions at the end.

Tabla playing Sam Gopal came to Britain in 1962 to study music. In 1967 he fell in with the hairiest of hippy-types circulating around the enormously hairy Ladbroke Grove underground scene and launched the Sam Gopal Dream, featuring amidst its fold the eponymous members of Clark-Hutchinson. A year later the band had changed, Lemmy had joined and they were simply called Sam Gopal. Lesson endeth.

Lemmy, who provided vocals as well as playing lead and rhythm guitar, claims to have written all the songs on Escalator in one night, whilst spannered on speed. Anybody who cares to dispute this is welcome to take it up with the man himself, though with the reputation that precedes him, you could well crawl away sporting his bass guitar as a head ornament.

All I can say on the matter is if Methedrine be the drug of creativity, then toot on. You may have sore gums in the morning, but you might also have something as good as this. Escalator is dark, heavy psych, shot through with a mean streak and sense of forboding that’s as far from peace, love and bloody flowers as one can get without actually killing anybody.

Speaking of which, the shot emblazoned proudly across Escalator’s cover depicts a band with physical harm on their minds, and woe betide whoever it was they’d caught looking at their pints.

Is it any good though? You might as well ask if the chance of Aston Villa bringing home any silverware next season is zero. Of course it is. Keep believing.

Yes, Sam Gopal’s Escalator is a crackling, fuzzed out journey through the murkier waters of British psychedelic rock, underpinned by the menacing snarl of a perpetually throbbing bass, courtesy of one Phil Duke. I could pick out individual tracks, such as the bowel-loosening ‘Cold Embrace’ or the trippily mellow ‘Yesterlove’, but that would be pointless. It’s all good stuff! There’s even room for an unsettling cover of Donovan’s ‘Season of the Witch’, which is no bad thing.

Sam Gopal’s percussion antics, mainly on the aforementioned tabla (a type of Indian drum), add the almost required air of late sixties Eastern promise, occasionally tempering the more sinister elements throughout.

The 2010 reissue of Sam Gopal’s Escalator features two bonus tracks, the single and heroin metaphor ‘Horse’ and its B-side ‘Back Door Man’.

And so to end: how hairy was the Ladbroke Grove underground scene? Hope you were paying attention. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Escalator by Sam Gopal is reissued on Esoteric and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Sam Gopal – Escalator

The Emperor’s new clothes are revealed and what is the mighty Floyd’s last album (at least as far as listenability goes) is shown up for what it is. Nevertheless, would you take the word of an unproven critic, yet time and again proven eejut, on this? Of course not. To do so would be foolish. So acquire a copy of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and experience the big fuss about nothing for yourself. Draw your own conclusions. On a pomposity scale it’s up there with Yes’s Tales From Topographical Oceans, yet lacks the charm of ELP’s ‘Karn Evil 9′.

The more astute of you may have reached this far, in what will inevitably be another piss-poor excuse for a review, and realised that The Wall is not the Pink Floyd album referenced at the head of the page. In fact, thus far The Wall mentions = six; Piper at the Gates of Dawn mentions = two. That is, of course, counting those mentions when totting up the mentions. Nevertheless, 3:1 is a pretty poor ratio against.

Anybody with a modicum of internet nous will point out that none of the above makes for good web copy. Four paragraphs in and absolutely nothing on the album you’re reviewing, aside from two fleeting mentions of its title. Everyone knows that nobody reads anything anymore, only scanning web pages for the info they want. The majority will already be looking elsewhere. So take me to one side and shoot me in the face, I’ll consider it an education.

All that aside, if you listen to Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn and The Wall and none of what came in between, it’s hard to comprehend both are by what was essentially the same band, give or take a member or two. All within the timeframe of 12 years.

Which brings us to the conclusion (for want of a better word) that Piper at the Gates of Dawn is well and truly Syd Barrett’s album. The then lead guitarist and vocalist wrote the lion’s share of the songs on this 1967 debut, and as such it crackles with a psychedelic energy that is lacking from subsequent releases (A Saucerful of Secrets aside). There is also the childlike innocence of splintered genius evident throughout; on ‘Matilda Mother’, ‘Lucifer Sam’ and ‘The Scarecrow’, to name but three, tempered with the hardcore acid explosion of undeniably the album standout ‘Interstellar Overdrive’.

The world probably doesn’t need another review of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and therefore I won’t bless it with one.

All that needs saying is if you’ve not already got it, go out and buy it. It’s bob on!

Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd is available from Amazon.co.uk

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Pink Floyd – Piper at the Gates of Dawn

However, if the question were to pick my favourite psychedelic band named after a month of the year, then without a doubt July would be victorious.

July were one of the many British Psych bands that came, saw, yet failed to conquer and fizzled out with less than a year notched up on their collective belts. In this short time they did manage to put out one album, its rarity ensuring original pressings have gone on to attain near-Grail status amongst psych collectors.

The self-titled July was released in 1968, and really is a must-hear for anybody with a passing interest in psychedelic obscurities.

Although heavily influenced by the Californian psych sound, July manage to retain the quirkiness associated more so with the British acid-rock scene, throughout. This is ably demonstrated on the infectiously jaunty ‘Jolly Mary’, which successfully straddles the light-hearted wing of both camps, coming across Beatles-esque, Toytown, and West Coast, all in one eclectic nautical package.

