My Little White Rabbit - The Key

 #My Little White Rabbit #psychedelic rock #garage rock #psychedelic pop rock #German #music video

Psychedelic rock became the soundtrack of the wider cultural exploration of the hippie movement. Considering it was widely dismissed at the time as merely another momentary fad, and erroneously presumed to be pretty much dead in the water by the middle of 1968, the influence of psychedelic rock runs long and deep, and because of its links to the hippie movement many bands having psychedelic elements get a modern hippie imprint all over their image, just like Hamburg’s My Little White Rabbit. Starting out in 2014 when the band members met up at a dry river bed in the Mojave Desert, My Little White Rabbit bring the hippie movement into the 2010s, both musically and visually.

Q: A lot has happened since you started. Today My Little White Rabbit are five members but you started out in 2014 just as a three-piece.

Rike: Yes, we’ve had some changes in the band. It wasn’t that clear who was and who wasn’t a band member because of how much time people had, so we played with different people. That’s why there was just the three of us on band pictures.

Jan: It was also a question of style, we needed some time to find our own identity. In the beginning we made kind of different music compared to what we do now. We just started by putting all our ideas together to see what direction to take it and some people weren’t that super interested in that. Not that it was a huge thing but some people left the band. But the three of us still wanted to be in this band and liked whatever direction we went, and decided that we’re the core of the band because we support the direction and the style of it. With that we had to find people who were as experimental as us.

About your debut album that just came out; does it relate to your EP from 2015 or is it something completely new?

Rike: It was released on the June 7th. We really wanted it to be released in March but as usual you need to deal with the label and other stuff. There are still some songs from the EP on the album because we released the EP ourselves without a label. That’s why the cover design is similar to the EP, to get a kind of fluid transition.

Jan: It’s kind of easy with the whole design thing. We stayed with our designer because we always like his stuff. The collages, the weird stuff, we all find that it fits very well with our music. Why change the design as long as we all like it? He always comes up with new ideas on designs.

Rike: He is great with implementing our weird and unprofessional ideas (laughs), a great man!

Jan: And for the album it’s great because we also want to show our fans how varied we are and that we have old songs we’re very proud of. Of course the old songs don’t sound like our new but that is how it has to be.

In 2014 someone people claimed that you played “absurdo pop” and I just had to laugh a bit about it. Let’s say your style now is lots of sixties psychedelic guitars and that people compare or describe you as hippies.

Rike: Someone started with this old hippie thing and it has followed us ever since. But we really aren’t that kind of hippies who dance around naked on meadows. I have nothing against people who like to do that (laughs), but we’re not really a one-genre band. Everything is moving around the psychedelic frame, sometimes more blues, sometimes more guitars, and some songs which are more psychedelic pop.

Lasse: It’s always difficult with the terminology because everybody has their own opinion about it. Is it more an aspect of life or is it a direction of music? In the late sixties it was rather a kind of collective name. There was everything you would imagine in terms of music and people who were different compared to what was normal, that’s why they came up with terms like “weltmusik”. Everything not like what’s the usual stuff belongs to “weltmusik”.

Jan: But if you use “hippie” as somebody who wants to be without social limitations and relate that to our music, I would say we are hippies because we want to make our music just as we feel and like. If it means freedom and self-expression, I can deal with it.

Rike: That’s exactly what we want to represent. You don’t have to follow certain rules just because you want to belong to one style.

Jan: A modern phenomenon in revival rock bands is that they get on stage in what looks like uniforms. Old leather boots, beards, slim shirts and all that stuff. The whole image has to fit the style, not just the music. That’s something we don’t want to do. It is important that everyone of us still stays an individual, that’s how our music comes to life.

You said you like to listen to music on your own. Which era is your favorite that you would love to live in?

Lasse: Awesome question! You always think about the sixties because there were bands like the Beatles. But I would say today anyway because there has been so much fun stuff happening after the sixties and we would have missed all of it then.  

Jan: I would say the same. If you’ve asked me a few years ago I would also have said the sixties, to see Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix play live, which would have been really cool. But it’s actually awesome today. I listen to very much new and interesting music on Spotify; it’s insane how many new artists I’ve found there just in the past four to five years. I’m in there every day. It would have been great to be a bit younger today and listen to all that stuff without thinking “I already know it” and be more open to it; being twenty years younger and skip the nineties would have been great (laugh). For music listeners it’s really great to be able to listen to music wherever you are. Maybe not for the bands.

Rike: Back then it was kind a hard to find new music. When I was like fifteen I always watched VIVA2 or MTV to find new music and to stay up to date. That was the channel we had and you wrote it down and got the record at the store or just listened to it there. It would have been great to have the channels we have today back then. Very easy access and a wide range of new bands and stuff.

Lasse: But it was more mystic back then. You were not able to listen to new bands every day, and you didn’t get to know what Uriah Heep had for breakfast (laughs). If I talk to my parents how they consumed music when they were young it’s really interesting. We were at Jethro Tull last Friday which was really awesome, and I asked them how they listened to that music back then and they were like “Somebody had the record or you had to go to a club and just hope the DJ would play it”.

Jan: You dealt with music differently. You bought an album and if you found it really awesome you sat with your CD player and listened to it over and over again. Today, I mostly listen to music when I’m on the road, back then I sat in front of my stereo and listened to one album like five hundred times because I was so thrilled about it. Not playing video games, not meeting up with friends, only listening to music. A complete spare time activity. Today it is more on the side. I’m still into it but I also have more time to listen to new music.

Lasse: That’s what every musician says. Music is available around the clock and you can listen to music everywhere.

Positive and negative, two sides as usual. Rike, one last question for you. You started your career in the classical field?

Rike: I started to play piano as a kid, at the age of six. At nine I started with violin and I played lots of the classical stuff until the end of my teenage years - years I don’t regret at all. At some point I started to play guitar because I wanted to do something new without having to take lessons. After the whole classical stuff it was important for me to do something without knowing exactly what I was doing, just have an open mind. It’s really good, both sides are really good. And classic music isn’t always just something you need to think about when doing.

Lasse: But you have to read notes (laugh).

What about singing? Did you start that as well as a kid or did it come later?

Rike: I’ve had singing lessons but really late. I sang in a choir as a kid and somebody said I had to get some singing lessons, but I didn’t want to sing the way people told me to. In the end I got lessons and tried out much stuff, but really late, ironically.

But you are good anyway.

Lasse: Well, yes. (laugh)

From: https://www.messedmag.com/2019/06/12/hamburg-crib-sessions-7-my-little-white-rabbit-interviewed/

Mu - Blue Jay Blue

 #Mu #Merrell Fankhauser #psychedelic rock #folk rock #psychedelic folk rock #1960s #1970s

In 1969, Merrell Fankhauser and Jeff Cotton formed MU together with Fankhauser's old bandmates from the mid sixties group Merrell and The Exiles. Cotton (aka Antennae Jimmy Semens) had left Captain Beefheart with three broken ribs after the exhausting experience of recording Trout Mask Replica. Their only album, Mu, was released 1971. After a couple of singles on their own Mu Records, they moved to Maui, Hawaii, in 1973. Larry Willey did not want to move, and Jeff Parker replaced him. In January 1974, they began work on their next album (The Last Album), but broke up before it was released when Cotton and Wimer left to study religion.  From: https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/mu

Well recorded psychedelic avant-prog blues record that actually doesn't work like blues at all. With a clean and full sound and songs made of the strangest dissonant blues licks and riffs, Mu delivers a record that doesn't remind me of anything I've ever heard before. You can hear the broken-up composition style of Captain Beefheart (of which the bass player originated) and yet it's totally different music. Another feature is the CSNY-like vocal harmonies on some of the tracks. On other tracks the vocals are more creepy.

Imaginative, intelligent, rhythmic and diverse music with a deep spiritual feeling to lift your heart, mind and body: Look at the sun, look at the moon, brother we are one. This album is like a time tunnel to the good aspects of the sixties: a mystical warm vibe, the feel of being connected to everyone and everything, respect to human and animal life and the living in touch with nature. Long live Mu, the mythical continent of Lemuria!

