SHERPA - TIGRIS & EUPHRATES (Sulatron Records LP, CD).

Two years on from their spellbinding debut album on Sulatron Records, Italian Psychedelic adventurers Sherpa are back with a stunning new record Tigris & Euphrates. A concept album of sorts based around the evolution of human language through time and how it has deeply changed the relationship between people (for better or for wors) , the new LP sees Sherpa dive deeper into the narcotic netherworld channelling everything from Popol Vuh to Spiritualized , slowly unfolding through six tracks summoning ancient magic. It’s a dark album, slow and sometimes menacing, but at the same time letting brilliant white shafts of light and hope break through the haze. Much like the first LP, the band’s second album blends together the trippy Krautrock of bands such as Bröselmaschine, Gila and the more mellow moments of Amon Düül II, near transcendental Middle Eastern flavoured drone outs with the foggy vibes of late 80s/early 90s bands like Spaceman 3, Loop etc. but this time Sherpa ramp up the atmospherics and they texturally almost come across like Slowcore Post-Rock in the quietest sections.

Tigris & Euphrates opens with the brooding ‘Kim (((o)))’ before slipping into ‘Creatures From Ur’ altered state that channels a somnambulistic Jason Pierce. Beautifully mellow, the new Sherpa record explores blissed out soundscapes that evoke Spiritualized at their best but slowed down to a fraction of the pace. ‘Equiseto’ and ‘Abscent To The Mother Language’ are slow burning psychedelic embers, strange and beautiful in equal measures, flickering in Tigris & Euphrates smoky sonic fog. When most modern Psychedelic bands are recording albums that sound like Can, Sonic Youth and Hawkwind locked in battle in a distant galaxy, Sherpa have created an LP that is totally at odds with the current scene. Apart from a squall out at the end of the closing track ‘Descent Of Inanna To The Underworld’, the new Sherpa record has a meditative quality of floating free of the anchors of the earth. Totally brilliant, you can check it out here……………………

https://sherpaita.bandcamp.com/album/tigris-euphrates

Tigris & Euphrates is out NOW on Sulatron records and available on clear vinyl (limited to 500 copies) and CD from all the best record shops and the usual suspects on line.

THEE PSYCHEDELICATESSEN 

MOTT THE HOOPLE - MENTAL TRAIN : THE ISLAND YEARS 1969 - 1971 ( UMC 6 x CD).

Before David Bowie gifted Mott The Hoople ‘All The Young Dudes’, the song that would turn their fortunes around, they were on the verge of splitting up completely, playing a few final shows due to a contractual obligation. Originally part of Island Records late 60s/early 70s coterie of British “underground” rock bands that included among others Free, Spooky Tooth, Traffic, Blodwyn Pig, King Crimson, Heavy Jelly, Vinegar Joe and Jethro Tull, the band had been partly conceived, created and named after a Willard Manus novel by maverick Island in-house producer Guy Stevens who wanted a group that would fuse together Blonde On Blonde/Highway 61 Revisited era Dylan with the Rock ‘n’ Roll raunch of the Rolling Stones. Adding Shropshire singer/songwriter Ian Hunter to established, hard gigging Hereford band Silence, led by guitarist Mick Ralphs, Stevens had a band that had depth and lyrical sophistication but live were one of the most thrilling bands on the planet that would tear up venues night after night (it was a Mott The Hoople gig that got rock shows banned from The Royal Albert Hall in the 70s after a minor riot) and it was said that “on a good night, they were the best band in the world”. Between 1969 and 1971 Mott The Hoople recorded four albums for Island, with Stevens at the controls for the majority of the sessions, however their live reputation never lent itself to record sales and any attempt to break America was met with indifference with Island dropping the band after the release of Brain Capers in November 1971. The period that Mott The Hoople were on Island has been somewhat ignored. There was a compilation, Rock And Roll Queen, released in 1972 to take advantage of the band’s new found fame but most “Best Of’s” and newer releases tend to unsurprisingly concentrate on the hits on CBS……………until now. Mental Train (The Island Years 1969 - 1971) is a 6 x CD box set that brings together all four albums, remastered and with a ton of bonus tracks, plus a disc that comprises more unheard and, in some cases, unreleased music from the Island archive and to round everything off, a disc of live material recorded at Fairfield Hall, Croydon on 13th September 1970 plus a BBC Radio One In Concert from the Paris Theatre, London on 30th December 1971. Complete with extensive sleeve notes by the former Mott The Hoople fan club secretary, the veteran Rock writer Kris Needs (who also had a hand in selecting the disc of rarities) and a 50-page booklet designed by Phil Smee who scoured the archives for rare photos and memorabilia, tracing the evolution of the band, this is the most comprehensive collection of the band’s formative years to date.

