The Active Listener's First Birthday Available on Bandcamp or on Limited Edition Cassette.

The 4th of November is the first anniversary of the Active Listener, and to celebrate I've put together a limited edition cassette release of tracks from many artists you will have read about on the blog over the last year and a few from newer names that took my fancy.
Many artists have been kind enough to supply exclusive or hard to find tracks in the form of demos, covers, remixes and unreleased songs.
This is an old fashioned, totally handmade, and non profit release with all tapes duplicated by myself on my home stereo, and all tracks personally donated by the artists involved. A labour of love for all involved.

Cassettes cost $2 U.S each plus postage. 
Postage to New Zealand  - $3 U.S
Postage to Australia - $6 U.S
Postage to Rest of World U.S / U.K / Europe etc. - $10 U.S
I apologise for the expensive postal rates, but I'm based in New Zealand, so they've got a lot of traveling to do.
Payment can be made via Paypal to this e-mail address : nford150@hotmail.com

A digital version (is also available for $2 ( U.S ) on bandcamp here : http://theactivelistener.bandcamp.com/album/the-active-listeners-first-birthday

There are a very  limited amount of these due to the time it takes to put each copy together, so if you want one get in quickly....
Each cassette will also come with a free mp3 download version.

The tracklisting is :

Side One - The Psychedelic Side
The Magnetic Mind - Laser Fingers
Sir Psych - Fly Without Wings
Zane Armstrong - Julia
Sky Picnic - Farther In This Fairytale
Les Annees - Catherine Fields
The Solar System - Dreamer's Distance
Mordecai Smyth - I've Been So Tired
The No-Men - Let's Escape Reality

Side Two - The Acid Folk Side
Darius Greene - Leaves Around Their Eyes
Tony Wakeford - Victor Sleeps
Chuck Owston with Sara Masters - Amethyst
Emily Jones - Bed of Mud
The Rowan Amber Mill - Mandrake, Hemlock & Rye ( Ergotism Version )
The Hare & The Moon - The Rolling of the Stones
Sproatly Smith - Willow's Song

DC Fontana - Pentagram Man Review

 

CD / Digital

As if naming your band after an ancient Star Trek scribe wasn't enough to indicate that DC Fontana operate at the more cult end of the spectrum, then half filling this E.P with vaguely Dennis Wheatleyesque diabolism seems to complete the picture. But the truth of the matter is that DC Fontana are a far more accessible prospect than you'd expect.
Musically they're a melting pot of swinging sixties London styles - predominantly mod / soul but with plenty of others colours peeking through.
"Pentagram Man" is the big drawcard - an epic, and yes diabolical, mod anthem with delicate psychedelic shadings provided by tremeloed rhythm guitars and the odd raga guitar break. Wise enough to know you can't have too much of a good thing, we get two versions, one with lead vocals by DC Fontana's own Louise Turner, and one provided by ex Sorrows vocalist and soul legend in his own right, Don Fardon.
Elsewhere the mod template is stretched and skewed further with "Sighed DC " delving into psychedelia with mellotrons and creepy foreign vocal murmurings, eventually settling into a hypnotic pastoral groove.
"What Would It Take?" is a delicate acoustic folk pop tune, peppered with accordions and some tastefully applied backwards guitar.
"Satisfied ( Part 1 )" meanwhile alternates between moody Manfred Mann Chapter Three prog jazz and uptempo conga bursts.
"Devil Angel" however seems the most likely track to hit the airwaves, an insistently catchy number which should collapse under the weight of it's accompaniment (which includes cimbalom, hammered dulcimer,Chinese yangqin, autoharp, cor anglais, oboe & flute), but somehow manages to find room for an eclectic group of unusual bedfellows without sacrificing accessibility, which come to think of it is exactly what DC Fontana seem to embrace as a manifesto of sorts.

Out this Friday, October 19th. Check out DC Fontana's Facebook page to learn more.

Want To Be On The Active Listener's Christmas Compilation(s)?

I'm on the scrounge again: The Active Listener's First Birthday compilation has proven so popular that I'm going to put together another collection for Christmas.

The costs of putting together and shipping the cassette version were considerably higher than I'd anticipated so the Christmas collection will be available as a Bandcamp download only - which means with no shipping or production costs for me to recoup it'll be a FREE DOWNLOAD.

I'd like to do separate Psychedelic and Folk / Acid Folk collections this time assuming I get enough tracks, the only question now is who wants to be included?