From: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/mu/mu/reviews/3/

Alice Donut - Madonna's Bombing Sarajevo

 #Alice Donut #punk rock #psychedelic punk rock #hard rock #alternative/indie rock #1980s #1990s

Alice Donut is a psychedelic punk rock band originally from New York City. Formed in 1986, the band spent the next ten years touring relentlessly throughout North America, Europe and Japan, building a perversely loyal following. Creem Magazine described Alice Donut shows as “the most decadent punk rock-fueled all-out orgies I ever witnessed.” Between 1987 and 1996, Alice Donut released seven full-length albums and 15 EPs, singles, and other releases on Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label and various other labels. 2004’s Three Sisters, their first record after their hiatus, was recorded as a four-piece with Tom Antona on vocals, Michael Jung on guitar, Stephen Moses on drums and Sissi Schulmeister on bass. Original guitarist Dave Giffen rejoined the group for Fuzz, which was recorded in Brooklyn’s BC Studio with longtime co-producer Martin Bisi and released in 2006. Both Three Sisters and Fuzz were released by Howler Records.
The band’s style and lyrics are eclectic. Their music is a mixture of hard rock, punk, and post-punk and typically features melodic, guitar-heavy, odd-metered, and rhythm based pieces and is often punctuated with brass instrumentation. Many of the members are traditionally - or classically -trained musicians, though rarely on the same instruments they play in the band. Alice Donut’s lyrics take on what they view as the perversities, odd details, and petty humiliations of life. Their lyrical subject matter focuses on topics including depravity, domestic violence, sexuality and eggs.  From: https://alternativetentacles.com/artists/alice-donut/

Alice Donut was one of the core bands of Alternative Tentacles back in the late '80s and early '90s. Their first album catches them at their rawest, but also their most fun. Musically, Donut's style has much in common with the psychedelic punk style of the Butthole Surfers, but I regard Donut as being the more straight-up fun-to-listen-to of the two. The Surfers are great, but in a different way. Alice Donut's work is better informed by a sense of humor and a lively attitude than the Surfers, who usually come off as being much darker and more serious. However, this does not mean that Alice Donut does not pack some weight - in keeping with many Alternative Tentacles bands, Alice Donut follows in the footsteps of the Dead Kennedys with their lyrics - heavy sarcasm, but always socially and politically relevant.  From: https://www.amazon.com/Bucketfulls-Sickness-Horror-Otherwise-Meaningless/dp/B00005YELH 

The Grip Weeds - Porpoise Song

 #The Grip Weeds #power pop #psychedelic rock #psychedelic pop rock #garage rock #indie rock #folk-pop #Monkees cover

The Grip Weeds are one of the foremost modern practitioners of the psychedelic rock, garage rock, and power pop genres. The music of this well-respected New Jersey band is strongly influenced by the mid to late 1960s sounds of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Buffalo Springfield. Since the band formed back in 1998, they’ve been captivating their fans with fantastic live performances and excellent discs such as 1994’s House of Vibes and 2015’s How I Won The War. The current lineup of the band features Kurt Reil on vocals, guitar, drums, and keyboards, Kristen Pinell Reil on guitars, percussion and vocals, Rick Reil on vocals, guitar and keyboards, and Dave DeSantis on bass. The Grip Weeds have just released their latest album, DiG, on JEM Records. It’s an outstanding disc, celebrating the garage rock and psychedelic era music that inspired the band. DiG includes classic songs from The Zombies, The Byrds, and The Monkees, but the album is also chock full of lesser-known (and equally memorable) tunes from bands such as Mouse and the Traps, The Gants, and The Nightcrawlers. The liner notes for the album are provided by Lenny Kaye, whose groundbreaking 1972 compilation Nuggets was one of the first retrospectives of the music of the garage rock and psychedelic era. I recently had an in-depth chat with founding member and producer Kurt Reil about the making of DiG.

Q: What was the genesis of DiG? Given the fact that your sound is deeply entrenched in the music of the 1960s, encompassing genres such as rock, pop, psychedelia, and garage rock, the songs on the album feel like a perfect fit for the band.

A: DiG is partly a discovery or re-discovery of our roots, and partly a way to get through a very difficult time during the pandemic. The album was something we found we could do as a band, and in some cases, work long distance because of the circumstances. We were planning to start a new record of original material, and we worked on a few things, but it quickly became apparent that we were actually having more fun playing the cover tunes we were messing around with, so we just shifted gears. It was just something we just found ourselves gravitating towards at the time.

Q: One of the things I love about the album is that you didn’t just pick familiar songs to cover. The selection of tunes is wonderfully eclectic. Even though there are some well-known songs like “Journey to the Center of the Mind” from The Amboy Dukes and “Lady Friend” by The Byrds, there are a number of tunes from less familiar garage rock bands such as “Lie, Beg Borrow and Steal” by Mouse and the Traps, and “I Wonder” by The Gants. Before the advent of CDs and internet radio shows like Little Steven’s Underground Garage, the only way to hear these records was on a vinyl compilation like Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets, or to search them out in places like used record stores.

A: We went pretty deep on DiG. When we started out as a band, we were excited by the songs that we hadn’t heard or that hadn’t been played to death. They were hard to find, and when we discovered them, we were saying “Wow! I can’t believe this record.” It was very exciting. Part of the DiG concept is the musical excavation of these nuggets or buried treasures. That’s what it was like for us in our early days when we would track down these records at flea markets or garage sales. When we started out in the late 1980s, these records were just gone. They had been forgotten by the industry because they’d had their run. They were really hard to come by, and CD re-issues of this kind of music hadn’t kicked in yet. What spurred on these garage bands to make music in the first place, was dreaming about becoming stars, because of The Beatles. We started out that way, too. That was the dream that The Beatles made possible. These groups, particularly the ones featured on Nuggets, were often teenagers, and in a lot of cases, they didn’t have much money. The bands would make a record in a local studio, they’d have some success, and their songs would take off for a while. Then they went on with their lives, and that was it. Those records are like time capsules of that era.

Q: One of the other cool things about the music of that era is that the “garage rock” bands actually wrote and recorded songs that encompassed a number of genres, including rock, pop, and soul. It wasn’t just one type of music, and that’s reflected by the songs on DiG.

A: These groups were looking at the charts and listening to the radio, and there were a lot of different kinds of music being played on “pop radio” back then. The garage bands were mirroring what they heard, so if what they heard was The Rolling Stones, they did a blues kind of thing, if it was The Beatles, they went for a pop or rock sound, and sometimes their inspiration came from other things, like Motown or vocal groups. We tried to accentuate that on DiG. One example is the song “Little Black Egg” which is included on the deluxe edition. The band used to play it in our early days, during our acoustic shows at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey. We wanted this version to have a really playful tone, so we pulled out a banjo and temple blocks to help give it that child-like vibe. One of our friends suggested Kristen should sing the lead because she has such an innocent-sounding voice. “Little Black Egg” was really fun to work on. Each song on the album has a particular significance and a story behind it.