Released in a sleeve depicting a brain teasing colorized reproduction of Escher's lithograph Reptiles, the debut, self titled, Mott The Hoople LP hit the record shops on November 22 1969. A cult hit among British heads, reaching 66 on the UK charts, the first album fits Guy Steven’s vision of Dylan fronting the Stones with a mix of covers (Doug Sham’s fantastic ‘At the Crossroads’, Sonny Bono’s ‘Laugh At Me’ and a berserk instrumental version of The Kinks ‘You Really Got Me’) and some Ian Hunter and Mick Ralphs songs. As a Blonde On Blonde era Dylan tribute Mott The Hoople works perfectly as Hunter’s piano intertwines with Verden Allen’s Hammond organ throughout the record creating swirling soundscapes underneath Hunter’s Dylan-esque sandpaper vocals on Mott originals ‘Backsliding Fearlessly’ and ‘Half Moon Bay’. The second side of the record has a rockier edge, featuring probably the best known song from this LP……….Mick Ralphs’ ‘Rock and Roll Queen’ is typical of much of his songwriting from this era with proto-metal riffing and…….erm………nowadays questionable lyrics about hard lovin’ women that Ralphs would eventually find International fame with Bad Company (‘Can’t Get Enough’ was originally written for Mott The Hoople fact fans). Ralphs provided counterbalance to Hunter’s Dylan influences, contributing songwriting and lead vocals on many of Mott’s best known songs of the Island era in addition to being a vastly under rated guitar player. Nearly 50 years on, much of the first Mott The Hoople LP still stands up well today………..although patchy in places it was the blue print for their time at Island. The bonus tracks included with the debut album collect together several alternate versions of ‘Rock and Roll Queen’ and ‘You Really Got Me’ plus Hunter’s ‘Road to Birmingham’ that first appeared as a single B side, although interesting not really essential.

Although critically savaged in the music press, Mad Shadows is a fantastic album and more influential than anybody dared to believe at the time. Released September 1970, this is where Mott The Hoople really started to find their way. Featuring a collection of original songs predominantly written by Ian Hunter and produced again by Guy Stevens it’s a much darker record with the Dylan influences still to the fore and no doubt the best of their four Island records. Mad Shadows includes five astounding Hunter compositions (‘No Wheels To Ride’, ‘You Are One Of Us’, ‘I Can Feel’, ‘When My Mind’s Gone’ and the ballsy Rock ‘n’ Roll wig out ‘Walking With A Mountain’) and possibly Mott The Hoople’s best song from the Island years, Ralphs’ electrifying ‘Thunderbuck Ram’. It’s a collection of songs that where criminally misunderstood at the time of release, with only Ralphs’ badly dated throwaway ‘Threads Of Iron’ a weak link, it’s a record that has aged beautifully over the passing of time and is due for a serious reassessment. If you only ever buy one Mott The Hoople record from their early years make sure it’s Mad Shadows. The bonus tracks include the alternate version of ‘Thunderbuck Ram’ that could be found on the Island sampler LP Bumpers and a BBC radio session recording of the same song along with a collection of demos, rehearsal cuts and alternative takes from the recording sessions. The live disc, It’s Live And Live Only, includes tracks recorded at Fairfield Hall, Croydon weeks before Mad Shadows hit the record racks and shows what a blistering Rock ‘n’ Roll band Mott The Hoople where on stage at the turn of the 70s……….."Mott would swing relentlessly and unstoppably into their show every night, like a marauding band of outlaws and every night there was something close to a riot – the kids couldn't get close enough; they simply couldn’t get enough. Ian Hunter – the unwritten boss – would plant himself centre-stage behind his shades and dare anyone to remain seated." Brian May, Queen…………..The centerpiece of the Fairfield Hall recordings is a stunning mash up of ‘No Wheels to Ride’ and ‘Hey Jude’ that is included with furious live versions of ‘Thunderbuck Ram’ and ‘Rock And Roll Queen’. No stranger to cover versions, Mott would take on classic tunes and completely own them and the live disc sees them dragging CSN&Y’s ‘Ohio’ from the West Coast to the West Midlands and giving it a good kicking along with supercharged versions of ‘Keep A-Knockin’ and ‘You Really Got Me’………….when most band’s were coming down in the post Psychedelic haze, Mott The Hoople were kicking in the doors and tearing the roof offa tha mutha. The live recordings show how understated the late Overend Watts and Buffin Griffin’s contribution to Mott The Hoople was……….never flashy but rock solid always propelling the band forward creating a solid base for Ralphs, Hunter and Allen to bend songs into strange and exciting shapes.