Please e-mail me at nford150@gmail.com if you have a track that you'd like to donate to either of these compilations.

I'll need it in a lossless format.

Here's hoping we can end up with something even better than the Birthday Comp. Thanks!

Download or Stream the Active Listener's Chillout Mix :

While chillout mix is a phrase that quite rightly strikes terror into the hearts of all sane men, the fact is that the idea is sound - even if the execution often leaves something to be desired. Here's my attempt at a chill out mix for psychedelia and folk lovers - hopefully an enjoyable alternative to those Morcheeba laced mixes of old....

 Download here.

The Eighth Tower Part I    By Adam Leonard       
Morning Sun By The Cosmic Rough Riders
From The Morning By Beautify Junkyards           
Life Aboard The International Space Station By James McKeown       
The Swan (Lord Of The Reedy River) By Donovan       
King Conrad By Maston           
Silent Garden By The Fallen Angels               
Son Of God By Parchment       
Mothers    By S. Carey       
Witches' Reel By Katie Rose           
Leave Me Here By The 23rd Turnoff
Beyond The Wychelm By The Advisory Circle       
To Walk the Night BY The Owl Service           
Something for Nothing By Sir Psych   
Green Grass Grows By Belbury Poly       
The Sky Children By Kaleidoscope   

Stream it here :

The Active Listener's Chillout Mix by The Active Listener on Mixcloud

Please get your votes in for the Best Psychedelic Albums of the Nineties.

Now that we've covered the best psychedelic albums of the 21st Century it's time to cast our gaze a little bit further back to the 1990s for the next poll.

What are the essential psychedelic albums of the nineties to you folks? I'm keen to hear from each and every one of you.

Please private message me through The Active Listener Facebook page here or just comment on this post.

Download a Great Kontiki Suite Guest Mix

 

The Kontiki Suite's resident DJ The Cotton Controller was kind enough to send me this fabulous mix to share with you all today. It's a peerless mix of pastoral psychedelia which is guaranteed to make every day feel like a hazy summer Sunday.

This was originally hosted on the fabulous seekmagic blog.
While you're at it you should check out the Kontiki Suite's current 12'' "Magic Carpet Ride"which also features a wonderful Time & Space Machine remix on the flipside.
And here's an excellent reimagining that they've concocted of I Am Spartacus' 'Pretty In Pink" :


Their full length "On Sunset Lake" will hit the shelves very soon - stay tuned for a review on these pages in the near future, but in the meantime download and thrash the heck out of this absolutely wonderful mix:

Download here.

Tracklisting :
Quite Village - Victoria's Secret
The Elected - Clouds Parting 8:14am
All Night Radio - We're On A Wave
Nobody Feat. Mystic Chords Of Memory - Porpoise Song
Soft Hearted Scientists - Rockford's Return
Caribou - Melody Day (Four Tet Remix)
Relatively Clean Rivers - Hello Sunshine
Fargo - Sunny Day Blue
The Green Pajamas - When She Comes (cottoncontroller edit interlude)
Super Furry Animals - Walk You Home
23rd Turnoff - Michael Angelo
Harper's Bizarre - I Can Hear The Darkness
Margo Guryan - Sunday Morning
Hiss Golden Messenger - Dreamwood (excerpt)
The Byrds - Wasn't Born To Follow
Kontiki Suite - Music Man
The Sadies - My Heart Of The Wood
The Green Pajamas - Queen of Sunshine (cottoncontroller edit interlude)
Black Cab - Summer Of Love
The Superimposers - Would It Be Impossible
Cotton Mather - Autumn's Birds
Bernard Wystreate - Daydream
Les Baxter - Tropicando
Olivia Tremor Control - Grass Canons
The Beach Boys - Little Bird (Time & Space Machine Edit)
Harper Simon - Berkeley Girl
Farmer Dave Scher - Surf Out Sunset
Beachwood Sparks - Ballad Of Never Rider/Silver Morning After
Junior Parker - Tomorrow Never Knows

The Best Psychedelic Albums of the 21st Century According To Active Listener Readers

Several weeks back I asked everyone to vote for their favourite psychedelic albums of the 21st Century.
Here, ranked in order of how many votes they received from readers are the results. Lots of stuff from the last 3 years, which I think is fair enough as there's been a huge renaissance in psychedelia recently and I'd argue that there's more quality psychedelia being produced now than at any point since the early seventies.
Click on album titles for more information.
Let the countdown begin!