Openers ‘My Clown’ and ‘Dandelion Seeds’ are eerily trippy, while elsewhere ‘Move on Sweet Flower’ is distinctly reminiscent of Gandalf. ‘Friendly Man’ alludes to some decidedly dark subject matter, although that could just be me misreading it, ‘The Way’ covers the eastern-mysticism angle with its energetic sitar-infusion, and ‘Crying is for Writers’ benefits from a scorching psychedelic guitar blitzkrieg slap bang in the middle.

July’s time on the music scene may have been but a slight ripple on an otherwise vast ocean of sound – though the constituent members would go on to enjoy success in various areas of the music industry – but the psychedelic gem they left behind deserves the status it enjoys today as one of the most sought after rarities of the acid era.

July is reissued on Rev-Ola and available to download at Amazon.co.uk

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July – a psychedelic obscurity

That would be the June 2010 issue. The one with a photo of Keith Richards at the height of his powers on the cover.

Along with an extensive feature on the making of The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (Not, as most would have you believe, their best album ever), there’s also a three and a half page article on Zoot Money’s psychedelic troupe, Dantalian’s Chariot, written by, of all people, yours truly.

Yes, the short-lived acid-rock/pop quartet and underground regulars come in for the HFoS treatment, courtesy of myself, with a little help from Zoot and Dantalian’s drummer Colin Allen, who both kindly agreed to be interviewed for the feature.

So if that’s your bag, make sure you get a copy.

Hereby ends today’s lesson in shameless self-promotion.

Record Collector website

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Dantalian’s Chariot Article in Record Collector

Despite the ridicule fired in his direction back then and in the intervening years, Donovan was nonetheless responsible for some of the gentler and more memorable songs of the psychedelic era. His blend of acid-folk flavoured psychedelic pop/rock first found an outlet on his third album release, 1966′s Sunshine Superman.

Originally denied a release in the UK due to contractual disputes, Sunshine Superman finally saw the light of day over here in 1967, although with an amended track-listing that threw in some songs from the follow-up, Mellow Yellow, and omitted others. The 2005 EMI reissue reinstates the original line-up, as well as a further 6 bonus tracks.

Sunshine Superman is a fairytale of an album, dripping in paisley-hued imagery, mystical wordplay, far off, wistful melodies and a healthy dose of naivety. Despite the dynamic kick-off, with the familiar title track, things soon settle into a mellower groove with the seven minute enchantment that is ‘Legend of a Girl Child Linda’, its lilting orchestral arrangement by John Cameron (responsible for the score to cult 70s Brit biker-horror, Psychomania).

From then on, Sunshine Superman throws out some splendidly haunting acoustic affairs in ‘Three Kingfishers’, ‘Ferris Wheel’ and the Arthurian ‘Guineviere’, incorporating sitar and an array of percussion instruments to convey the feeling of otherworld, hallucinatory bliss.

Cranking things up again into full electrical territory is ‘Season of the Witch’, a rare excursion into the realms of the menacing, which prophesised Donovan’s soon-to-be status of being the first high-profile British pop star to be arrested for marijuana possession. The song would go on to be covered by Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger, Sam Gopal and Vanilla Fudge among others.

Closing with the eerie, celesta and harpsichord-laden ‘Celeste’, Sunshine Superman is, with the odd notable exception, a beguiling and ethereal album, its head lodged firmly in the clouds, which glides effortlessly into the consciousness like a sea breeze drifting through a coastal village, somewhere in 1966.

The seven bonus tracks are merely cosmetic and neither add to, nor take anything away from Donovan’s first complete foray into the realms of psychedelia.

Sunshine Superman is reissued by EMI and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Donovan – Sunshine Superman

For those that don’t already know, Fruits de Mer Records, to quote co-founder Andy Bracken from our recent interview with the label, “release limited edition vinyl records of songs originating in the late 1960s/early 1970s, in a psych, kraut, folk, prog vein, covered and reinterpreted by contemporary artists.”

A Phase We’re Going Through is their first foray into the album market and hopefully, on this evidence anyway, it won’t be the last.

Described in the press tackle as “… an album of songs that were drenched in phasing when first recorded, or have been now, or would if only we and the bands had been paying proper attention …” A Phase We’re Going Through lives up to its remit with 11 trippy tracks plucked from the ether of the late sixties and given a thoroughly phased seeing to by an assortment of bands still living the psychedelic dream.

An eclectic mix of originals has been chosen for the Fruits de Mer cover treatment, including The Who’s ‘In the City’, July’s eerie ‘My Clown’ and Billy Nicholls’ spirited ‘London Social Degree‘. These are given rousing reinterpretations by Permanent Clear Light, The Swims and Zombies of the Stratosphere respectively. The Swims’ version of ‘My Clown’ is particularly atmospheric, nicely harking back to the July forerunner that appeared on their sole and ultra-rare eponymously titled 1968 album.

The Monkees, Jimi Hendrix, Caleb Quaye and The Bee Gees also come in for some royal treatment with The Luck of Eden Hall covering ‘Love is Only Sleeping’, Cranium Pie (who, incidentally, did a sterling version of Dantalian’s Chariot’s ‘Madman Running Through the Fields’ back on FdM Vol. 7) doing a spectral ‘Little Wing’, The Campbell Stokes Sunshine Recorder tackling ‘Baby, Your Phrasing is Bad’ and Sidewalk Society giving their take on The Brothers Gibb’s ‘Red Chair, Fade Away’.

All good stuff, which brings us seamlessly to the highlight of A Phase We’re Going Through, The Chemistry Set’s ‘Silver Birch’.