From: https://www.culturesonar.com/the-grip-weeds-dig-some-cool-covers/

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Bubblegum Infinity

 #Psychedelic Porn Crumpets #psychedelic rock #garage rock #psychedelic pop rock #music video

Like all the best inventions, Perth’s Psychedelic Porn Crumpets were born out of a simple idea that soon got out of control. Of course, most simple ideas don’t usually result in a group of humble musicians touring the world, rubbing shoulders with iconic artists, and kicking goals most lifelong tunesmiths could only dream of, do they? That, however, is exactly where we find Psychedelic Porn Crumpets in 2021. The Porn Crumpets’ (as brevity dictates) origin story is one that countless artists around the world could relate to, with English-born Jack McEwan launching the group as a solo bedroom project during a period of procrastination between uni studies.
Having performed in a Radiohead-inspired indie-rock outfit with drummer Danny Caddy beforehand, it was a chance meeting through connections that brought Golden Slums guitarist – and former semi-professional skateboarder – Luke Parish into his life.
“Me and Luke actually met through a mutual drug dealer,” McEwan recalls over Skype, his south-eastern English accent offering up a hearty laugh as he does so. “I’d end up bringing my little amp and guitar around there, because I think we spent most weekends there. The dealer had an electronic drum kit, and then Rish came around, and he started playing drums, or something like that, and we just kept going. I’d play drums, Rish would play guitar, and then we’d keep swapping.” Even today, many years later, Parish is still saved in McEwan’s phone contacts as “Luke Jams”. After all, the idea of forming a new band with his new musical mate wasn’t quite on the cards yet. A few months after they first jammed together, McEwan showed Parish an early demo of “Cornflake”, with the guitarist so taken by what he had heard that he met with McEwan the very next day to record the guitar parts for what is now the track “Cubensis Lenses”. Thus the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets were born, with the full lineup being rounded out by the addition of Caddy, guitarist/keyboardist Chris Young, and bassist Luke Reynolds, who departed in 2020.
At the time of Psychedelic Porn Crumpets’ arrival into the world in late 2014, the Perth scene they were born into was a perfect breeding ground for their type of music. “It was this real bubble of guitar-based bands, like blues and psych,” Parish recalls, raising his voice to be heard over a neighbour’s exceedingly-loud gardening routine. “There was a real explosion at that point.” “Everybody had a Cry Baby Wah and a facemelter fuzz pedal,” quips McEwan, as he professes his love of local groups such as Red Engine Caves, the Love Junkies, or even Parish’s Golden Slums. “We just managed to get the tail-end of the psych scene after Tame Impala and Pond,” he adds. “The door was still open for that style of music. For us, it was like Australia had sort of died down a bit, just as Europe and America was getting wind of it.” While acts such as the aforementioned Perth locals Tame Impala and Pond had served as influences upon the entire Australian music scene, McEwan notes that he had been fond of bigger names like Karnivool, The Mars Volta, Wolfmother, and Tool before Kevin Parker’s brand of music helped to kick things off.
The local Perth music scene was undergoing a few changes when the Porn Crumpets entered the fray. Major festivals such as the Big Day Out and Soundwave had just held their final events in the city, leaving only Laneway (held in Fremantle) and Southbound (held in Busselton) as the big draw cards on WA’s musical lineup. Instead of imploding, the local scene thrived, with countless artists springing up to fill the Perth stages which rarely played host to as many international acts as some fans would have liked. “It was like, ‘Well there’s no jazz fusion band here’, and then you end up with Grievous Bodily Calm, and, ‘There’s no other bands trying to do punk music, and we don’t have that’, so Boat Show came out of that,” McEwan recalls. “There was a big gap for people to be able to do their thing and not have the battle of competing with international artists.” It was this fertile ground that allowed bands like Psychedelic Porn Crumpets to fulfill a musical need and find their feet. Relentless live shows allowed the group to hone their talents on the live stage, growing their profile as a presence on the local scene. Behind the scenes though, the group worked tirelessly at becoming a force to be reckoned with in the studio.  From: https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-perpetual-rise-of-psychedelic-porn-crumpets-25341/

Ouzo Bazooka - Clouds of Sorrow

 #Ouzo Bazooka #psychedelic rock #neo-psychedelia #Middle Eastern rock #garage rock #Middle Eastern psych rock #desert rock #psychedelic surf #Isreali #music video

Ouzo Bazooka was formed in Tel Aviv, a city with its own unique lifestyle, where one can feel that the vibrant urban scene is driven by cultural coexistence and vigorous creation. Drawing influences from this melting pot and exotic Middle Eastern feel, along with classic hard rock, psychedelic art, garage rock and surf – Ouzo Bazooka’s sound is a dizzying concoction of east meets west.
Leading the pack is renowned musician and local guitar hero, Uri Brauner Kinrot, who grew up on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean sea, absorbing surf culture and playing a mean rock guitar. Uri has been active in the music scene for over a decade, throughout which he has played with, recorded for, and helped shape the influential sounds of big names such as Balkan Beat Box, Shantel, Firewater and Kocani Orkestar. Uri is also the leader of the critically acclaimed Mediterranean surf band Boom Pam, who are currently collaborating with Turkish psychedelic-folk legend Selda Bağcan. His unique sounds have made their way to far corners of the world, rocking out major music festivals such as Roskilde, Glastonbury, Fuji Rock, Lollapalooza and many more.
After roaming the globe and spreading his mediterranean-chic love, Uri felt the urge to pursue a new project using earlier influences that had always echoed in the back of his mind. He returned to the sounds and artists that have shaped him since his teens; Cream’s blasting energies, Link Wray’s surfed-up style and The Sonics’ soulful garage feel. Uri’s kaleidoscopic vision exemplifies good ol’ rock n’ roll with an oriental tinge, which is undoubtedly heard in his latest endeavor, Ouzo Bazooka. Recorded with local giants such as Adam Scheflan on bass and Kutiman on drums, the album consists of several catchy hits granting a melodic-pop feel that brings a sweet sound to the ears with a tangy middle eastern twist. Ouzo Bazooka’s self-titled debut album was released in 2014 and kicked off the bands career with a brilliant start.
Uri then decided to team up with drummer, Ira Raviv (Monti Fiori, Boom Pam) and keyboard player Dani Ever Hadani (Rami Fortis, Boom Pam) to form the present band and create the second album, Simoom. The album is an elegant demonstration of Uri’s ability to combine all of his influences and experiences together in the smoothest way possible. The album takes you on a dreamy psychedelic journey through heavy fuzzed guitars, colourful synthesisers, roaring drums and “garage-esque” fun. This well-performed blend can easily be heard throughout the album, from the spacey psychedelic keys and vocals on Look Around, to the traditional heavy dabke groove of Clouds of Sorrow, and up until the swinging thundering drums on Black Witch.  From: https://www.stolenbodyrecords.co.uk/ouzo-bazooka

Lykantropi - Wild Flowers

 #Lykantropi #hard rock #blues rock #folk rock #psychedelic rock #retro-1970s #Swedish 

Melody Lane had an interview with Martin Ostlund, singer and guitarist of the Swedish psychedelic folk melancholic rockers Lykantropi. A great band highly recommended to fans of Coven, Blue Oyster Cult and Fleetwod Mac.

Melody Lane: First of all, can you tell us where the name Lykantropi comes from?  

Martin Ostlund: In my opinion it´s the process and transformation in the creation of songs. A song is like chapters in a book that is transforming in a way by its dynamic etc., and also I do love horror movies and you can hear that in the lyrics.

Melody Lane: The line-up of the band is confirmed. Is it the same from the beginning of the band, or have you had changes in the last years? Can you tell us something about the roots of Lykantropi? And where the band was born?

Martin Ostlund: I started the band in about 2013. No one except me was in the band from the beginning. Tomas joined us about 2014-15, Ia and My about the same time. We had just recorded our first album when the drummer decided to drop out, so then came Ola. The latest to join is Elias. He was a stand-in player instead of Pär “Pärry” Nordwall, and became a member about a year ago.

Melody Lane: Can you list us five songs from the Lykantropi discography (including new material), that can define the sound of the band. Five songs that can help our readers to know Lykantropi.

Martin Ostlund: Black Old Stone, Julie and Alexandra on the first album, Vestigia and Sällsammanatt on Spirituosa. Kom ta migut and Coming Your Way on Tales to be told

Melody Lane: Tell us something about the creative process of your music. Is there a main composer or is there team work? The songs come from ideas of a single member and then the band works on these ideas in the studio jamming together, or your songs are written in the studio and all the members compose together? What about messages and subjects of your lyrics?

Martin Ostlund: Oh, it’s different depending on which song, but what’s new for us is that me and Tomas have spit the writing on the new album. I did almost everything on the first two except two songs on Spirituosa. Both me and Tomas come with the skeleton of a song idea, and we work together as a band. Some songs have messages, but you have to read between the lines of fiction and private exposures. Some songs are inspired by old folklore and fairytales, but also we have much fantasy in it with the Northern melancholy touch.

Melody Lane:  Apart from the all the problems and troubles related to the Covid-19 pandemic, any chance for us to see Lykantropi playing live here in Italy/Europe in the next months/years? Maybe summer festivals? Any plans?

Martin Ostlund: We actually had plans for a tour in Italy, Spain, etc. just before the pandemic, so yes, we will come and play when it’s all over.