15. Broadcast - The Future Crayon ( 2006 )

14. The Smiles and Frowns - The Smiles and Frowns ( 2010 )

13. The Soundcarriers - Harmonium ( 2009 )

12. The Paperhead - The Paperhead ( 2010 )

11. Broadcast - The Noise Made By People ( 2001 )

10. The Coral - The Coral ( 2002 )

9. The Sufis - The Sufis ( 2012 )

8. Broadcast - The Haha Sound ( 2003 )

7. Sir Psych - The Popsike World of Sir Psych ( 2012 ) 

6. The Orange Alabaster Mushroom - Space and Time: a Compendium of ( 2001 )  

5. Beaulieu Porch - Beaulieu Porch ( 2012 ) 

4. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots ( 2002 )  

3. Dungen - Ta Det Lugnt ( 2003 )  

2. Tame Impala - Lonerism ( 2012 )  

1. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker ( 2010 )


The following non placing bands also received votes :
Acid Mothers Temple, The Alchemysts, Alfa 9, The Amazing, Aqua Nebula Oscillator, Asteroid #4, Belbury Poly, Bevis Frond, Bipolaroid, The Black Angels, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Black Mountain, Colorama, Mikal Cronin, Crystal Stilts, Earthless, Entrance Band, Erland & The Carnival, Expo 70, The Focus Group, Ghost, Haunted Leather, Richard Hawley, The Heads, The Horrors, The Hypnomen, I.E.M, Life on Earth, Loop, The Magnificent Brotherhood, Mammatus, Mirror Mirror, The Moons, Mmoss, Neon Indian, Joanna Newsom, Of Montreal, Oh No Ono, The Orange Revival, Pepe Deluxe, Plastic Static, Radio Moscow, The Resonars, Ty Segall, Shabazz Palaces, Sky Picnic, Elliott Smith, The Solar System, Stardeath and White Dwarfs, Stereolab, Sula Bassana, Thee Oh Sees, Älgarnas Trädgård, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Vibravoid, Ween, When, White Fence and Ty Segall, Wolf People, Wooden Shjips, Zwan


The results for the reader's poll of Best Psychedelic Albums of All Time can be found here.
 

Arbouretum - Covered in Leaves Review

Tour Only CD

This is one that's slipped under the radar a little - sold by the band at show's on their Spring 2012 tour, "Covered In Leaves" highlights a different side of Arbouretum than their more ambitious 'official' releases.
Recorded live to a 2 track with no chance of overdubs, it's a much more straightforward rock record than we've seen from them before.
While this may sound like a bit of a slapdash release to some, I actually enjoyed it more than any of the 'proper' releases of theirs that I've heard so far, and it's certainly not as lo-fi as it's recording conditions would make you expect.
There are a few originals, but it's the well chosen covers that are the most appealing. Dylan's "Wicked Messenger" sounds great in every context I've ever heard it in, so that one's a bit of a no-brainer, but the garage rock ballad take on Creedence Clearwater Revival's "As Long As I Can See The Light", with it's ghostly, processed Warren Zevon style vocal, and the unlikely, propulsive rock version of the usually delicate traditional " She Moved Through The Fair" show that Arbouretum have previously unacknowledged interpretive skills, and are certainly an indicator that they may be that most rare of breeds - a band with a distinctive enough sound of their own to put out an inventive covers album, where they're not overwhelmed by the material.
Hard to find but worth the effort.

An Introduction to the Paul Is Dead Conspiracy.

I'm a sucker for a good conspiracy theory, and Paul is Dead is one of the best out there (up there with the moon landing..)
For those that haven't heard of this, the theory is that Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash in 1966 and replaced by a lookalike competition winner, known among other things as William Shears Campbell/William Sheppard, Billy Shears and most commonly Faul - Fake Paul.
The fact that this alleged phony was writing better songs than the real Paul doesn't seem to be enough to put people off this absurd but hugely entertaining theory.
The story started in the late sixties when some American college students noticed various clues in Beatles song lyrics and on album covers alluding to Paul's death and literally hundreds of sometimes tenuous othertimes staggeringly direct clues have been uncovered since.
The covers of Sgt Peppers and Abbey Road are particularly ripe with clues. The detail above from the "Abbey Road" album cover shows the Volkswagen's number 28IF, as in Paul would be 28 if he was still alive..