Let’s face it, Wild Life is a bit rubbish. Stung by the commercial failure of Mad Shadows Mott The Hoople returned to the studio late 1970 without Stevens to produce their own record. Although there are a few cracking tunes, including Hunter’s pastoral ‘Waterlow’ and sublime ‘Angel of Eighth Avenue’, Wild Life is the sound of a band seriously losing its way. Flirting with Country Rock, Gospel influences and an acoustic bucolic sound more akin to label mates Traffic, it sounds like a band desperate to have a hit record by introducing alien elements into their music……….of course there is yer by now expected Mick Ralphs’ paean to hard lovin’ women, ‘Whiskey Women’, but even then there is a shortage of songs with the album bulked out by 10 minutes of ‘Keep A-Knockin’’ from the Fairfield Hall recordings. With bonus tracks that include singles from the Wild Life sessions it’s not Mott The Hoople’s finest hour, even though it it charted 4 places higher than Mad Shadows.

With Guy Stevens back at the controls, Brain Capers was a return to form. Dedicated to the memory of James Dean, Mott The Hoople’s last album for Island, released in December 1971, returned to the Dylan/Stones fusion from the first two records with a much heavier sound. Possibly the “heaviest” of the early Mott records, Brain Capers has a post Psychedelic Hard Rock sheen with Allen’s snarling Hammond and Ralphs’ crunching guitar riffs not a million miles away from the sound of Deep Purple and Uriah Heep on tracks such as ‘Death May Be Your Santa Claus’ and the brilliant ‘The Moon Upstairs’. Apart from a couple of great covers (Jesse Colin Young’s ‘Darkness, Darkness’ and Dion’s ‘Your Own Backyard’) and a solo writing credit for Verden Allen for the soulful ‘Second Love’, Brain Capers is dominated by Hunter’s ever improving song writing has he slowly becomes the focal point of the band. The bonus tracks are fantastic collection of raw demos and alternate takes including early versions of ‘One Of The Boys’ and ‘Mommas Little Jewel’ that would later appear on All the Young Dudes. The second half of the live disc features a recording on 30 December 1971 from the Paris Theatre, London for a BBC Radio One, In Concert broadcast and features five tracks from Brain Capers (plus ‘Whiskey Women’ from Wild Life) with Mott in their element playing in front of a live audience. More focused than Wild Life, Brain Capers was supposed to be the record that turned Mott The Hoople’s formidable live reputation into record sales but to say that it died on it’s arse is something of a understatement. It was the first Mott album that failed to chart either in the UK or USA leading to Island dropping the band. Disillusioned and due to split up after a final gig in Zurich in March 1972………..that was until Bowie got wind of what was happening from Overend Watts and, reveling himself to be a massive fan of the band, persuaded them to carry on, first offering ‘Suffragette City’ before it was decided that ‘All The Young Dudes’ suited Mott best. The rest, they say, is another story for later on………………    

Mott The Hoople’s output for Island was prodigious with four LPs in the space of just over 2 years. Disc 5 of Mental Train, The Ballads of Mott The Hoople, gathers together a mix of out takes, demos, alternate versions, live recordings and unreleased songs that there wasn’t room to include with the bonus tracks on the four albums, making this box as complete as possible history of the Island years. It’s a beautifully presented collection of mostly hard to find early material but at around forty quid of your hard earned, it’s more for the hardcore Mott fan and not intended as an introduction to the band (we recommend the 2009 The Very Best Of Mott The Hoople for that).