Melody Lane: Could you tell us two bands, from the actual international scene, you’d like  to tour with? Two bands that would represent a perfect line-up for Lykantropi to play with. And why these bands?

Martin Ostlund: English Purson, and maybe The Blood Ceremony. They have both the groove in their sound, but different in their sound.

Melody Lane: We know that ‘to define is to limit’ but how do you define the Lykantropi sound? Are you a psychedelic rock band? Prog/folk band? Vintage ‘70s rock band?

Martin Ostlund: Well, we define ourselves in all those actually. But the main thing is that we love vintage amps and what we call the warm tube sound, so there you go! Vintage rock it is!

Melody Lane: Which musicians are/have been your main musical inspirations?

Martin Ostlund: I have to say Fleetwood Mac´s “Then Play On”, and Swedish 60s-70s artist Bo Hansson; he played the Hammond organ, and has done instrumental records and is famous for “The Lord of the Rings” made in the 70s.

Melody Lane: Which are your favorite bands nowadays? Are there any musicians you’d really like to collaborate with? And why?

Martin Ostlund: No favorite, but I really like Amanda Werne in Slowgold, and also the Swedish band Amason with amazing Amanda Bergman on vocals. Great musicians and bands with the heart and soul in your face.

Melody Lane: What has been the most important concert for Lykantropi’s career?

Martin Ostlund: Hmm, I don’t know! We have had some great concerts in different places. Geronimos and Debaser in the capitol of Sweden Stockholm are some of them.

Melody Lane: As a musician, what has been your biggest achievement to date and what do you want to achieve in the near future?

Martin Ostlund: I think the latest soon to be released “Tales to be Told” is a really great record, where we as a band work together in the best way. It’s the best so far of our three albums in my opinion. We have plans for making a new album in the near future without revealing too much.

Melody Lane: Are you totally satisfied with your choices about sound and the writing of your previous albums? If you could, would you change anything?

Martin Ostlund: We are satisfied with the sound on all our albums. Even some years later.

Melody Lane: In the end - a message from you to all Melody Lane readers.

Martin Ostlund: Message to the people! Close your eyes in a calm spot in your favorite nature surroundings, and hopefully you hear and listen to mother earth’s prayer for our future existence and how we can take care of this place we call earth. A big kiss from Lykantropi.

From: https://www.melodylane.it/NEWSITO/index.php/818-lykantropi

Drug Couple - Still Stoned

 #Drug Couple #alternative/indie rock #psychedelic rock #neo-psychedelia #psychedelic alt-country

I have always believed that life is what you make of it and that very much depends on the opportunities that arise and how you make things happen. In the case of Miles and Becca Robinson, they had already released one EP, Little Hits, as a band from Brooklyn which had a crazy mix of alternative rock and country and the kind of sound we might have heard if Paul Westerberg had taken over the reins of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and given it an alternative country twist. But big city life clearly does not suit us all and this is most certainly the case for this particular Drug Couple.
One day in March 2020, Miles and Becca literally upped sticks to plan their wedding, headed right up to the hills of Vermont, and soon vowed never to return as they quickly found that they were not missing city life at all. So what do you do when you suddenly find yourselves unemployed, in the middle of the woods and with a load of time on your hands? Being based in a two hundred year old barn they decided to build a studio which they called Freelandia, grow some marijuana, draw on their love for country and American indie rock and record themselves a debut album, Stoned Weekend. With a strong focus on love and hash fueling an unbridled creative spirit, the creation of this album quickly gathered pace. And whilst their developing sound lends more than a passing nod to the likes of Dinosaur Jr and The Lemonheads, there is much more to get your head around before you reach that inevitable transcendental state.
Whilst the majority of the vocals and instrumentation are down to both Miles and Becca, they were also joined by Pastor Greg Faison on drums throughout, together with Danny Meyer on saxophone and piano and Travis Rosenberg on pedal steel. All of this was put together in the Freelandia studio in the wilds of Vermont. In Stoned Weekend, Drug Couple have totally absorbed the DIY punk ethic and created a unique blend of alternative rock and country with a big slice of psychedelia that is guaranteed to chill the very fabric of your soul until you are horizontal and in a state of dream-like haze. From: https://louderthanwar.com/drug-couple-stoned-weekend-album-review/

Drug Couple is (or is it are) Miles and Becca Robinson. They used to be a “Brooklyn band”, until they moved to the Vermont countryside. They got married, grow marijuana, like country and American indie rock, and don’t particularly miss the city. Now that’s straight from the horse’s mouth as it were and yeah, I can see that is an unquestionable truth. Full of farm fresh sounds recorded in their very own barn studio Freelandia “Stoned weekend” is a sweet, sweet record giving you ten superbly balanced slices of seriously layed back guitar-based Americana that will have the hairs on the back of your neck tingling. And yes, I totally believe that you would have had to cut the air in their studio with a knife when they compiled this work. (Perhaps including a scratch and sniff cover would have been appropriate but I guess the DEA may have taken exception).
So, what’s going on here? well Drug couple have definitely zoned in on the chilled out retro sounds that only home-grown horticultural endeavors (which they unashamedly promote) can really bestow on an artiste. They have been widely compared to Neil Young. Hmmm - that needs qualifying. Let’s say Neil Young at his high-water mark with the legendary band he worked with as heard on 1972’s Harvest LP also recorded in a barn! That figures. There is just a certain “je ne sais quoi” about recording in a barn whilst stoned that you’re unlikely to get out of any metropolitan set up that I’m aware of. But there’s more. Of course, there has to be right? To me there are beautifully nuanced nods to Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd too with Miles Robinson’s vocals evoking the soulful rawness of Ronnie Van Zant particularly on the superb opening track “Stoned weekend”. That sets the scene for the whole of the LP which is drenched in glorious pedal steel guitars throughout and just to labour the point “Stoned weekend” concludes with an alternative take on track one “Still stoned” which if anything is even more mashed up than when they set off.  From: https://allmusicmagazine.com/review-of-the-debut-album-by-drug-couple-stoned-weekend/

Circulus - Little Big Song

 #Circulus #psychedelic folk #progressive folk #folk rock #British folk rock

A fanciful blend of traditional British folk, prog rock, psychedelia, and folk-rock, with a cultural mindset that is rarely seen outside of a revival screening of The Wicker Man, Circulus is the brainchild of Michael Tyack, a songwriter and musician who has set out to create music that exists in the 20th and 16th centuries at once. Based in South London, with Tyack the only constant member after dozens of personnel shifts, Circulus incorporate the drums, guitars, and Moog synthesizers you'd expect from a rock band with a retro early-'70s approach, but also features a variety of medieval instruments, including crumhorns, recorders, and a reed instrument called the rauch pfeifer, whose intense volume Tyack declares "isn't really acceptable to modern ears." Circulus are nearly as well-known for their collective fashion sense as for their music, with Tyack costuming himself and his accompanists in thrift-shop capes, caftans, hats, and masks that are equally influenced by the British hippie scene and Tyack's self-proclaimed model in style, Philip the Good, who was the Duke of Burgundy in the 13th century. Add to this the stated belief of Tyack and his bandmates in pixies, fairies, and "old gods" and you get a group whose reputation for eccentricity precedes it, but Circulus have also won a loyal audience for the strength of their music, with fans ranging from traditional music enthusiasts to death metal addicts. Circulus made their recorded debut in 1999 with an EP entitled Giantism, but it wasn't until 2005 that the band found a sympathetic record label interesting in financing an album-length recording - Rise Above Records, an extreme metal label that issued Circulus' full-length debut, The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to Be Sent. A second album, Clocks Are Like People, followed a year later.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/circulus-mn0000306289/biography