The photo on your left (taken from the White Album) has been alleged to be not Paul dressing up, but the only publicly distributed photo of William Shears Campbell.

Some alleged clues taken from various Beatles recordings include the following :

• From "Got To Get You Into My Life" : "I was alone, I took a ride, I didn't know what I would find there".
• From "A Day In The Life" :  "He didn't notice that the lights had changed" .
• From "She's Leaving Home" a line that mentions the time of the accident : "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock as the day begins".
• From "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I buried Paul, I buried Paul". Although most believe John is actually muttering "Cranberry Sauce".
• "Bury my body" and "Oh untimely death" appeared in the radio feed towards the end of "I Am The Walrus", taken from a BBC production of King Lear.
• From "I'm So Tired" , John whispers "Monsieur, monsieur, monsieur, how about another one?" When played backwards, this sounds like "Paul is dead, man, miss him, miss him".
• From "Don't Pass Me By" : "I'm sorry that I doubted you, I was so unfair/You were in a car crash and you lost your hair".
• From Faul's "Mother Nature's Son" :  "Find me in my field of grass".
• There is the sound of a car crash, followed by an explosion, in "Revolution 9".
• "Revolution 9" when played backwards, is said to contain the repeated phrase "Turn me on, dead man".

The sheer volume of these clues seems to have convinced a few people.
There are whole websites dedicated to the phenomenon. Visit here to check out a bunch of other clues.

The writers of DC's Batman even got some mileage out of this in the June 1970 issue.

Andru J Reeve wrote an excellent and thoroughly engrossing book on the whole phenomenon that is particularly involving without actually suckering you in.  You can buy his book "Turn Me On Dead Man: The Beatles and the "Paul Is Dead" Hoax" here. I highly recommend it.

Even more entertaining is the DVD release "Paul McCartney Really Is Dead ; The Last Testament of George Harrison" which purports to feature an audio recording of George confessing all on his deathbed. Alas 'George' sounds nothing like the George we all know and love, and any remaining credibility is derailed when Paul's ex-wife Heather Mills is implicated in the original crash, despite the fact that she wasn't even born at that point. Entertaining stuff nonethless if taken with a grain of salt (well, lots of grains of salt). The DVD is available here.

The Mystery Tour wrote "The Ballad of Paul" to cash in on it (watch it below). Plenty of other tunes have alluded to it as well - there's a CD compilation of these tunes available somewhere...



A quick google search will turn up hundreds of other websites dedicated to this urban legend, with some pretty heated arguments developing between believers and non-believers.
My stance is that this whole phenomenon only goes to show you can prove almost anything you want - true or not -  if you look hard enough for clues, especially in a songbook as rich in surrealism as the Beatles is.
My recommendation is to start with "Turn Me On Dead Man: The Beatles and the "Paul Is Dead" Hoax", and if you want to know more after that delve into the crazier end of the spectrum....

Beaulieu Porch - In Touch With The Infinite Review

Out of the Box Digital

Another album so soon from the Porch? It seems that Simon Berry is almost indecently industrious, and if the result of this is two fabulous albums in one year, then I'm not going to hold it against him.
While the self titled debut (reviewed here) was all ornate "Sgt Pepper" meets "Pet Sounds" psych pop goodness, Berry has widened his net on this one to also include stomping glam pop and just the slightest tinge of late seventies punk rock, all delivered in Berry's own inimitable style.
Opener "Anno Domini" demonstrates this well with it's sweet and sour juxtaposition of sugar sweet verses with chaotic ascending choruses layered with out of control fuzz guitar shredding.
Berry's self described "squeaky" voice is still the dominant instrument though, giving this an even more British hue than the first album - I'm immediately reminded of the likes of the Dukes of Stratosphear, while "Virgil Part 1 (Hello World)" resembles a psychedelicised Slade - no wait, come back!
There's plenty of intricate, orchestrated psychedelia here for those that fell in love with the first album, but the headlong fizz punk of tracks like "Devolution" will likely win new fans keen for something a bit more raucous too.
A number of these tracks were originally written for Berry's Spider 72 project, which was a much noisier prospect. It's impressive how seamlessly he's been able to stitch them into the Beaulieu Porch tapestry, proving even more than the debut how astute he is at assimilating a diverse string of influences into something unmistakably his own.
I doff my cap to you Mr Berry.
 
Available soon via iTunes and Amazon. Befriend Mr Porch on Facebook here to keep up to date.