I have to admit I’m unfamiliar with the original, a tale of an abandoned bride by none other than Del Shannon, taken from his brief voyage into the acid-spiked waters of psych, 1968′s The Further Adventures of Charles Westover. The Chemistry Set ensures it remains a haunting and trippy affair, swathed in vocal effects and atmospheric, non-intrusive phasing. It brings to mind The Bobcats’ meditative ‘Lord John’ and has inspired me to seek out a copy of the … Charles Westover album, so I can hear the original.

Elsewhere, and as stated the other week, the Geese version of Pink Floyd’s ‘Point Me at the Sky‘ is a space-rock, acid-frazzled corker, and the only minor quibble I have regarding A Phase We’re Going Through is that, perhaps, The Marshmallow Staircase’s version of Jefferson Airplane’s ‘Plastic Fantastic Lover’ is a little too phased, rendering it a touch on the muggy side for these ears. But that’s personal choice and doesn’t hamper the enjoyment of an otherwise excellent release.

With A Phase We’re Going Through being this good, hopefully the wait for Vol.2 won’t be a long one.

A Phase We’re Going Through will be released in June 2010 on limited edition, coloured 12″ vinyl. It can be pre-ordered through the Fruits de Mer website, but a quick hand will be needed, as these releases have a habit of selling out fast.

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A Phase We’re Going Through – Various Artists (Fruits de Mer Vol. 11)

HFoS – You only release the singles on limited edition, coloured vinyl (which, incidentally, look good enough to eat). What made you choose this particular format over, say, a compilation CD?

AB – Now, now, don’t get me started. I’m not a fan of CDs, and downloads don’t actually exist.

Thanks for liking our vinyl – that’s grand. We just choose colour combinations that feel right at the time. You never really know what they’re going to look like till they arrive at the door.

7” vinyl is what us “over 35s” grew up with, so I suppose there’s a certain nostalgic affection there from our viewpoint. But aurally and aesthetically, there’s no comparison between a CD and a vinyl record.

Essentially, though, we’re releasing music in a format that we like to buy in.

HFoS – All the releases have gone on to sell out. Who makes up the Fruits de Mer audience?

AB – Not quite all! We still have a few copies of a couple of releases left. Pop over to www.fruitsdemerrecords.com for all the skinny on those and future releases. And I urge people to join the mailing list (send your email address to info@fruitsdemerrecords.com). I see the day coming where we’ll be a mailing list only label.

Geographically, we’re selling approximately 45% in mainland Europe, 45% in the UK, and 10% elsewhere. The States is the toughest place to crack. Don’t get me wrong, we have a handful of really loyal followers there – good people – but it’s tiny – less than 3% of sales. The vinyl culture isn’t the same in the USA as Europe, and there’s that attitude of “wanting to be associated with success,” which is hard to overcome.

Demographically, the majority of our customers are just like me and Keith. Male, 35+, music obsessive’s, long-standing record collectors etc. There is a healthy smattering of females there, though, and younger people who are so hungry for new music and discovering sounds from the past – that’s smart, gives me a real buzz.

HFoS – Although the limited edition status, like a Wembley cup final, make the releases that little bit more special, will there come a time when Fruits de Mer Records are putting out full production runs? The fact they always sell out so quickly suggests there might be a demand for it.

AB – To be frank, I simply don’t want it to get too big. It’s already a lot of work, and I have no desire to deal with distribution companies and the like. They’re all going out of business, anyway.

The best thing about our label(s) is the interaction we get with our customers and the people, like yourself, who support us in the media. That makes it all worthwhile. Thank you for your support, Nick.

The biggest thrill, for me, is putting out a new record, announcing its availability to our mailing list, and getting 100 messages in 24 hours from people I’ve never met, but feel like I know. I know that if we expand, that side of things will be lost, because we’ll be spending all our time posting stuff out and dealing with the administrative side of things. Small is beautiful, as I keep saying to Keith in a re-assuring tone…

HFoS – Vibravoid’s excellent Pink Floyd tribute EP, What Colour is Pink? was released this month (April). Is it true that, despite hitting volume 10, you’ve yet to make any money on the Fruits de Mer venture?

AB – The money’s an irrelevance – as long as we just about break-even, we’ll carry on. As long as people want what we do, we’ll carry on. As long as we find interesting bands to cover tracks, we’ll carry on.

HFoS – What then keeps you doing what you do?

AB – It’s terribly clichéd, but we really do “do it for the love of it.” I’m the luckiest bloke in the world. I run a label with my best mate, Keith, my wife fully supports what I do, I have a customer base second to none, some great contacts in the media, I get to deal with some wonderfully talented musicians, who also happen to be smashing people, and they all appreciate what we do.

If more people did what they’ve always dreamed of doing, instead of buying in to all the societal and media sponsored bollocks, the world would be a much better place. We even did a free cassette to our regulars at Christmas – 12 tracks donated by all the bands we’d worked with in 2009 (Alison O’Donnell gave us a Flibbertigibbet track, for example). We just gave them away as a “thank you” to people. Commercial suicide, but it’s that kind of ‘fuck you’ attitude to the perceived rules. What happened to that, eh?

HFoS – There’s a 12″ LP out in June, titled A Phase We’re Going Through (Cover artwork looks great BTW). Who’ll feature on this and what songs will be covered/reinterpreted?

