Wake up to these gorgeous pastoral stoner sounds from Brazilian psych duo Lula Côrtes e Zé Ramalho. It’s the kind of jam you wanna listen to while you space out on the steam swirling up from your pot of tea. Forced Exposure says:
Paêbirú is an obscure Brazilian psych concept album about the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) that was lost to time in a warehouse fire in 1974… the entire range of 1970s hippie Brazilian musician culture is displayed in this record.
This is what happened when the Rockin’ Ramrods tuned in, turned on, and dropped out: Puff (as in the Magic Dragon). Beautiful Acid-Test-worthy psych-pop balladry.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say this track has the best organ sounds ever. (Sorry, Ray Manzarek) First, a chunky, gritty garage organ, then halfway through, hallelujah-worthy church pipes that’ll have you as blissed out as Jim Morrison riding the snake…
Thành Mái — Tóc Mai Sợi Vắn Sợi Dài (Long, Uneven Hair)
from Saigon Rock & Soul: Vietnamese Classic Tracks 1968-1974
I’ve been doing a little hunting around for Vietnamese music from the 60s and 70s and came across this Sublime Frequencies compilation, which is, as the label would suggest, sublime. It’s packed with psychedelic rock…and keep in mind these songs were recorded during the Vietnam war. From Sublime Frequencies:
By the mid-1960s, Vietnam had been ravaged by war for years. American G.I.s had become a standard fixture in Saigon, as did many of the cultural artifacts they brought with them. This certainly included the music. The sounds of rock and roll dominated the radio waves, and Saigon nightclubs were teeming with new sounds. Musically, the Shadows and the Ventures soon gave way to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as an enthusiastic set of young Vietnamese rockers signed on to the lifestyle, always eager to hear the latest musical trends the G.I.s would bring in on LP or tape. This era saw the birth of a vibrant rock scene yet rock music and anything that came close was commonly referred to as ‘soul’ in the Vietnamese genre-listings. All of [these tracks] were recorded in makeshift studios and even US army facilities while the Vietnam War raged – and were issued by a handful of Saigon record companies on vinyl 45s and reel or cassette tapes.
Visits to the blog Super Sonido always yield a few equatorial treats. My last visit was no exception, turning up a brilliant set of psychedelic tracks from Brazilian composers Alceu Valença & Geraldo Azevedo. They hail from the state of Pernambuco, in the region of Brazil that juts eastward into the Atlantic.
Watch the Chilean kids behind psychedelic electro group MKRNI (as in mac & cheese) bounce and gyrate to their garage organs. This is the stuff tropical dreams (and nightmares) are made of…
Keep an eye out for their new full length coming out in Diciembre, Playa Futuro. Til then, gorge yerself on MKRNI at their soundcloud.
2 of Clubs was Linda Parrish and Patti Valentine, two blondes with singing gigs at the Cincinnati nightclub Guys and Dolls. It wasn’t long before they figured out how harmoniously their voices braid together. That should be enough to lure you in. But then the going gets weird, and the Spector turns into spectacle, with a psychedelic frenzy of key changes. This gets a 10 in the unexpected performance category.
pierreism: ‘Heart’ by 2 Of Clubs Starts off as a Spector-ish ode to everyone’s favourite love-pump, then just when you least expect it, ’60s PSYCHEDELIC PARTY FREAKOUT! Amazing. (via Derek’s Daily 45)
Whistling, hand in hand with your sweetheart, wandering the dirt footpath towards the ice cream stand on a lazy summer day. Take a lil bit of that, add a dash of the house guitarist for Carnival’s 5-day Eastern Caribbean cruise and you’d have just about the right formula for ‘Always Friends.’ (Oh yeah, and maybe a horse trainer. Gotta love that whip-cracking percussion.)
Secret Cities are back from their Kansas City basement with an album that’s as easy to listen to as it is bewildering. They’re channeling a lot here, from the rabbithole anthem ‘Brief Encounter,’ with its baroquely psychedelic feel, to the dreamy choral jazz of ‘Love Crime.’
It stays pretty engaging throughout, probably because we’re eavesdropping on a musical conversation that began in 2002, long before the group even began, when bandleaders MJ Parker and Charlie Gokey met at bandcamp and began a pen-pal style of musical collaboration, each building on the other’s 4-track efforts and sending the tape back. Isn’t that cute? Cuteness pays off in these melodies. Isn’t that the ice cream stand just beyond those apple trees?
