The only music worth its salt is psychedelic..
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I would disagree and agree at the same time re. The Elevators Paul Drummond's Eye Mind book is really good on this (look at me though, with an appeal to books and history - about as far away from the psychedelic experience as possible). The band were living with the ramifications of LSD and getting high in Texas at a time when a joint could get you put away for years. They might've been the first "drugs as lifestyle" band and it cost them. Tommy Hall sounds like he's still quite mad, Roky was institutionalised, Stacy Sutherland had continual bad mental health up until his death. And I think there music tries to communicate this, "Slip Inside This House" is an amazing song - the lyrics have root in mysticism and sound really other to me, though I could imagine you just hearing it as a load of vague hippy warbling. There's a pretty strong carryover from their experiences in the music as I hear it - i guess it was successful (or cult at least 'til recent years) 'cos it managed to do this and still keep that pop/rock immediacy.
I have listened to a fair few canon psych LPs though and thought "this is just like The Beatles but not as good".
I do have a soft spot for twee UK psychedelia thoughso maybe my taste is not to be trusted. That pop moment when grown men pretended to be five years old. That is one thing this thread is missing so far. The sheer BAD TASTE and awkward moments that psychedelia through up by the bucketload.
I love this LP f'instance, but don't know if you can play it in company:
Do Bulldog Breed count in that? I was trying to tell someone their album was pretty good, then realised it was going to be a really hard sell with song titles like "Sheba's Broomstick Ride" and "Eileen's Haberdashery Store".
Can't listen right now as am at work. However, here is an example of something that might be seminal 60s psych - or could equally just be girly garage pop with an engineer testing the delay switch for the first time - that I think is well groovy:
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
ya personal fave of mine as well, as well as one of the few all woman band garage tunes
I confess to a fondness for garage psych. mostly US (+ Canadian) >> UK, as I generally prefer the rawer/protopunk side, lotta British stuff is too twee for me
kinda feel like the harder British stuff tended toward mod, The Who Maximum R+B thing, tho tbf these are generalizations
@Danny - 13th FE were true pioneers in every way + the deserve massive credit but think it's fair to say they paved the way for other people more than anything
having said that they do have some real tunes. I've always loved their version of it's It's All Over Now Baby Blue, despite my general aversion to all things Dylan.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
a few personal faves
this one is proper drug music
ultra fuzzy af protopunk classic, also p conceptually psychedelic, "journey to time" such a ca. 67 vibe
probably the noisiest feedback 60s fuzz I've heard. from protopunk capital Detroit. whole LP is pretty good, v rare for garage rock.
this one is proper drug music
ultra fuzzy af protopunk classic, also p conceptually psychedelic, "journey to time" such a ca. 67 vibe
probably the noisiest feedback 60s fuzz I've heard. from protopunk capital Detroit. whole LP is pretty good, v rare for garage rock.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
+ tbf here's a couple British tunes that rock decently hard
famously covered by Ride, tho it ain't got nothing on the original, tho fair fucks to em for having good taste
famously covered by Ride, tho it ain't got nothing on the original, tho fair fucks to em for having good taste
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
oh + not really psychedelic at all but the ultimate girl band garage tune, featuring a young Suzi Quatro, an underrated/forgotten female rock pioneer
Psychedelic things from 2017:
Guitars:
Tonstartssbandht - Sorcerer
Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper
Synth Jams:
Estancia La Mar - Sesiones de Panama
Bandhagens Musikförening - Protokoll A
I feel like mystical/earthy/atmospheric dub techno fits in here too. The label Silent Season releases a lot of stuff that does this well:
Wanderwelle - Lost In A Sea Of Trees
Whether any of these things truly live up to the essence of earlier generations of psychedelica, I can't say. The Tonstartssbandht has a throwback feeling so it is *sonically* on that vibe. The other albums are clearly different from traditional psych rock sound, but they certainly induce a certain drug-flavored meditative feelings onto a sober mind. I think you could add a lot of modern ambient music to this list, perhaps modern musicians and fans are digging more into ambient music as a contemporary way to induce transcendence and empathy ("Why is ambient so popular now"). Pan's Mono No Aware comp mines some beautiful territory that one could certainly call psychedelic.
Guitars:
Tonstartssbandht - Sorcerer
Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper
Synth Jams:
Estancia La Mar - Sesiones de Panama
Bandhagens Musikförening - Protokoll A
I feel like mystical/earthy/atmospheric dub techno fits in here too. The label Silent Season releases a lot of stuff that does this well:
Wanderwelle - Lost In A Sea Of Trees
Whether any of these things truly live up to the essence of earlier generations of psychedelica, I can't say. The Tonstartssbandht has a throwback feeling so it is *sonically* on that vibe. The other albums are clearly different from traditional psych rock sound, but they certainly induce a certain drug-flavored meditative feelings onto a sober mind. I think you could add a lot of modern ambient music to this list, perhaps modern musicians and fans are digging more into ambient music as a contemporary way to induce transcendence and empathy ("Why is ambient so popular now"). Pan's Mono No Aware comp mines some beautiful territory that one could certainly call psychedelic.