AB – Indeed there is! It’s a cracker, as well, 11 tracks that were, could have, or should have been ‘phased’ back in the 60s. The track listing for that pearler shall be:

(original artist in brackets)

The Campbell Stokes Sunshine Recorder – ‘Baby, Your Phrasing is Bad’, (Caleb)

The Chemistry Set – ‘Silver Birch’, (Del Shannon)

Rob Clarke and the Wooltones – ‘Mind of a Child’, (Clouds)

Cranium Pie – ‘Little Wing’, (Jimi Hendrix)

Geese – ‘Point Me At The Sky’, (Pink Floyd)

The Luck of Eden Hall – ‘Love is Only Sleeping’, (The Monkees)

The Marshmallow Staircase – ‘Plastic Fantastic Lover’, (Jefferson Airplane)

Permanent Clear Light – ‘In the City’, (The Who)

Sidewalk Society – ‘Red Chair, Fade Away’, (The Bee Gees)

The Swims – ‘My Clown’, (July)

Zombies of the Stratosphere – ‘London Social Degree’, (Billy Nicholls)

And the artwork was done by Brian Langan of The Swims from a brief I gave him. He’s a smart, talented artist and he grasped exactly what I wanted to achieve. There are references to all the tracks in this psychedelic melee – brilliant.

HFoS – Is there a temptation to put the album out on CD and go down the Amazon/iTunes route of distribution?

AB – Nope. I’d simply get no pleasure from “selling” someone a download, and very little from a CD. I’ve done a couple of CDs and I wish I hadn’t bothered. We sell 3 times more vinyl than CDs when both are offered. Why would anyone shell out for a CD, when they can just wait a while and get a free download via torrent, or something?

And I have no problem with people downloading our stuff illegally. Ultimately, these people aren’t music fans. My theory is: anyone looking for an illegal download is never going to buy a physical product, so just let them have it and maybe they will tell someone who has a soul…

HFoS – What’s does the future hold for Fruits de Mer Records (deserved world domination aside, of course)?

AB – Ha! Thank you. Nah, as I’ve probably made clear by now, I’ll always keep it at a level that is manageable and allows us to interact with the punters. We’ll keep going, in a similar vein, but perhaps pushing the boundaries of the sphere we operate in a little. Got to stay fresh, you know? And we have our next six or seven releases planned and at various stages of coming together.

Besides, at the moment it’s difficult to expand. There aren’t the media outlets, in printed form or radio, to take it much further. I don’t think the music business has ever been so closed – all that bollocks about the internet levelling the playing field, eh?

There are signs of encouragement, though. MOJO recently reviewed the Us & Them release, and Classic Rock has picked up on the upcoming Vibravoid EP. Most encouraging is that Ian Harrison at MOJO came to us and asked for a review copy. I have absolute respect for the guy for that.

HFoS – It would be unfair to ask which release so far has been your favourite, so tell us some of your favourite psychedelic acts/tracks from the multihued mists of time.

AB – Too hard, and it changes on a daily basis. I mean, I’m sat here listening to Midlake’s The Courage of Others, having just listened to CAN’s Delay 1968, and prior to that I had Traffic’s Mr Fantasy on the deck.

One thing I know: there are only four artists I buy everything by. Don’t need to hear it – just hearing about it is enough. They are Eddie Cochran, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake and The Fall. Between those four, just about every other song ever recorded can find some common ground, anyway.

HFoS – Finally, if you could have any artist or band in the world – dead or alive – from any period of time, to do a Fruits de Mer single/EP, who would it be and what tracks would feature?

AB – Good question. For me, Eddie Cochran. No hesitation. Keith would go for…hmmm, let me see: Stevie Marriott squaring off with Daltrey, with a Moon driven Who mentalling up a Pretty Things track. That’d be my guess. Shit – that’d be good, wouldn’t it?

And on that note, we leave Andy and ourselves to ponder just how good a showdown like that might really sound.

HFoS wishes to thank both Andy and Keith for taking the time to answer our questions and helping to set up the interview. We wish them and Fruits de Mer Records the best for the future and hope that they keep on doing what they’re doing.

You can find out more about Fruits de Mer and also order these wondrous nuggets of cylindrical ethene derivatives from the Fruits de Mer Records website.

Part 1 of Fruits de Mer Records interview

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Psychedelic Spotlight : Fruits de Mer Records Interview (Part 2)

Liberally laced with Hammond organ and scorching guitar abuse, Revelation is a throbbing blend of West-Coast style acid rock and crunching Ladbroke Grove freakouts, channelled through the rolling valleys of the Brecon Beacons and delivered courtesy of Wales’ finest.

‘And In the Beginning…..’ applies the jump leads to the still beating heart of previous incarnation The Bystanders (responsible for psych classic ‘Cave of Clear Light’) with its biblical flavoured dawning of Man, giving way to a triumvirate of deep-fried psychedelic tripping in ‘Sudden Life’, ‘Empty Room’ and the largely instrumental ‘Puella! Puella! (Woman! Woman!)’.

‘Love’ puts the brakes on proceedings, dare I say, sounding a little out of place amidst the scorching riffs and raucous happenings elsewhere, before the simulated female orgasm and all round seediness of ‘Erotica’ kicks in, a song that, when issued as a single in 1969, was roundly banned throughout the UK.

With the bouncy boogie-woogie piano of ‘Blind Man’ taking us into the final straight, it’s a melting pot of acid-chewing soundscapes and apocalyptic effects that lead up to ‘The Future Hides its Face’, an alternative reprise of the opening track.

A concept album of sorts, telling the story of Man’s journey through life or some such, Revelation is a joy to behold. Hardcore, unforgiving psychedelic rock, char-grilled on a bed of spaced-out lyrics and ideas, this is possibly Man’s tightest offering, remaining more focused than their later (albeit, still great) progressive/acid rock outings.