Wah-wah pedals meet Istanbuli strings in this psychedelic track sung by the enchanting Ajda Pekkan, the superstar of Turkish pop music. This is from the good old days, before she got all that work done and posed with Chippendales. (Turkish google image search)
This track features on the compilation Turkish Freakout: Psych-Folk Singles 1969-1980. Well worth picking up, over at Holy Warbles.
A psychedelic display of electronic music effects and all kinds of synthesizers, dreamed up by Joseph Byrd, a composer and ethnomusicologist at the UCLA New Music Workshop. Byrd hung in avant-garde circles with folks like Terry Riley and wanted to bring electronic sounds to rock music.
This cut has plenty of that, with crunchy electronic harpsichord and ray-gun screeching, and almost sounds like a rubric for the Stereolab sound. (Or maybe Broadcast, who drew influence from the U.S.A.)
It’s exciting music, but unfortunately the fun didn’t last long. Tensions between band members frequently boiled over, due in no small part to Joe Byrd, who was quite a control freak, according to some accounts. (He even got into a fistfight with electric violinist Gordon Marron backstage at a gig at the Fillmore East.)
And when three members of the band were busted for marijuana at a gig in Orange County, California, the experiment was over.
Rome’s Venice, aka Beniamino Petroselli, just dropped an EP of dirty psychedelic beats, crawling with lush, prehistoric sounds.. a pursuit through the jungle, unfolding poisonous flowers, a pool of bubbling lava. He says of the EP, and this track:
Each track represents a story. The whole concept is about nature, roots, wildness. [30th Century] is about time, time collapsing in it self. We have the past because it’s really similar to the origins, but it seems all is set in the future. Everything remains attached to the roots of creation.
Sounds a little L. Ron Hubbard to me… but that’s what this EP is all about. Flying saucers x Mayan pyramids x dinosaurs = Venice.
Remember ‘If You Want It,’ that sweet golden slice of pop from TV Girl last year? I played that song so many times it was easily the soundtrack to a month’s worth of my life. Well today we’re doing a little musical archeological dig. Studying a song, by dusting off the fossils of forms less evolved.
So here’s ‘Hello It’s Me,’ by Nazz, Todd Rundgren’s dreamy psychedelic garage band before he went solo. This isn’t the version of ‘Hello It’s Me’ sampled in the TV Girl track — that would take 4 years to evolve from the ancestral melody here.
No, this is the earlier, slower version, the first original song Rundgren penned. But it never made much of a splash, which is why Todd himself dusted it off for his 1972 album Something/Anything?, speeding it up, giving it a pop injection, and making it into his biggest single ever.
Peter Pan’s window is open… time to fly away… and this is the soundtrack. Nightlands put out one of my favorite releases of 2010, Forget the Mantra. And I’m really excited (and you NYC folks should be too) because they’re bringing this trips festival to Glasslands on Saturday night, w/ Sun Airway. If they can do these harmonies live I’ll be the guy with the big smile plastered all over my face.
And something I missed the first time around, a book which may or may not have anything to do with the band name — William Hope Hodgson’s 1912 horror novel The Night Land, “one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written,” a novel “describing a time, millions of years in the future, when the Sun has gone dark.”
Now, at the beginning, I did walk outwards into the Night Land, somewhat blindly, and without sure direction; being intent only to put a good space to my back, that I might cure somewhat the ache which did weaken my heart at the first.
But, in awhile, I ceased somewhat from my overswiftness, and did put thought to my going. And I came quickly to reason that I should try a new way through the Land; for it might be that there was an over-watchfulness in that part which had been trod by the Youths.
And I began therewith to set this thought to the practice; and went not direct towards the North; but to the North and West; and so in the end to mean to circle around to the back of the North-West Watcher, and thence to the North of the Plain Of Blue Fire; and afterwards, as might be, have a true and straightway to the North; and by this planning come a long way clear of that House of Silence, which did put more fear upon me than all else that was horrid in the Land.
Heard this French psych-punk rager on Brian Turner’s show the other day and it blew my mind. Like a vision of the End Days, cooked up in a garage with homemade fuzz boxes and smooching robots.
Here’s South Korean psychedelic pop chantress Kim Jung Mi, accompanied by fuzz guitar master Shin Jung Hyun and his band The Men. Shin Jung Hyun’s musical direction blended the sounds of Korean folk music with Western influences, though this tune to me shares sensibilities with Jorge Ben’s ‘Ponta de Lança Africano (Umbabarauma).’
Mulholland Driving, driving music inspired by a dark night navigating the Hollywood Hills.
Music for promotional purposes only. If you are the copyright holder of a particular song and wish to see it removed, I'm happy to do so. Just let me know.