With its rauch pfeifers and crumhorns, psychedelic guitar solos, squealing vintage synthesizers and songs about pixies and burning scarecrows, Circulus' debut album, The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to Be Sent, is so far removed from anything else currently available, so blithely unconcerned with any contemporary notions of cool, that it makes for genuinely shocking listening. It is by turns preposterous, unsettling, tear-jerkingly beautiful and wonderfully refreshing: the one thing it is not is a concerted effort to storm the charts by sounding a bit like Coldplay or Franz Ferdinand, which may explain the flurry of critical excitement the band are currently generating. But it is merely the tip of the iceberg, the musical wing of a wilfully skewed world view that vocalist and band "auteur" Michael Tyack has been formulating since a visit to America in the late 80s, when homesickness led him to begin attending Elizabethan music concerts: "When I discovered Elizabethan music I was like, wow," he says. "It was exactly what I was pining for, some ancient culture. I didn't really want to hear any modern music at all. All I did was go to early music concerts and mix with early music boffins for about five years, discovering a whole world of ..." His voice trails off as he searches for the right phrase. "Something great," he decides, with a beatific grin. The medieval era, he says, "is my ideal, the whole style and the music. I mean, I like tights. I like the way those dresses look on women. It's all just beautiful. Take away the diseases and the brutality and it's a very stylish period. Very, very long pointy shoes." As a result, he says, he has dedicated his life to creating his own world, "which has nothing to do with Tesco or anything. You get people in Finland doing it, they live their lives as Iron Age people and have a good time. That's the plan, to set up an alternative way of life, where all like-minded people can congregate."  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jun/17/worldmusic.folk

The Move - Colour Me Pop 1969

 #The Move #Roy Wood #Jeff Lynne #psychedelic rock #blues rock #hard rock #British psychedelia #psychedelic pop rock #art rock #proto-prog #proto-metal #1960s #music video

Colour Me Pop was a BBC television series from the late 1960s that devoted itself to some of the best rock & roll acts of the period, without the usual compromises that such programs engaged in - groups would perform on camera, with their microphones live and their instruments plugged in, for as long as 30 minutes at a clip, and they wouldn't limit themselves to singles, either; Colour Me Pop was among the first television shows on either side of the Atlantic that could be used to perform and showcase album-length bodies of music.
The Move's set captures the four-man lineup behind Shazam in peak form. Whether they're playing hard electric numbers like "I Can Hear Grass Grow" or acoustic guitar driven pieces such as "Beautiful Daughter," or pieces that were otherwise unrepresented in their history, such as "The Christian Life" and "Goin' Back," they sound great - indeed, the version of "The Last Thing on My Mind" here is superior to the officially released studio recording on Shazam, and also makes good use of super-imposition and split-screen effects for its time. Oh, and the sound is excellent.
From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/colour-me-pop-the-small-faces-the-move-dvd--mw0001009492

I've seen the Moody Blues, Small Faces and The Move episodes of Colour Me Pop. Does anyone know if these performances are studio backing track with live vocals?

Somewhere in the dark part of my brain I remember seeing a web site that dealt with that very question. The interesting thing was that it varied, even within a particular episode. For instance, 'Fire Brigade' on The Move show is live, but there are other songs that aren't.

The Move January 1969
Several tracks are completely live - vocals and band - either that or the totally "live" numbers were exclusive pre-recorded backing tracks. Fascinating to see and hear Carl Wayne on bass on "The Christian Life" and interesting to compare the vocals on "I Can Hear The Grass Grow" to the 1967 "Beat Beat Beat" version with Ace Kefford. "Fire Brigade" is just magnificent. However, "Wild Tiger Woman" is a mime to the single release, as is "Something". "Beautiful Daughter" is a curious one - it's a mix of what appeared on "Shazam" - the vocal is identical but the mix is very different since it features a drum part on it and there's no strings - I think - getting a bit confuddled here myself (hence swiftly re-editing this post a couple of times). All three shows are magnificent slices of early colour British pop TV. How tragic that the vast majority of episodes of this show were wiped - editions featuring Love Sculpture, Family, David Bowie, Orange Bicycle, The Kinks, The Hollies, Manfred Mann and many more, all lost forever.

From: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/colour-me-pop-uk-tv.146238/

Occasionally plundered for clip shows, The Move’s Colour Me Pop appearance from 4th January 1969 saw them tearing through hits like Flowers In The Rain and Fire Brigade as well as the popular b-side Something, chaotic chart-missing single Wild Tiger Woman, a work in progress version of Beautiful Daughter, and covers of the Gerry Goffin and Carol King number Goin’ Back and bluegrass standard The Christian Life, both of which had recently also been covered by The Move’s noted favourites The Byrds. As well as an early sighting of the sort of glittery jackets that the Carnaby Street boutiques had recently started to sell – maybe inspiring David Bowie and Marc Bolan to take a trip to Alkasura the following Monday – this performance is also notable for capturing the band as they were adjusting to the recent departure of original bass player Ace Kefford. The Move had always shared out lead vocals as the ‘narrative’ of each song dictated – if you want a good trivia question to catch someone out with, ask them who the first person heard singing on BBC Radio 1 was; chances are they’ll know the first record played was Flowers In The Rain and automatically say Roy Wood, but the opening verse was actually handled by Carl Wayne – and Ace Kefford can be heard prominently on many of their best known singles. Although any fan of The Move would be able to tell that they were audibly struggling to compensate for his absence in places, their vocal interplay nonetheless caught John Lennon’s attention; while discussing how to approach The Beatles’ new songs, he mentioned the effect that The Move’s distanced stage positioning had on their vocal arrangements and began playing around with ideas inspired by that. This was an especially startling moment for me, as when I had a chat with Beatles expert Chris Shaw about the Yellow Submarine soundtrack, we got on to the subject of speculation about how The Beatles might have sounded if they had started playing live in 1968. Sceptical of some of the more fanciful ideas of string sections and elaborate stage effects, I had suggested instead that they’d have sounded more like the flashy psychedelic pop captured on the live album Something Else From The Move. It’s quite something to realise how close to the reality that very nearly was.  From: https://timworthington.org/2021/12/21/did-you-watch-the-bbc2-thing/

Purson - The Contract

 #Purson #Rosalie Cunningham #psychedelic rock #progressive rock #stoner rock #occult rock #neo-psychedelia #music video

Purson was a psychedelic rock band originating from London, England, active between 2011 and 2016. Described by bandleader Rosalie Cunningham as "vaudeville carny psych", the band utilizes a wide range of sounds including psychedelic rock, folk, acid rock, occult rock, prog and a general inspiration of 60s and 70s rock. Purson gained significant buzz with only a handful of songs on Soundcloud before signing to Rise Above Records and being named the band of the week by one Fenriz of Darkthrone early on. The band name has its origins in demonology, in which Purson is one of the Kings of Hell. Cunningham wanted to name the band after a god. After not finding any god-like names that they liked, they searched in the names of demons or devils. Purson managed to release two studio albums in their short tenure along with touring throughout Europe and The United States, building their name up as a rising act in the UK rock scene.  From: https://riffipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Purson

While her previous band, Ipso Facto, always had a sense of drama about it, Rosalie Cunningham moved into an even more theatrical direction with the formation of Purson - she described the band as specializing in "vaudeville carny psych." Exploring the world of proto-metal, the English group wove together influences like Cream, Deep Purple, and Jethro Tull into a quasi-mystical pastiche of psychedelic wonder made up of fuzzed-out guitars and Wurlitzer organs. Purson's full-length debut, the well-received The Circle and the Blue Door, arrived on Metal Blade in 2013. 2016 saw the band make the move to Spinefarm for their sophomore outing, Desire's Magic Theatre. The group ceased operations the following year, with Cunningham embarking on a solo career in 2019.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/purson-mn0002881568/biography

Kula Shaker - Govinda

 #Kula Shaker #psychedelic rock #neo-psychedelia #raga rock #post-Britpop #psychedelic revival #world music #1990s