The Esoteric reissue boasts four bonus tracks, including all the single mixes released from the original album and a previously unreleased instrumental of ‘Erotica’.

The 2009 reissue of Revelation by Man is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Man – Revelation

Our love of the label is well documented already, so as part of the occasional Psychedelic Spotlight series, Head Full of Snow imposed itself on one half of the team, Andy Bracken, to find out what makes them tick.

HFoS – For those that don’t already know, can you tell us what Fruits de Mer Records do and what makes you different from the rest?

Andy Bracken – We release limited edition vinyl records of songs originating in the late 1960s/early 1970s, in a psych, kraut, folk, prog vein, covered and reinterpreted by contemporary artists… Sounds quite complex when you write it down like that.

What makes us different from the rest is that we don’t really have a clue what we’re doing, but do it anyway. With smiles on our faces. And it works!

HFoS – Where did the idea for Fruits de Mer come from?

AB – It was mine, all mine! Kind of. I’d been running a label (Bracken Records) for a few years, and had known partner (that’s label partner) Keith for many years. We’d sit in pubs and muse the notion of starting a label together, but wanted an angle rather than simply setting up another indie imprint.

Keith wanted to re-release some of our favourite more obscure or under-appreciated tracks from 1966-1973 on 7” vinyl, but I was never too keen on that. As it happened, nor was EMI, so I suggested we get a contemporary band to cover the tracks we’d already acquired a licence for.

I pulled in a band I knew, they nailed the tracks, Keith liked them, we put it out, it sold out, and a monster was born…

HFoS – And the name? What’s the relevance of fish?

AB – Ha! Keith’s partner (that’s sexual partner), Liz, came up with it, as it’s her favourite meal. It seemed right, in an odd way, as we’re dredging up old gems and serving them up in a fresh and appetising way. That’s good – I may use that on the PR…

HFoS – How do you go about choosing which bands to work with?

AB – Initially, there has to be something we like in their sound, but we’re also always listening for potential in terms of re-interpreting. I think to successfully pull off an FdM release, the artist has to have a strong identity and a quite individual sound. The third element is then hearing what they could cover and how they could make it different or (hopefully) better.

HFoS – And who chooses which songs to cover, you or the bands?

AB – It really is a collaborative thing. We brainstorm with the band, and perhaps 20-30 tracks may be thrown into the mix before we settle on a few. We also have a bit of a say in how it’s done, as we don’t have any interest in simply putting out reverential covers. The new version has to “bring something to the party.” The whole thing is about finding the right dynamic – the right song, covered by the right band in the right way.

HFoS – Mark Fry stitched together his own fragmented, acid-folk lullaby ‘Dreaming with Alice’, bucking the trend of current band covering somebody else’s classic. How did this particular collaboration come about?

AB – I hooked up with Mark via MySpace, of all things. We exchanged emails and he and his wife came and stayed with me for a few days. The Frys are two of the loveliest people I’ve met in recent years. I suggested Mark cover some tracks for us and, after initial reticence, he agreed. There was a rumour going around for years that Mark Fry was long-departed, so it was nice to see he wasn’t. At least I don’t think he was – he ate well enough…

HFoS – Who had the idea of recording ‘Dreaming with Alice’ as a single entity? (On the original 1972 album of the same name, the track is broken up into short verses and sprinkled across its duration)

AB – Erm, that was me again (I’m feeling a bit boastful now). Mark and Keith ‘got it’ as soon as I suggested it. Mark did tell me that he wished he’d thought of it.

HFoS – Are there any plans in the pipeline to collaborate with other original artists on their own material?

AB – No, not at this juncture, but you never know. We’ve had contact with a few people from “back in the day”, so…

HFoS – Has there been feedback from any of the original artists?

AB – Yeah, we had a bit from Van Der Graaf Generator and Rod Argent (The Zombies), but those were initiated by us. I doubt any of the original artists are even aware of us, to be honest. At the end of the day, we’re hardly all over NME and ToTP, or whatever. Is Top of The Pops still going? I have no idea.

And on that note we appear to have run out of room, so we’ll leave Andy and ourselves pondering the current status of Top of The Pops until next week, when we may, or may not, discover the answer.

Make sure you tune in then for part 2 of our interview with Fruits de Mer Records’ Andy Bracken.

Fruits de Mer Records website

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Psychedelic Spotlight : Fruits de Mer Records Interview (Part 1)

A Pink Floyd rarity of sorts, ‘Point Me At the Sky’ was the band’s fifth UK single, released in December 1968. A poor showing in the charts meant Pink Floyd didn’t release another UK single until 1979′s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’, by which time their sound had changed somewhat considerably.

Written by Roger Waters and David Gilmour, ‘Point Me At the Sky’ places us firmly in post-Barrett territory, though the futuristic lyrics shimmering effortlessly across the heavy psych hark back to the Madcap’s style.

I’ve heard the Geese cover on A Phase We’re Going Through and its a corker. However, until the June release here’s the original. Top stuff!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lao8pnUI0Rc

Fruits de Mer Records Interview -- Part 1

Fruits de Mer Records Interview -- Part 2

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Pink Floyd -- Point Me At the Sky

The self-titled Caravan, although unmistakeably Hastings, Couglan and the Sinclairs in sound, is much more of a psychedelic album, in tune with the times, than their later traditionally progressive meanderings.

