Tag Archives: psychedelic

185. stoned immaculate

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Another argument in favour of the Dub Syndicate (the whole On-U Sound project in general) continuing to be one of the great overlooked items in recent cultural history. Seriously. In the case of Stoned Immaculate, that means you grab a sample of Jim Morrison waxing poetic about what it’s like to be way out there at the psychedelic edge, lay it over some suitably strong and mysterious dub and voila! It hits the cool zeitgeist of summertime 1991. A stupid war has ended and with it the so-called Winter of Hate, so maybe something new and beautiful is being born. The 90s did have that vibe … for a while anyway.

DubSyndicate-1991-StyleScott

217. do it clean [live]

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Wherein Echo + the Bunnymen make it clear that they really are the greatest band in the world (for a few minutes anyway, live at the Royal Albert Hall in 1983), surfing all the powerful and angular waves of the confusing and psychedelic moment, taking them to places where gravity holds no sway. Which in the case of Do It Clean means, what the hell, why not throw in some Beatles, some James Brown, some Nat King Cole and Boney Maroni! Because once you’ve achieved a certain critical velocity, there are no borders anymore, no barricades, no lines between – it’s all just one superlative song.

Echo+Bunnymen-Live-1983

218. like a rolling stone

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“This being the version of Like A Rolling Stone that Jimi Hendrix played live in 1967 at the Monterrey Pop Festival. I may have been only seven at the time and thousands of miles away, but I heard it anyway, such was the superlative noise that Mr. Hendrix set loose unto the universe that evening – it cracked the speed of light, broke the bounds of time. And, of course, a loose, wandering cover of Bob Dylan’s still fresh epic had to be part of that performance, because that’s how zeitgeists work. A few songs later, he’d be setting his guitar on fire, a heat you can still feel … but that’s another story.” (Philip Random)

JimiHendrix-1967-Monterey

252. haunted when the minutes drag

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“Love and Rockets may not seem so important now. Just another sort of post-new-wave outfit rediscovering the beauty and expansive power inherent in taking rock (and not just a little pop) to the psychedelic realm. But in 1985 when their first album hit, it was almost unprecedented (or certainly very long out of style) – a modern music that dared to be colourful, epic, BIG, and not looking back at all, just straight ahead into the haunted now, because that’s what 1985 was like … if you had the right kind of eyes.” (Philip Random)

love+rockets-1985-vid

 

255. King Midas in Reverse

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In which The Hollies get more serious than usual with an almost-hit about a man who, everything golden thing he touches, he destroys, which rather confuses the original myth about the king with the golden touch who ended up starving to death, because who can digest golden bread, or stew, or porridge for that matter? But it’s still a hell of a strong song. Welcome to psychedelic England, 1967, where there was at least as much confusion as colour in the magical breeze. As it was, Graham Nash (who wrote King Midas) would soon be splitting from the band, taking off to America and all manner of future glory as a serious rock artist, while the rest stayed home and mostly stayed pop, with a few golden moments to come, but nothing like what they’d once known.

hollies-1967-psyche

259. soon

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“The first thing I ever consciously heard of My Bloody Valentine was Andy Weatherall‘s 12-inch remix of Soon. And it was good, immediately figuring in all the mixtapes I was making at the time, 1991 being a serious watershed year for me. I’d taken the baleful rage and angst of the 1980s further than most, and loved it often as not. But now it was time for a change, and here it was, often as not lyrically vague as it was musically expansive, like 1960s psychedelia all over again, only bigger, richer, pumping cool light and amazing colours. And then the album Loveless showed at the year’s end, and I finally heard the actual original version of Soon, and holy shit, it was everything I could’ve imagined, only more so, the future having arrived.” (Philip Random)

mybloodyvalentine-soon-1991