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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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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Trip Inside This House, is one such site. A cornucopia of psychedelic goodness, taking its name from The 13th Floor Elevators track ‘Slip Inside This House’ and overseen by the encyclopaedic mind gone high that is valis Hertel. A fairly regular series on the Trip Inside This House site is Ten Questions, where valis grills someone currently active on the psych music scene (playing, writing, bloody great fan), so the rest of us can discover what makes these polychromatic peoples tick.

Being the crusading force of originality that HFoS is, we decided to nick this idea wholesale and turn the technicolour tables on the man who poses the questions, valis himself.

The man knows his stuff and isn’t afraid to wax lyrical on all things mind-expandingly musical. One of the many thoroughly interesting, kaleidoscopic troubadours writing on the genre today.

Those adverse to infectious enthusiasm and the desire to share it with others need not apply.

1. In ten words, or less, define “psychedelic music.”

Brain-analogue triggering devices to trip inside this house…

2. When and where did your love of psychedelic music arise?

As far as psychedelic music it’s been nearly 20 years now. My readings in the late ’80s were leading me further and further “down a rabbit hole,” with Robert Anton Wilson leading, and showing, the way. I’d copy his bibliographies and always had those on hand when going to used book stores or the library. When I felt stymied enough over the course of a few months I’d request an inter-library loan and get a book that way as my only recourse. (I’d get some strange looks, too, when requesting some of those titles.)

That was a prefatory to music exploring the same things I was reading about, i.e. “explorations of inner space.” This culminated in late 1991 with a friend loaning me a copy of the Spaceman 3 cassettes and the Roky* tribute, Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye. That compilation was a true eye opening experience! No pun intended. I sought out further music from the bands contributing and haven’t been the same since. (I do enjoy power pop, too. But my main focus and obsession is psychedelic music. It fills that human desire which Ronald Siegel has termed “the Fourth Drive.”)

*Roky Erickson, founding member of The 13th Floor Elevators and pioneer of psychedelic rock

3. Where do think the line is drawn between psychedelic and progressive rock?  For instance, many psychedelic bands in the late sixties – Edgar Broughton or Soft Machine spring to mind – were also classed as progressive rock (in the UK, at least), yet a traditional prog band such as Camel would never be described as psychedelic.

I’m underqualified on this question. Having had this survey for a few weeks now this is the one question which I get hung up on. I “know”, as much as one can know, there is such a line but I’m unsure where it’s drawn; the phrase “I know it when I hear it” readily springs to my mind. I completely get the Soft Machine reference but would never classify-in my wildest imagination, Edgar Broughton Band as being anywhere near the category of prog. Their work seems to lean so heavily on blues based tropes with some dabbling in psychedelia, a la the Pretty Things, or the Rolling Stones even. My preference allows me to listen to Soft Machine works while eschewing Camel. I also avoid any Yes like a plague, but have time for early Gabriel-era Genesis. (I love ‘Carpet Crawlers’ from The Lambs Lie Down on Broadway.)

The whole question baffles, on multiple levels, in my mind. This possibly speaks to the complexities only I’m seeing in it, more than what may exist in reality. It doesn’t seem to be about the overall length of a track as putting it in progressive rock territory either. I can name numerous tracks in the 15-20 minute range which are full-on psychedelic without crossing any real or imagined line into prog’. I suppose if forced to make an easy distinction it seems prog was “overblown excess & egoistic ars gratia artis.” It works for me in an arena of music I pay little to no attention to. In the same way I pay no attention to the works (o_O) of Britney Spears and the other clones of pop/trash culture.

4. What are your reasons for laying bare your soul, so to speak, upon the internet with Trip Inside This House, and how do you hope TITH’s story to play out?

The reasons are fairly simple: a compulsion to share my obsession for flag-waving on behalf of the genre known as psychedelia. I’ve found the community of psychedelic music to be some of the nicest people I’ve ever communicated with and this adds to the overall positive experience and helps me continue the blog. As an extension of the blog, I’ve been doing a radio show, titled the same, for the past 15 months on our local community radio station. Trip Inside This House, the radio show goes out on Tuesdays, from 5 to 7am, Central time. (You can access two weeks’ worth of archived shows for streaming, too.) The radio show has also allowed me to expand the horizons of the blog. Seems symbiotic.

As far as how the story plays out..? Well.., every once in a while a new hare-brained scheme will pop into the head and I’ll act on it, so new features are added or dropped depending on how far I think I can go with it. (E.g., “The Wayback Machine” feature was a long-running constant of the blog but it got harder and harder to get participation because band members really preferred to be highlighted and increase their visibility by the more lengthy “10 Questions.” I just couldn’t stay ahead of the curve in an “inventory of respondents” way so that I’d be further stressed by the need to get someone “right now!” and that usually didn’t happen. I hope the blog continues picking up followers/readers but that seems out of my control, too. The best I can do is try to promise as much original content as I can, on a weekly basis, and hope it satisfies all concerned. Other than that, it’s a means of creative expression which is two-sided: myself & the bands. I honestly don’t have an ego about it; I’m proud of it, to be sure, and I guess pride is a part of the ego but I don’t think the blog defines me, rather the opposite.

