The only music worth its salt is psychedelic..

Woebot

Well-known member
...and by that I mean music which speaks to the existence of transcendent realities.

On this the 75th anniversary of Albert Hoffman discovering LSD.

Because I'm an old fart I'm of the opinion that the reason 99.99% of today's music, young people's music, does not speak to me is that it ISN'T psychedelic.

And I reckon young people too (under 30s) are aware of this gaping hollowness in their music as well. That's why so many of them (and us older people) still fixate on older music that was informed by the psychedelic experience.

I'm talking about the far out music of the 60s/70s/80s/90s.

There are the odd breakouts of insanity after 1996 but not enough to sustain everyone's interest.

Is there a properly modern psychedelic music? Is the dreaming going on in other arenas of culture?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I balk at this notion but perhaps I'm not understanding you and have too narrow a notion of what constitutes psychedelic music...

Certainly I think a lot of music nowadays lacks ambition and a sense of meaningfulness

If you mean something more sonically psychedelic I'm more in agreement - e.g. my thread on where are the rnb geniuses, I'm constantly astounded by Timbaland Missy Elliot and the Neptunes production from the late 90s/early aughts. The sweet spot for me is the fusion of psychedelic/out there sonics with pop music. Even ardkore had this, and of course jungle and garage and grime...
 

Lichen

Well-known member
This was always my plea to the trance crowd - psychedelic is a synonym for 'good' or 'effective'.
Needless to say it fell on deaf ears.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Luka and I were talking about something related lately, the question of whether you can have truly great literature without a spiritual dimension or spiritual belief involved (even if the artist is reacting against it). I suppose the sort of psychedelica you're talking about is spiritual rather than sensual.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
One of the only songs that's occuring to me here is Lil B's 'I'm God', with his cry 'Somebody tell the trees I'm the best out!' And Clams Casino's very psychedelic, dreamlike beat.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Needless to say it fell on deaf ears.

Well I guess that's a risk you take by going to trance nights.

It's a scene I know nothing about and generally avoid like the plague, but isn't there a whole subgenre called 'psytrance', with the 'psy' presumably standing for 'psychedelic'? Of course whether it's actually psychedelic in any meaningful sense is probably open to debate.
 

Lichen

Well-known member
The goa / psy end of it was the bit I got involved in.
I lived with devotee in the early 90's and went to parties with him.
It was essentially a public school acid cult presided over by an ageing Australian prog rocker.
It threw up the odd good record, and the parties were often in stunning places - no wonder given that many of its acolytes owned swathes of the UK.

Makes me feel a bit queer thinking about it all really.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It was essentially a public school acid cult presided over by an ageing Australian prog rocker.

Does sound quite good fun, put like that. Maybe not the public school bit.

Edit: speaking of Goa, I saw Juno Reactor at a festival years back and they were quality.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Patrick Lundborg (RIP), the guy who wrote psych/private press bible "Acid Archives" wrote another book about psychedelic culture. He used to talk a bit on his blog (The Eternal Now) about modern psy-trance but tbh, doesn't sound like he found it a fraction as compelling as the music of the 60s & 70s. The name that sticks out in my memory is (I think) Spongle? There was a mix he did of this stuff that I always regretted not downloading.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Interview here: I’m too old to go dancing all-night on some beach in the Greek islands, but I can still enjoy some of the Goa/PsyTrance stuff at home. There’s a vast difference in quality, and some of it is pretty awful, but the best vintage stuff like Hallucinogen, The Infinity Project, Man Without Name etc I think is very good and trippy music. However, I must admit that I’m not as much into the Goa style as I was when it first appeared around 1994. It hasn’t aged perfectly well, and these days I rather listen to the Psybient music, which to me is the ultimate example of psychedelic music for the 2000s. When they realized they could lower the tempo to “rock” beats, these talented electronica guys like Simon Posford began making music that is as perfectly psychedelic as the best late ‘60s stuff. The only difference is that it’s mostly electronic, with some acoustic/analog overlays, but that’s fine with me—I’ve always been a great Kraftwerk fan. I recommend any psych fan to check out the most recent Shpongle album and see what they make of it.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It's big in Israel, apparently. There's a group called Infected Mushroom which has record covers like this:

infshroom.jpg

and which I suspect may be a key reason for the near-global unpopularity of Israel.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I'd like to get more of an idea of how woebot is defining psychedelic, because I'm thinking of all the clichés of psychedelica - and that psychedelic art, for example, is often aesthetically dreadful (although maybe this is because drugs decay taste)

But by this definition of a transcendent reality, even Michelangelo could be psychedelic because he's evoking a higher spiritual plane, albeit in a representational style.

I don't think Woebot is talking about religious music though, or religious art.
 
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blissblogger

Well-known member
Simon Posford is an old mate of Woebot's i believe

i'm in sympathy with the general proposition but then i keep thinking of music i love that isn't really psychedelic even if you define psychedelia really loosely and uncouple it from "druggy-sounding" or "drug-taking-conducive".

definitely feels like something is missing - and trying to pin down and characterise the Lack is an interesting challenge

i tried to get at it recently by writing about how there is not a sense of people releasing something in themselves through the music - a feeling of liberation and energy exploding outwards into the world

which is something you got in Sixties rock and pop (almost of all of it, as a base level condition of its existence, i think - so that Lulu records have it as much as the Stones). Then it carried in some way with groovy 70s rock, and then it became something else compeltely with punk (are X-Ray Spex's "Let's Submerge" and "Identity" and "Warrior in Woolworths" et al psychedelic? not really, but the sound is a huge burst of liberation and raging glee even when the lyrics are absolutely cynical / despairing / nihilistic). And it's definitely a quality in the best songs by the Smiths - Morrissey finding the release through music / dance that he can't in actual life.

And so on and so forth .. with rave in all its forms expressive of a renewed Dionysian turbulence

But i don't feel this aspect to be around much in the contemporary listening landscape, which maybe connects or reflects w/ modern uses of technology that numbing / distracting / self-repressing

but in terms of actively druggy music, there is trap - which is druggy but w/o spirituality maybe (different chemicals)

oblivion without transcendence
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Shpongle are fucking dire.

Isn't there a distinction to be made between psychedelic and hippy? Wouldn't call miles hippy.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
some of the avant stuff is psychedelic. rashad becker traditional music of notional species vol 1. synaesthetic. like hearing the sound of alien beings licking and tickling you. but also exploding out of the speakers. very 2c-e.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
what's psychedelic music? thought this was super obvious but must need spelling out.

the sex pistols definitely.obviously. ur bad trip.

most anything by future. just watch those hallucinatory videos.

pretty much anything which uses reverb gratuitously.

the black dog. boards of canada. detroit.

lee perry at the black ark. any dub obviously.

trppin ardkore 'ordes. terminator "you're talking about things i haven't even done yet"

astral weeks.

tomorrow never knows.

wire chairs missing.

chrome chromosome damage.

can mushroom.

SHOULD BE PLAINLY AUDIBLE.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Boldly leading with the Joker in the pack there cos if the sex pistols are psychedelic I have NO IDEA what it means :crylarf:
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I was gonna say, there's no way in hell SPs are psychedelic. Musically they're about as straightforward rock'n'roll as it gets. And punk (I don't mean the weird stuff on the edges of punk or what came after, I mean Pistols, Clash, Damned, Ramones) was in large part a reaction against psychedelia, wasn't it?

(Never mind that John Lydon used to sell acid tabs on King's Road before he was 'discovered' by McLaren, or that the Ramones were big LSD fans and once released an album of 60s pop-rock covers - I would still say most punk rock, the punk that got into the charts and onto jukeboxes, is broadly un-psych if not actively anti-psych.)
 
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