By reviving the swirling, guitar-heavy sounds of late-'60s psychedelia and infusing it with George Harrison's Indian mysticism and spirituality, Kula Shaker became one of the most popular British bands of the immediate post-Brit-pop era. More musically adept and experimental than many of their contemporaries, Kula Shaker brought the overpowering rush of Oasis to psychedelia. Led by vocalist/guitarist Crispian Mills (born January 18, 1973; the son of '60s actress Hayley Mills and film director Roy Boulting), Kula Shaker were initially a psychedelic quartet called the Kays, which formed in 1993. In addition to Mills, the Kays featured his teenage friend Alonza Bevan. The two had previously played together in a band named Objects of Desire; during that time they also ran a psychedelic nightclub in the back of an ice rink. Following the dissolution of Objects of Desire, Mills made a spiritual pilgrimage to India, and upon returning he formed the Kays with bassist Bevan, drummer Paul Winter-Hart, and vocalist Saul Dimont. Within a year, Dimont had left and organist Jay Darlington had joined the band; prior to joining the group, Darlington had played in several mod revival bands. After spending two years touring and recording, releasing two EPs on Gut Reaction Records, the group had not made any headway. According to Mills, the band changed its name and direction in the spring of 1995, when he had an epiphany that the group should be called Kula Shaker after a ninth century emperor and pursue a more spiritual direction. For the next three months, they performed as Kula Shaker, and they quickly received a record contract with Columbia, which was eager to sign another band that had the multi-platinum crossover appeal of Oasis.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/kula-shaker-mn0000776408/biography

Kula Shaker’s Crispian Mills, now 27, is the son of actress Hayley Mills, so he met a lot of artists (including David Gilmour) when he was growing up in the '70s and '80s. Some of those artists introduced him to Indian music and philosophy when he was only 10, and by the time he was 16 an interest had grown into an obsession. "I finally got on a plane to India when I was 20," he says. "When I got there, I was very lucky to meet people who understood the best aspects of India, especially the older devotional traditions. I was lucky because India is sinking more and more under the weight of the industrial world we live in. A lot of the time they don't notice the treasures they've got because they want to stock up on Coca-Cola and get a satellite TV. I don't know how long it will last, but it's still there." Mills didn't become a classical Indian musician, however. Instead he tried to integrate elements of Indian culture into the rock'n'roll he had grown up with. He found that the droning guitar tones and repeating rhythms of psychedelic-rock were especially easy to blend with Indian music. "Because psychedelia in its purest sense, putting aside all the drug associations, is about mind expansion, it fits in nicely with the Indian concept of transcendence. Both want to take us beyond what we already know into fresh territory, fresh experience, a fresh outlook. They complement each other.” "The world has shrunk to the size of an orange," he adds, "so we're rediscovering our planet and all these interesting people in different places. In the West, we have a monopoly on technology, but we have a lot to learn in other areas. And we should learn it before it disappears forever."  From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1999/07/09/kula-shaker-what-a-concept/1baea3a4-0d82-4b3f-b7dc-b923da508b7e/

Gaupa - Kartan

 #Gaupa #doom metal #psychedelic rock #stoner metal #progressive rock #folk metal #Swedish

Gaupa has already been described as "Bjork fronting a rock band" and although we can see where that description is coming from there is far more to Gaupa than an unusual and unique voice placed in front of a rock'n'roll backdrop. First thing one notices about Gaupa (the band) are the levels of musicianship on display here; solid, tight percussion combined with deep growling bass lines are the backbone around which Gaupa's two guitarists lay down diverse washes of delightful  and dynamic six-string colouring, the pair not so much going head to head as complimenting each other with a mixture of eastern motifs, shimmering arpeggios, crunching heavy powerchords and scorching psychedelic lead work. However it is the vocal acrobatics of  Emma Näslund that many will leave this EP remembering long after the last note of "Gaupa" fades into silence. Näslund  has a unique tone and delivery and it is easy to see why those comparisons with Iceland's elfish chanteuse have been made as both singers have that same distinctive vocal elasticity in their armoury, however where Bjork's voice sometimes wanders into shrillness there is a smoother more fluid timbre to Näslund's vocals that is, for us, far more pleasing and easier on the ear.  From: http://stonerking1.blogspot.com/2018/07/gaupa-gaupa-review.html

An amalgam of psychedelic rock, stoner metal, and doom metal with female lead vocals. It's a style that many bands have played in the 2010's, especially following the success of Jex Thoth and Blood Ceremony. Gaupa pursue generally the same style as those bands, though with their own nice little nuances. There is a nice balance between calm, drifting psychedelic sections, and abrasive, rocking doom and stoner metal pounding. A nice, thick bass line carries fluid, desert-ish guitar leads, which sounds very atmospheric. What truly gives the band their identity is the vocal style of Emma Näslund. If you go on the group's bandcamp page, you'll see that they are all comparing her style to that of Björk and they are absolutely right. "Psychedelic/Stoner/Doom Rock with Bjork on vocals" all I can say is hell yeah. The singing is awesome. She does ethereal chants, crazy shouts, enunciates words playfully and gently, she sounds awesome. She really adds that quirk to the music that helps the band stand out, especially on the playful rocker track 'The Drunk Autopussy Wants to Fight You (perhaps one of the best song titles ever).  From: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/ep/gaupa/gaupa/

 

Heavy Temple - A Desert through the Trees

 #Heavy Temple #heavy metal #stoner metal #occult rock #doom metal #psychedelic metal #music video

Heavy Temple have been fighting the good fight since 2012, but they’ve kept the world waiting until 2021 for their debut album. Fortunately, it was well worth the wait: Lupi Amoris is a finely streamlined record crammed with awesome riffs, soaring vocals and memorable songwriting. Singer, songwriter, bass player and all round head honcho High Priestess Nighthawk was kind enough to take some time out to answer our questions.

Sadly, stage names seem to be on the wane these days so kudos to you for keeping the flag flying. Where did High Priestess Nighthawk come from and how do you decide on names for new members?

There’s a Tom Waits album called Nighthawks At The Diner, and I guess it just stuck with me. Every member gets to choose their own name. Unless they really don’t want to, in which we try to come up with something that reflects their personality. I structured it around the religious nomenclature system because I always wanted Heavy Temple to feel like rock and roll church, where you go to worship the riff.

Heavy Temple have gone through a plethora of different line-ups. Could you give us a potted history of the ins and outs of the band? How did the current line-up come together?

It’s certainly been a revolving door. People’s lives and priorities change, and I wanted a band with that flexibility so we could always keep playing and touring. When we started almost ten years ago, we were a three piece. Bearadactyl was kind of on loan and Rattlesnake moved to the west coast. Saint Columbidae joined on drums, and we were a two piece for a while. Then I found Tempest, or perhaps I should say she found me, and honestly, she really saved the band. Good drummers are like mythical creatures, and they’re always all in multiple bands, so I got very lucky. Then we added Barghest, who ended his tenure to work for NASA (hopefully making Heavy Temple the first band to have a member in space). Thunderhorse stepped in almost immediately, and that brings us to 2019. We were able to do a lot of touring, despite not having been able to record Lupi Amoris, which was intended to be tracked with the previous line-up. Parting ways was not easy, and it was a very hard decision to make. I don’t expect anyone to understand it, but I think we just had different expectations and creative goals. I knew that Paisley and The Baron were great musicians, so it was a no-brainer to ask them to join. Every iteration of Heavy Temple has shaped what we are right now, and as objectively as I can say so, this line-up is probably the closest to what I envisioned when I started.   

I absolutely loved Lupi Amoris. It touches on a wide range of musical genres but is really hard to pin down. How would you describe it?

I always laugh a bit at this question because I have a hard time describing it myself. I suppose I’d just call it heavy rock and roll. I think that Heavy Temple has always had a wide array of influences, but if I had to pin it down I guess psychedelic doom. We like kraut and classic rock, psych, stoner and sludge, desert rock, black metal. I think we’re just an amalgamation of those genres we like

One thing I particularly enjoyed was the interplay between the riffs and the vocals – you don’t just follow the riff melody like Ozzy did and I found the dynamics very striking. Could you talk us through the process of how a Heavy Temple song comes together?

I still struggle when writing vocal melodies because I’m also playing the bass, so generally they are last to develop. The composition and arrangement are the easiest parts for me, but I do like to nurture them and let them take their own shape. As for the vocals themselves, I like to let the music breathe a little, so I just sing when I feel it’s appropriate. What I do like about Ozzy is that he kind of does the same thing. Sing on the verse and chorus, then let the band take the reins. I’m very excited about writing the next album as a band. I’ve been the primary songwriter so I think creating collectively will lead to some sonic exploration for all of us.