Stirring psych and prog into one progressive melting pot, Caravan benefits from a duffer-free track list of eight songs, none of which you’d be ashamed to take home to meet your mom. Notably free of the double entendre titles that would become a Caravan fixture, the likes of ‘Policeman’, ‘Cecil Rons’ and ‘Grandma’s Lawn’, still manage to keep their lyrical tongues propped comfortably within the cheek.

David Sinclair’s atmospheric organ trickery blends perfectly with Pye Hastings’ often ethereal (some might say wispy) vocals, a marriage consummated on easily the finest that Caravan’s debut has to offer, the hypnotic psychedelic folk majesty of ‘Ride‘, featured here t’other week.

For the most part, Caravan keeps things short, with the majority of the eight tracks just tipping over the four minute mark. The exception to this is the epic ‘Where but for Caravan Would I?’, co-written by ex-Wilde Flowers bandmate and brother to Soft Machine bassist Hugh, Brian Hopper.

‘Where but for Caravan Would I?’ clocks in at a full-fat nine minutes, laying the foundations for the more prolonged Caravan excursions that would feature on their 1970 follow-up If I Could Do it All Over Again, I’d Do it All Over You and beyond. It’s a rousing trip into the arena of complex, organ-led progressive soundmaking, providing an ideal closer to Caravan’s debut with its suggestion of what was to come.

Overall, Caravan provides an excellent listen and a more than welcome jump-off point from which to delve deeper into the band’s backcatalog, albeit one that only hints at the future Caravan sound.

Caravan is reissued by Decca Records and is available from Amazon.co.uk

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Caravan Debut Album

Released in 1967, Ptooff! bursts from the Ladbroke Grove underground scene – home to, among others, the Edgar Broughton Band and Hawkwind – sounding like a wire brush antithesis to the dancing pixies and free love fare peddled in other quarters and so beloved of the petal-chewing hippy contingent.

Sporting a punk attitude ten years prior to that particular scene hitting the mainstream, Ptooff! only partially demonstrates the raw aggression that made the band such an unpalatable prospect to the flower children espousing the ethics of peace and love. It mixes psychedelia, American blues influences and even some Tyrannosaurus Rex-style hippy folk into one uneven pot that’s both exhilarating and frustrating in turns.

Following a brief spoken intro the album kicks off with the sexually charged, slightly sinister ‘I’m Coming Home’, which of the eight tracks is probably the most complete, as it descends into a heavily fuzzed maelstrom of psychedelic white-noise. From then on things get patchy.

‘Child of the Sky’ is the aforementioned hippy folk track, a pleasant enough psychedelic excursion whose leftfield take on traditional new age feyness makes for a splendid juxtaposition of lyrics and melody, even if I’ve no idea what it is he’s going on about. Unfortunately the same can’t be said of ‘Charlie’, a blues track that’s just plain dull, and though ‘Nothing Man’ is brimming in musical ideas, it does all sound rather like a Situationist-inspired performing arts project put on by a gaggle of students in the last throes of rebellion before their trust funds mature.

‘Garbage’ ventures into the arena of rhythm & blues that the likes of The Rolling Stones sold back to the US, with psychedelic extremes injected for good measure, before the instrumental ‘Bun’ takes us into the rip-snorting closer, ‘Deviation Street’ – a social nightmare played out against a menacing assault upon the senses of distorted guitar, finger-bleeding bass and skull-splitting drums. Absolutely stark raving mad.

Which provides a fitting epitaph for this review. The Deviants hawked a brand of disaffection, anti-authoritarianism and sedition-fuelled rhetoric while all around them were kissing chrysanthemums. Ptooff! isn’t always successful in conveying this, and often sounds as though the foot has been purposely left off of the pedal, making for quite the bumpy road. Still, as a barbed respite from the more whimsical excesses of psychedelic rock and pop, it’s definitely worth a listen.

Ptooff! by The Deviants is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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The Deviants – Ptooff!

This currently unsigned act have been plying their trade in technicolour noisemaking since early 2008, and their four-track EP, released last year through digital download, is a minor tour-de-force that harks back to the heavier psych/space rock bands of the late 1960s.

If Hawkwind had enlisted the services of Jim Morrison at any time during their 500+ years on the planet, the result might’ve sounded a little like Spiral 25′s E.P. But less of the comparisons, this is here and now and if this is anything to go by, Spiral 25 is delivering the goods on the current UK psychedelic scene.

The EP kicks off with ‘Let the Light Shine On’, the title being a possible a nod to Pink Floyd’s ‘Let There be More Light’, which is a mind-shattering meld of grinding guitars and bass, interspersed by the sonic squeals of Dolphins surfing the Milky Way. A near impenetrable fug of scorching sound is summoned from the same deep, dark recess the Edgar Broughton Band’s Wasa Wasa dwells in, and it doesn’t let up for the remaining three tracks.

Following the near darkness that is ‘Let the Light Shine On’, we’re once again rocketed into the blackest depths of space for ‘Signals’, a pulsating bassline being our guide through the furthest reaches of the cosmos that brings to mind Pink Floyd’s earliest interstellar excursions. And there’s no ray of light for the remaining two tracks, ‘Shadows In Line’ and ‘Today’s Future (Tomorrow’s Past)’, the latter a relentless industrial grind punctuated by a rasping harmonica distress call.

Spiral 25′s E.P. is a confident and thoroughly accomplished slice of darkest psychedelic space rock, heavy on distortion and fuzzed-out guitars and bass. The fact this band remain unsigned is something that needs remedying sooner, as opposed to later.