5. What’s the -valis position on the recent news that Roky Erickson is to release his first album of new material in 14 years? Do you think some things are better left in the past?

Hmm, the “-valis position”..? I’m excited to hear where Roky’s “at” now. In most cases, decisions like this might be discerned as market-driven cash grabs but I think this falls far from that. My opinion, of course.

His name certainly has cache value and there’s no denying the importance of the man on this genre. Let’s give him a chance, at least.

The 13th Floor Elevators (Roky Erickson front row, right)

6. Which is better, the British or the American brand of psychedelic rock?

In my world there’s room for both. Turks, Africans, French, South American, Canadian, and perhaps even some Scottish, too! The collection isn’t weighted to either and I don’t make conscious decisions to play British or American psych’ on my radio show.

Now, if the question was meant to stir debate on the thematic and lyrical concerns of ’60s psychedelia coming out of the two countries I’m still going with the “room for both” statement. That debate has shaped up, in my mind at least, to be an oversimplification.

Yes, the Americans were dealing with the spectre of being drafted but there’s just as much as “light weight” & “toytown” psych’ here in the States as there was in the Isles. The argument simply doesn’t wash with me…

7. Which of today’s bands are really capturing the sound and essence of 60s psychedelic rock?

Lords! How much space do you want to devote to this survey as this may take up your entire allotment of web space? I tend to concentrate far more of my time and energy in exploring and seeking out these current purveyors, so this list could go on for, quite literally, days.

I think a couple of great starting points would be to point readers to the last two years’ “Best of…” posts. I believe I’ve named 100+ bands in my own lists! All worthy of the attention and exploration of their sounds, imho.

The BEST of 2008

Brain Buzzin’ Best of, 2009 Edition

That’s the short answer. Those which leap to mind, band-wise: The Asteroid No.4, Darker My Love, the Black Hollies, the Black Angels, Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor, the Chemistry Set, Mondo Drag, the Grip Weeds, Outrageous Cherry, the Higher State, the Thanes, Anton Barbeau, the Dolly Rocker Movement, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Oblisk, Capsula, the Early Days, Lyserg Sands, Squires of the Subterrain, the December Sound, Stereoscope Jerk Explosion, Chatham Rise, Helicon, the Black Strands, A’dam Sykles, the High Dials, Troubador Dali, the Lovetones, the Quarter After, Screen Vinyl Image, the Starlight Mints, Evangelicals, Grails, Cosmic Trip Machine, Bipolaroid, the Upsidedown, Clinic, Deleted Waveform Gatherings, Dog Age, and on and on and on and on and on and on, ad inf.

8. Favourite psychedelic album of all time?

Primal Scream – Screamadelica

It’s the one which literally blew my mind, after hearing their version of the Elevators “Slip Inside This House” on the tribute compilation; has everything I really need from a psychedelic record and there’s no track I skip over.
After that it’d be Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request, by the Brian Jonestown Massacre and/or The Asteroid No.4′s brilliant These Flowers Of Ours: A Treasury of Witchcraft and Devilry… There, that’s three – ‘cos three is the magic number.

9. Top Ten Psychedelic Songs?

At this slice of time in the cone-cut:

(Randomly ordered)

1. The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows
2. Mondo Drag – Tallest Tales
3. Asteroid #4 – My Love
4. Cass McCombs – Tourist Woman
5. The Bongos – Numbers With Wings
6. Brian Jonestown Massacre – Malela
7. The Scoundrels – Up There
8. Legay – The Fantastic Story Of The Steam Driven Banana
9. The December Sound – Drone Refusenik
10. The Dolly Rocker Movement – Memory Lane

This answer will change in 23 minutes, and every 23 minutes thereafter.

10. Turn the tables, if you’d like, and ask me a question.

Where do YOU think the line is drawn between psychedelic and progressive rock?

HFoS: After giving it some thought, I find it impossible to give a definitive yay or nay. Suffice to say I have to agree with the “I know it when I hear it” answer. The two genres will never be exclusive to one another – early Procol Harum is definitely a case of both – but I think with the arrival of King Crimson the border became a little more defined, with prog rock being associated with a certain style of sound… Saying that, it’s impossible to draw a line between the two. Both are explorations of the further reaches of the musical stratospheres and, as such, an ear-pleasing one. The only way to separate is if you were to take the traditional aspects of both. ie Syd Barrett, Tomorrow and Kaleidoscope versus Yes, Camel and Gentle Giant. Even in that scenario the psychedelic wing could be classed as progressive, but not in the same way as the latter three, who, incidentally, could never be classed as psychedelic.

I think what I’m trying to say is, if there is an answer to this question, I haven’t got it.

I would like to thank valis of Trip Inside This House for taking time out to reveal a little bit more about the man behind the prismatic mind. And if you haven’t checked out his excellent site already, now’s the perfect opportunity to do so.

Until next time…

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