Clearly a lot of thought went into the lyrics and artwork for the album. Could you tell us about the broader themes underlying them?

At its core, Lupi Amoris is a collection of love songs. I met my partner at a festival in the woods, and they were the one to show me the Angela Carter story. A couple tracks on the album pre-date our relationship, but this album as a concept didn’t start to take shape until maybe three years ago. Sometimes you meet someone, and it changes the whole trajectory of your life, so I wanted to write about that using the Carter’s story as a skeleton. My confidence, independence and autonomy are of great value to me, and there was something about the narrative that just spoke to me.

From: https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/interviews/heavy-temple/

Procol Harum - Simple Sister - Beat-Club 1971

 #Procol Harum #psychedelic rock #progressive rock #art rock #proto-prog #1960s #1970s #music video

Procol Harum’s ‘Broken Barricades’ album starts, like ‘Home’ before it, with Robin Trower's guitar playing an unmistakable signature phrase. This angry eruption signals the start of the song that engineer John Punter called Pimple Blister, with its cruel, some would say misogynistic lyric. Like Whisky Train, this is an enormously popular song with live audiences, specially in the USA, and since it was written all Procol's guitarists – Trower, Ball, Grabham, Renwick and Whitehorn – have played it. The five-note opening rhythm, on a repeated note, even found its way unwittingly into Mick Grabham's final bars of Beyond the Pale.
On stage the song exists in two varieties, the mere three-verse one (a mere 3 minutes 17 seconds on the Beat Club recital of 27 November 1971), and the extended 'build-up' version, over a melodic bass-line midway. The longer version is far more dramatic – the same instinct for juxtaposing opposites resulted in the insertion of the quiet Bach Prelude into Repent Walpurgis, another thundering four-chord passacaglia. Strangely there are some fans who would prefer both songs in attenuated form. It's worth dilating on the origins of the central riff, which has borrowed the first five or six notes (and the sprightly rhythm) wholesale from the opening of The Capitols' 1966 Cool Jerk. But Procol do something more interesting than the Cool Jerk composers: they modulate the motif from C major up to E flat, then again to G minor and down again … it goes somewhere, rather than being just an R&B elaboration of the basic blues progression. The Cool Jerk riff starts out with bass, then adds 'some eighty-eights' (a particularly shoddy-sounding piano), then immediately the whole band, but Brooker's ensemble builds up minutely slowly, something added every time the refrain re-starts, constantly surprising the listener with melodic and rhythmic ideas, begging the question, 'how can this end'? Musically the arrangement (by Brooker, conducted by George Martin, who is not credited on the sleeve) may be one of the big anomalies in the Procol catalogue: most of their orchestral work draws on baroque or romantic European traditions, but here the layering also seems reminiscent of modern, minimalist composers like Reich and Glass. Other famous records use heavy repetition and progressive layering – for instance Hey Jude and I Want You (She's So Heavy) – but these cases have endings faded or cut, somehow leaving the effect unconsolidated in one's ear. We do hear such a throwaway technique on the Barricades album in the final minutes of the title track. But Simple Sister, like its antecedent Whaling Stories, offers remission from the build-up, finding a closure that offers emotional relief.
This unique build-up is finely structured. Bars 1 to 32 follow the Skip Softly chords, after which the guitar plays a more-or-less fixed melody over the Cool Jerk riff, heard for the first time. Bars 41 to 64 comprise another 'unit' of Skip Softly and Cool Jerk; then the guitar lets rip for an improvisation over the Skip Softly chords, running from bars 65 to 88 (at the end of which section we hear a cross-fade between two takes, using two different guitars). Bar 89 begins a Skip Softly sequence that delays its last chord, and the brief drum break at 97 begins the Cool Jerk section in earnest. Piano, bass and drums start it at 98; bar 106 adds one of the manic chattering sounds we now know to be Gary Brooker's piano, recorded while running the tape slow, and subsequently speeded up. Chris 'The Grouts' Michie describes this process in illuminating detail here: for a long time the source of this sound was a mystery, though Geoff Whitehorn's strummed guitar does a capable job of imitating it in live performance. One more piano note is added every eight bars until 146, by which time high 'chiming' notes are heard as well, and at 154 guitar and 'celli join the chattering fray, with some quiet brass. High melodic strings are added at 170, whooping brass at 178, and heavy Wagnerian brass at 186. Just when pop precedent primes us to expect a fade, the Skip Softly motif cuts in at 194, and one more verse is sung; 210 sees the speedy coda, (including a new chord!) and the long growling C minor sustain at 213 ends the song. Gary told the NME (5 June 1972) that this was 'Music from the 23rd century'.
The reversion, from the Cool Jerk section to the opening matter again, is done with a musical brutality entirely suited to the cruelty of the words. It’s a song of vitriol and abuse, continuing the Still There'll Be More vein of writing. Perhaps it was a deliberate irony, adapting the riff of a positive, life-enhancing dance tune to offset Keith Reid’s savage libretto. This piece portrays serial vindictiveness like Poor Mohammed does: but what disease merits such cruel treatment? Despite the problems of interpretation that it poses to the record-buyer, Gary told NME that the piece was 'Lyrically quite simple, but there's something very personal about it. A quick summary of a situation Keith ran into somewhere.'  From: https://www.procolharum.com/tn+sq/bb_tr_simpl.htm

Wand - Passage of the Dream

 #Wand #psychedelic rock #shoegaze #stoner rock #noise rock #garage rock #animated music video

On their third album, Los Angeles’ Wand gracefully sidestep the potential pitfalls of psychedelic songwriting—meandering guitars, rambling lyrics, directionless tracks. They ground the blurry, bizarre visions established on their previous efforts, Ganglion Reef and Golem, in colorful imagery, so that the faces of the monsters they’ve written about on past records come into full focus.
While the shadow of Wand’s mentor Ty Segall still hovers over Wand’s blown-out garage sound, the band’s own flickering light is beginning to shine through more often. They have added some progressive folk rock to the mix, fondly recalling unique and memorable records like Mellow Candle’s Swaddling Songs and Comus’ classic First Utterance without sounding like a carbon copy. Cory Hanson’s voice shimmers  against the acoustic palette of songs like the beautiful closer "Morning Rainbow", the song that also contains 1000 Days’ key lyrical thesis: "We will see this world together in its terror."
Paralysis, paranoia, disappearance, erasure, pure fear, and curdling dreams are all themes that reappear in Hanson’s lyrics for 1000 Days; even the titular song, a concise bit of folky garage pop with a sunny-sweet choral melody, seems like it might be a love song at first but quickly turns into the nightmare of relationship stasis, depression, and ennui ("I don’t need a thing ‘cause I’ve had every dream"). The mingling of beautiful, honeyed melodies with dark, bleak lyrical content is nothing new, but Wand do it especially well, and they have a precision in their songwriting that keeps their music from spinning off into glazed burnout territory.
Though one worries that with such a prolific release schedule that Wand will run out of ideas, 1000 Days is a heartening record, a record that sees a young band picking up steam, playing with their influences more deftly than on their prior LPs, and bringing a thoughtful approach to old and well-traveled sounds. There’s enough interesting moments on 1000 Days to hold onto these songs, go back to them, and explore within them. That’s more than many of their cohorts within the cluttered and long-trendy field of psychedelic garage—there are hundreds of disposable tape-label bands with little to say out there, and it’s wearying to search through all that crud for the occasional gem, which does exist—have to offer.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20995-1000-days/

The Zombies - I’ll Call You Mine

 #The Zombies #Rod Argent #Colin Blunstone #psychedelic rock #blues rock #pop rock #baroque pop #psychedelic pop #classic rock #British invasion #1960s

Q: Where did the name, The Zombies, come from?