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Basic
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Lol, you really are a professional sourfaced cunt, aren't you?
luka
Well-known member
if we take art to be a map to, or multi-perspective model of, human experience, a materialisation
of feedback (it finds the forms to fit), if art is that kind of cartography of experience, then the
psychedelic, the will to transcendence,
("and by that I mean music which speaks to the existence of transcendent realities")
or to overcomings, or just to slippings sideways, in between and through the cracks,
has to play a part in that. we have to go there. we have to fill in those blank pages of the
atlas. it's a continent. you can't leave it out. empty space. here be monsters. that won't do.
but what the psychedelic necessarily excludes is all that it strives to transcend,
the homeliness and familiarity of the everyday, the world which can be reached out
and touched. that kind of tenderness for the close-at-hand. that kind of cosy but
fierce, gratitude for friends, family, lovers. the circle of affection. a grounded
physicailty. inhabiting the body. feeling emotions, those petty, grubby things left
over from a botched childhood.
without distancing or disowning. all those featherless hatchlings squawking in
the nest. a human scale of values.
this is the kind of intimacy and compassion and patience psychedelia is in flight from.
these are the ties that bind. take flight or make a home. i think that's the binary we're talking about.
you get a similar opposition set up in More Brilliant Than The Sun, with Eshun scorning
the humanist/roots/streets tradition for sonic fictions, afrofuturism, the post-human.
it's possible that the most gracious and wise music is from the humanist and not
the psychedelic tradition, but i couldn't do without either. you need both halves
for the map to be complete.
of feedback (it finds the forms to fit), if art is that kind of cartography of experience, then the
psychedelic, the will to transcendence,
("and by that I mean music which speaks to the existence of transcendent realities")
or to overcomings, or just to slippings sideways, in between and through the cracks,
has to play a part in that. we have to go there. we have to fill in those blank pages of the
atlas. it's a continent. you can't leave it out. empty space. here be monsters. that won't do.
but what the psychedelic necessarily excludes is all that it strives to transcend,
the homeliness and familiarity of the everyday, the world which can be reached out
and touched. that kind of tenderness for the close-at-hand. that kind of cosy but
fierce, gratitude for friends, family, lovers. the circle of affection. a grounded
physicailty. inhabiting the body. feeling emotions, those petty, grubby things left
over from a botched childhood.
without distancing or disowning. all those featherless hatchlings squawking in
the nest. a human scale of values.
this is the kind of intimacy and compassion and patience psychedelia is in flight from.
these are the ties that bind. take flight or make a home. i think that's the binary we're talking about.
you get a similar opposition set up in More Brilliant Than The Sun, with Eshun scorning
the humanist/roots/streets tradition for sonic fictions, afrofuturism, the post-human.
it's possible that the most gracious and wise music is from the humanist and not
the psychedelic tradition, but i couldn't do without either. you need both halves
for the map to be complete.
luka
Well-known member
as an addendum, the transcendent equates to the timeless, astral planes
of out there, and so in theory it's not as concerned with (firm ground) or as
reflective of (shakier ground) the microchanges, confluences and convergences
of the historical moment. that acute sensitivity to tiny changes the young have,
compressed histories, that makes popular music so protean and volatile.
of out there, and so in theory it's not as concerned with (firm ground) or as
reflective of (shakier ground) the microchanges, confluences and convergences
of the historical moment. that acute sensitivity to tiny changes the young have,
compressed histories, that makes popular music so protean and volatile.
everyone secretly wants music that speaks to new revolutionary possibilities through technology. subtle refusals and subversions of the familiar. abolish codeine!
That is the sad thing about the 2010s we are less concerned with doing away with the old.
Well, EDM is sort of what we all want, but it's all cartoonish ain't it?
Dare anyone defend it?
That is the sad thing about the 2010s we are less concerned with doing away with the old.
Well, EDM is sort of what we all want, but it's all cartoonish ain't it?
Dare anyone defend it?
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luka
Well-known member
this is the counter argument to the psychedelic and the visionary, from rilke's duino elegies
Perhaps we are here in order to say: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window –
at most: column, tower… But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing. Isn’t the secret intent
of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together,
that inside their boundless emotion all things may shudder with joy?
Threshold: what it means for two lovers
to be wearing down, imperceptibly, the ancient threshold of their door –
they too, after the many who came before them
and before those to come…, lightly.
Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as
the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits...
Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one,
you can’t impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe
where he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show him
something simple which, formed over generations,
lives as our own, near our hand and within our gaze.
Tell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood
by the rope-maker in Rome or the potter along the Nile.
Show him how happy a Thing can be, how innocent and ours,
how even lamenting grief purely decides to take form,
serves as a Thing, or dies into a Thing
Perhaps we are here in order to say: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window –
at most: column, tower… But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing. Isn’t the secret intent
of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together,
that inside their boundless emotion all things may shudder with joy?
Threshold: what it means for two lovers
to be wearing down, imperceptibly, the ancient threshold of their door –
they too, after the many who came before them
and before those to come…, lightly.
Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as
the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits...
Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one,
you can’t impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe
where he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show him
something simple which, formed over generations,
lives as our own, near our hand and within our gaze.
Tell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood
by the rope-maker in Rome or the potter along the Nile.
Show him how happy a Thing can be, how innocent and ours,
how even lamenting grief purely decides to take form,
serves as a Thing, or dies into a Thing