An acoustic live EP, a second record towards the end of the summer, and a collaboration with Fruits de Mer Records are all on the cards for Spiral 25 in 2010. HFoS hope to have an interview with the band up in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile you can get a hold of Spiral 25′s debut EP via various sources by going here.

Spiral 25 website

Spiral 25 MySpace page

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Spiral 25 – E.P.

Following on from Us & Them’s splendid ‘Julia Dream’ reworking for the previous Fruits de Mer release, the record label that shouldn’t work but bloody well does, have tapped the Pink Floyd psychedelic vein once more to bring us mere mortals  the deity-like splendour that is Vibravoid’s What Colour is Pink? EP.

Vibravoid, the German psychedelic rock outfit, are no strangers to the Fruits de Mer experience, having already appeared on the Krautrock Sensation EP. This time around the likes of Can and Kraftwerk are replaced solely by acid rock’s highest profile exponents, Pink Floyd.

Lifting three tracks from the Floyd’s second album, 1968′s excellent A Saucerful of Secrets, Vibravoid let rip with a blistering rendition of space-rock opus ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’, followed by fellow interstellar explorations ‘Let There Be More Light’ and ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’.

Choosing to cover anything from Pink Floyd’s early days is always going to leave a band open to fierce criticism from the handful of Barrett obsessives holed up on painfully obscure and insanely miopic forums the length and breadth of the interwebs. Even though none of the three tracks appearing on What Colour is Pink? featured lead vocals or stemmed from the pen of the Madcap himself, one can imagine virtual knives already being sharpened, ready to cut these Teutonic upstarts down to size for having the temerity to tackle the mighty Floyd.

No such reckless knifeplay here though. Vibravoid’s take on both ‘Set the Controls…’ and ‘Let There Be More Light’, are spot on interpretations of the originals, never straying far beyond the radar of the source material, but injecting enough nuances to ensure they remain relevant and interesting. ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ manages to condense the original’s 12 minutes of interplanetary meandering into just three and a half. No easy feat, to be sure.

What Colour is Pink? may not sport the innovation of the Us & Them mash-up of ‘Julia Dream’ and ‘All the Pretty Little Horses’, last time around, but so what? When something sounds this good, it doesn’t matter.

Full marks to the Fruits de Mer team once again, and to those travellers beyond the realm of the ninth dimension, Vibravoid. Long may they keep the psychedelic flag flying.

The What Colour is Pink? EP -- Limited edition pink vinyl 7″, with pink labels in a pink sleeve -- goes on sale April 2010,  and will be available through the Fruits de Mer Records website. Be warned, these vinyl superlatives have a habit of selling out fast!

Witness for yourself Vibravoid’s sonic-barrier splintering version of ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2xi7bxBYw

Vibravoid’s MySpace page

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Vibravoid -- What Colour is Pink? EP (Fruits de Mer Vol. 10)

Real Life Permanent Dreams – a cornucopia of British psychedelia 1965-1970, from Sanctuary Records, is exactly what it says on the tin, a veritable abundance of psychedelic joy that’s as essential as it is comprehensive.

With four discs (yes, four), a 46-page, oversized glossy booklet, and a monumental 99 tracks that kick off with the original demo version of The Smoke’s ‘My Friend Jack’, is there really any need for me to continue this review?

The set is a mixture of rarities, unreleased tracks and live recordings. There are contributions from more established acts, such as The Small Faces, The Kinks, Soft Machine and The Nice, and an absolute wealth of material from lesser known artists. Ramases & Selket, The Orange Bicycle, Our Plastic Dream, Fat Mattress, Harmony Grass… Just looking at the names on the back of the elongated slipcase this treasure trove is housed in, is enough to send any psych, acid, or early prog enthusiasts bandy with excitement.

Each of the four discs on Real Life Permanent Dreams sports its own title, reflecting the chronological categorising of sound, as opposed to date, into which the five years have been divided. So it starts with Sowing the Seeds before moving onto Plant a Flower Child Today, then HappyDaysToyTown, and finishing on Circus Days Are Here Again. Any one of these discs, if sent out into the cruel world to fend for itself, would prove a formidable force to reckon with. When combined, like Dai-X on Star Fleet, they become both the unstoppable force and the immovable object that, if ever were to meet, would spell the end of the world.

Sowing the Seeds largely covers the raw, infant sound of psychedelia – though some tracks are as late as 1968 – with early, acid-laced examples from Donovan (‘Sunny Goodge Street’), John’s Children (‘The Lilac Hand of Menthol Dan’), Lord Sutch (‘The Cheat’) and future Quo, The Traffic Jam (‘I Don’t Want You’).

Plant a Flower Child Today blossoms the more flowery sound associated with the summer of love, as The End start things out with an alternative version of their ‘Loving Sacred Loving’, featuring a closing harpsichord flourish of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, absent from the album version. The disc finishes 26 tracks later, on another alternative take, this time an unreleased, brass-free version of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s ever-incandescent ‘Fire’.

HappyDaysToyTown hits the toytown and popsike trail with such little-heard gems as Timon’s ‘The Bitter Thoughts of Little Jane’, The Beatstalkers’ tale of the pot-smoking ‘Silver Tree Top School for Boys’ and Andy Ellison’s mellatron-infused ‘Fool FromUpper Eden’. If that’s not enough to tempt you, then there’s also a BBC session of one of the all time psychedelic-pop classics, The Status Quo’s ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men‘, as well as Birmingham’s own, and early Steve Gibbons excursion, The Uglys with ‘Love and Best Wishes’.