Rod Argent: We got together in 1961, at the very beginning of the English band scene. That was even a year before the Beatles. We didn't know what to call ourselves. For the first month or so, we were called the Sundowners. But I think that may well have been a western film in the same way as the Searchers' name was from a John Wayne movie. We were also the Mustangs for a couple of weeks, but never went out on a gig with that name.  One day, our bass player at the time, who was the only one initially who left the band before we were professional, said, "What about The Zombies?" This was in the days before any of the crop of zombie films, like "Return Of The Living Dead." Now I just about knew what a zombie was. It had something to do with Haiti, and some sort of voodoo, unsavory sorts of things. Colin Blunstone didn't even know that. He hated the name! But I loved it. If we were lucky enough to get any recognition later, then very soon the name itself would be unimportant. It would just become whomever the members of the band were. A year after the Beatles were named, no one that I know thought about insects or even the play on words. They just thought about John, Paul, George and Ringo. That proved to be the case with us. When we were in the studio once, I was wandering around and heard the sound of Miles Davis coming from a record player in someone's dressing room. I knocked on the door. It opened, and there was Manfred Man. I asked if that was Miles playing, and he said, "Yeah, yeah." Then he looked at me and asked, "You're Rod Argent, aren't you?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Man, I love your record, but you have to change that band name." But we never did [laughs].

Q: How did you meet Colin Blunstone?

Argent: The day we had our first rehearsal was the first day I met Colin. He was a friend of the bass player, who was a friend of mine. Originally, I was supposed to be lead singer, and not play piano at all. We had a little jam, and thought it was all going pretty well. Then we had a coffee break. I wandered over to an old, beaten-up piano, and started playing some Stingers records I'd heard. Colin came running over and said, "That sounds fantastic. You've got a great playing ability. Why don't you sing AND play piano?" I thought that would be too much, to sing lead vocals and play piano, so I said, "No." Twenty minutes later, we had another break. Colin sat down and started strumming a guitar, because he was going to play second guitar, rhythm. He started singing a Ricky Nelson song. It sounded absolutely lovely! I said, "My God, I had no idea you could sing like that. I'll tell you what. - you be lead singer, and I'll play piano." And that's how we started. It was Easter of 1961.

From: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2020/06/08/how-did-the-1960s-band-the-zombies-come-up-with-their-strange-name/?sh=4af7dfa63d4e

Mouth - Parade

 #Mouth #progressive rock #psychedelic rock #krautrock #hard rock #retro-1970s #German

Mouth were formed in Cologne in 2000 as a trio, comprised of Christian Koller (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Jan Wendeler (bass, bass synth) and Nick Mavridis (drums, backing vocals, keyboards). The band's style is a blend of 'golden era' progressive rock - with influential names such as Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Soft Machine, Hatfield & The North - as well as classic rock/hard rock and prog related names old and new: Led Zeppelin, The Who, David Bowie, T. Rex and Fish. Indeed, this is often cited as a mixture of retro prog, krautrock, hard rock, psych and glam rock - all together it fuses into a unique spleen, often underlined with dystopian themes.
In 2007 they were offered to record an album, and their debut 'Rhizome', released for Bluenoise label, saw the light of the day two years later. Nearly at the same time Nick Mavridis left the band and was substituted by Thomas Ahlers until Mavridis re-entered the crew in 2010. Jan Wendler left in 2012 and Gerald Kirsch joined as the new bass player in 2013. During the next years the band recorded a lot of songs, with the result being the albums 'Vortex' (2016) and 'Floating' (2018), both highly acclaimed productions showing way more kraut and psychedelic rock attitude. After the death of Gerald Kirsch in 2018 the band went on a short hiatus, then announced Thomas Johnen as a new member in March 2019. Their live comeback was at the Krach Am Bach Festival. Containing new and previously unreleased material, a further EP is planned for late Summer 2019.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=5194

Wucan - King Korea

 #Wucan #hard rock #folk rock #psychedelic rock #doom metal #stoner rock #progressive metal #retro-1970s #German #music video

Wucan - Retro Rock with Romanticism and Women’s Power

eclipsed is a music magazine based in Aschaffenburg and has been on the German market since 2000. It is aimed at friends of sophisticated rock music who want to go on a new acoustic voyage of discovery month after month.

eclipsed: Tell me the origin of the band.

Francis Tobolsky: Well, I started the band with an ad when I moved to Dresden four years ago to study. In my old hometown Chemnitz I didn't see the chance to find like-minded people. My claim was to make classic blues rock by Free and Rory Gallagher. First of all our drummer Axel Pätzold reported himself on the ad and peu à peu they all came together. About Tim George on guitar and finally Patrick Dröge on bass.

eclipsed: And how did you find your way to this special sound, a mix of classic hard & blues rock with Tull's flute, Krautrock influences and modern retro rock à la Blues Pills?

Tobolsky: Yeah, then the songwriting started. Somehow it came all by itself that we drove this, I say, old-school sound. I think that this is also connected with the fact that none of us really listens to new, current music. Many productions are simply too polished to a high gloss for us, especially in the metal area, of course also in pop/rock. Somehow we didn't like it.

eclipsed: Where'd you learn to play the flute so well? It really reminds you of Ian Anderson.

Tobolsky: (laughs) Funny you should say that. Just a few days ago a metal music magazine said that this was the biggest insult to the majesty I would do on the flute. Jethro Tull wasn't an influence at all, but as a thirteen year old I enjoyed two years of classical flute lessons. Later I concentrated more on the guitar. But then I thought to myself that I could also bring the flute into the band.

eclipsed: Where does your band name come from?

Tobolsky: We were really desperate to find a band name. And Tim sent me an unspectacular music link. This was the music video of the song "Wucan" by psychedelic rocker Black Mountain, which in Chinese means "lunch" in addition to the name for a Chinese city (laughs). We decided that together as a band.

eclipsed: How did you approach your first album?

Tobolsky: So on our first release, an EP, we weren't really happy with the sound. This time we wanted to make it clear from the outset that this was not supposed to sound so modern, but ... yes, "mustier". Also adapted to our music style. We also recorded live and took a little more time to experiment, for example with the Moog synthesizer and the theremin I play.

eclipsed: So how did the long track "Wandersmann" come about, which is out of the ordinary in German? This reminds me of romantic poetry as it used to be with "Leiermann" from Franz Schubert's "Winterreise".

Tobolsky: You, exactly. I used to want to study literature. I was always such a cultural epoch freak, and my absolute favorite time was romanticism and especially the so-called black romanticism. Maybe that had some influence, too.

eclipsed: "Sow The Wind sounds a lot like early seventies. Would you have wanted to live back then?

Tobolsky: (laughs) That's a difficult thing. Somehow you're used to all the comforts of the 21st century. At least then I would have experienced this spirit of the time first hand. So I can only have this told to me by people like my grandparents, who already lived then, or people who were active in student movements.

eclipsed: Young people nowadays tend to hear the charts, hip hop and electro more often. How do you get your obviously so rich musical knowledge about older music at all? Where does this love come from?

Tobolsky: Well, I've asked myself that question many times before. I've been interested in music since I was a kid. I was often with my grandparents, and here in Saxony they had an oldie radio station on the air, from the sixties to the eighties. I must have preferred a certain sound and song structure. When I finally had my own internet access when I was fourteen or fifteen (laughs), I could surf around and was constantly looking for music. You can always get links to other bands and songs on YouTube, which you then like, and you can keep on hanging around like that.

eclipsed: It's nice that the Internet also provides such positive things. What are your musical role models?

Tobolsky: Besides Blues Rock there are many old Krautrock bands like Novalis, Hoelderlin and Birth Control, but also East German bands like Renft and Karat.

eclipsed: How do you see the current retro-rock scene with bands like Siena Root, in whose opening program you will play in the coming months, or especially the Blues Pills, with which you will probably be compared now, simply because there is such an energetic front woman on stage.

Tobolsky: Hm, difficult question ... I almost think that some people in the press are already annoyed about it. But every retro rock band sounds different to me anyway. In Metal, for example, many of the bands sound much more similar. No, it's full of musical diversity, it can be more like blues rock or heavy metal or it can be psychedelic. Yes, or even garage rock of the late sixties, there are so many different ways of playing that you can't even say, so this retro rock, that annoys me. This all sounds so fresh and different. I just think that certain bands are promoted in a very strong way and that can get on people's nerves. I can imagine that, especially what comes from the big labels.

From: https://www.eclipsed.de/en/current-issue/underground/wucan-retro-rock-romanticism-and-womens-power