Circus Days Are Here Again charts the shift from psychedelic pop into the heavier territory of psychedelic and progressive rock, with Velvett Fogg (‘Lady Caroline’), Humble Pie (‘The Light of Love‘), Man (‘Empty Room’) and Bobak Jons Malone (‘On a Meadow Lea) all on fine form, among others. There’s a live snatch from one of the Soft Machine’s meandering excursions as well as, somewhat peculiarly, Andrew Bown’s ‘Tarot’, the theme tune to ITV’s 1970 kids’ series Ace of Wands.

Of course, there are notable omissions (Tomorrow, The Pretty Things, Pink Floyd…just a few), but when faced with the kaleidoscopic feast that’s on offer instead, that’s quickly forgotten. Besides, I’m sure anybody salivating at the thought of this collection will already have everything recorded by those bands and any other big name exclusions.

Real Life Permanent Dreams – the title, incidentally, coming from a Tomorrow song but included here as a cover by The Orange Machine – if you hadn’t already gathered, I quite like. All it leaves for me to say is make sure you get a hold of this superior psychedelic compilation. Through fair means or foul, it matters not; just get your hands on it. Now!

So there you have it. Our psychedelic/prog/folk compilation week reaches its end. Now that’s over with, Jeffman’s headed for a long lie down beneath a heavy cloud of polychromatic sounds. Until next time…

Real Life Permanent Dreams – a cornucopia of British psychedelia 1965-1970 appears to have been deleted, but if you have money to burn it can be picked up for extortionate prices at Amazon.co.uk

Also in Compilation Week:

Looking Towards the Sky – Progressive, Psychedelic and Folk Rock from the Ember Vaults

Cave of Clear Light – The Pye and Dawn Records Underground Trip 1967-1975

Strange Folk

Spirit of Joy – Tales from the Polydor Underground 1967-1974

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Real Life Permanent Dreams – a cornucopia of British psychedelia 1965-1970 (compilation week)

Spirit of Joy gathers some of the better and the lesser known tracks from the considerable underground canon hosted by Polydor and its imprints during the golden age of music. From The Crazy World of Arthur Brown to Focus, stopping at such picturesque stops as Eric Burdon, Supersister, and Barclay James Harvest in between.

Despite the rare low point (is there really any need for the jazz stylings of John McLaughlin or Ginger Baker’s Air Force?), Mark Powell, who compiled the tracks and penned the extensive liner notes in the 45 page booklet, has put together a definitive retrospective of the surprisingly underground output of the traditionally overground label.

Disc 1 is the highlight with a strong psychedelic and progressive mix. Kicking off with The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s ‘Nightmare‘, quickly followed by the perennial ‘Fire’, the pace doesn’t let up. Familiar outings such as Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity’s ‘Wheels on Fire’ and Eric Burdon’s ‘Good Times‘, rub shoulders with early Van der Graaf Generator, ‘People You Were Going To’ and the manic ‘Firebrand’; Aphrodite’s Child, ‘Magic Mirror’; The Soft Machine, ‘Feelin, Reelin, Squealin’; Rory Gallagher’s Taste, ‘Born on the Wrong Side of Time’; and The Creation, ‘How Does It Feel to Feel’, among others.

This disc also features ‘Sunshine Day’ the debut single by Jethro Tull, which, in an act of defiance by producer Derek Lawrence, was attributed to Jethro Toe. Less psychedelic, but equally present, is ‘Dogs’, The Who’s wonderful ode to greyhounds, female dog handlers and beer.

Disc 2. Psychedelia gives way to the more progressive meanderings in, what for me is, the weakest link in this triumvirate of triumph. That said, it’s still a cracking good listen with plenty worth shouting about. Supersister and Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come both put in strong showings with two tracks apiece, while the Pink Fairies’ faintly disturbing ‘War Girl’, Audience’s ‘The Banquet’ and The Who’s ‘Amazing Journey’ all maintain the high standard.

There’s even room for Thunderclap Newman’s ‘Something in the Air‘. Hardly underground, but this jaunty, listen-with-mother paean to revolution is harmless enough and provides light distraction from the heavier fare demonstrated elsewhere.

Disc 3 wrings dry the acid-soaked psychedelic towel, instead flinging a handful of classic prog acts, and even some krautrock noodlings, at the wall.

Following a rousing start from the Pink Fairies and their prelude to sedition, ‘Right On, Fight On‘, the stage is given over to some of the cream of progressive rock, with Rare Bird, Medicine Head and Golden Earring all in fine form. Faust provides the aforementioned krautrock with the frankly bonkers ‘Meadow Meal’, while Spirit of Joy is given its undoubted highlights in the form of Web’s haunting ‘I, Spider’, the mighty Barclay James Harvest’s reworking of the Bee Gees similarly titled ‘The Great 1974 Mining Disaster’, and the always welcome Focus with their barking mad classic ‘Hocus Pocus‘.

Spirit of Joy undoubtedly lives up to its title, delivering a euphoric compilation of psych and prog, whereon the considerable hits pummel the few misses into a wisp of insignificance.

Spirit of Joy – Tales From the Polydor Underground is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Also in Compilation Week:

Looking Towards the Sky – Progressive, Psychedelic and Folk Rock from the Ember Vaults

Cave of Clear Light – The Pye and Dawn Records Underground Trip 1967-1975

Strange Folk

Real Life Permanent Dreams – A cornucopia of British psychedelia 1965-1970

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Spirit of Joy – Tales From the Polydor Underground 1967-1974 (compilation week)