Due for release 02/11/2018, Mental Train (The Island Years 1969 - 1971) is available to pre-order now from all the usual suspects.

THEE PSYCHEDELICATESSEN

FUZZ CLUB EINDHOVEN 2018 (Effenaar, Eindhoven August 24th -25th)

With the Liverpool Psych Fest taking 2018 off as a “fallow” year leaving a hole in the festival calendar, the perfect opportunity arose for someone to fill the gap. Step forward Fuzz Club, the ever expanding London Psych Rock label who have just curated one of the best ever Psych Fest line ups for quite some time at the lauded Effenaar venue in Eindhoven. Spread over two days with two rooms of music, it was a celebration of everything Fuzz Club with a bill to die for with bands from across the globe that included the label’s big hitters 10,000 Russos along with the well respected “cult” bands and breakthrough acts that Fuzz Club have brought to the attention of the discerning PsychHead over the years such as Pretty Lightning, Sonic Jesus, Dead Rabbits, RMFTM, Sekel, Dead Vibrations, Helicon, The Oscillation and JuJu plus a few other bands that have links to the label through Fuzz Club’s essential Reverb Conspiracy compilations and the raw and live Fuzz Club Session’s releases such as Holy Wave, Josefin Öhrn and Ulrika Spacek. Add to the mix of great Fuzz Club related bands two of the current scene’s heavyweights, The Black Angels and A Place To Bury Strangers, then you really have got a “wish list” festival.

Day 1 featured sets from German Spook Blues duo Pretty Lightning, Brit Shoegazers Dead Rabbits and a somewhat more subdued than normal performance from Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation before Ulrika Spacek took everything up a notch with their own take on Detroit meets Cologne Rock ‘n’ Roll. The first day was spent mainly exploring the festival, soaking up the the vibes (which throughout the weekend were brilliant no doubt helped by in part by the……erm…..”enhanced” local cakes and confectionery available) and digging the sounds. The first real discovery was the excellent Ron Gallo who up till now had managed to stray way off our radar. Energetic and thrilling Gallo and his band played a blistering set of fuzzed up and freaked out Garage Punk to a wild and appreciative crowd in the smaller second room………if you like stuff like Ty Segal, Thee Oh Sees (or whatever their name is at the moment) etc.,etc., Ron Gallo is someone you really should check out. The absolute highlight of Day 1 was no doubt the phenomenal set from Brooklyn noiseniks A Place To Bury Strangers……………..Mostly obscured in a haze of smoke and a barrage of strobe lights APTBS were visceral to the extreme with a 60 minute ear splitting assault on mind and body with an eventual coming together of band and audience in psychedelic communion. After nearly 15 years of solid touring and recording it seems that APTBS time has finally come.

If the first day was about hanging out and checking the bands, it was Day 2 when the party really kicked off. After great sets from both The Oscillation and Tales Of Murder And Dust it was Sonic Jesus that got the party started with their 80s influenced dark psychedelic Synth Pop which eventually ended up with countless people on stage and Bez style freaky dancin’. In reality JuJu is a solo project from ex Lay Llama Gioele Valenti where Krautrock, Afro-Beat and Psych Rock are effortlessly blended together and last year’s debut for Fuzz Club was a huge critical success turning on countless new folk to this spellbinding band ……….JuJu live is a solid hour of groove where the pulverizing bass lines, heavily-reverbed guitars, textured walls of sound, gospel drones and crooning vocals from the records are all present and correct and with its rhythmic, otherworldly psychedelia alternating between the Teutonic sheen of Neu! and the funky Afro-Beat rhythms from Western Africa, Gioele and his heavy friends summon all kinds of spirits from down town Lagos to the neon lit streets of Dusseldorf. One of the highlights of last year’s Liverpool Psych Fest, JuJu again totally nailed it with a killer set among their Psych Rock peers.  Another band that has slowly been gathering fans over the last few years is French duo The Limiñanas. With a sound that is akin to Serge Gainsburg being filtered through the narcotic haze of the Velvet Underground, they have been releasing records since 2009. With BJM’s Anton Newcombe at the controls for their last record, Shadow People, they have developed a much harder, rockier sound that is really evident live. One of the unexpected highlights of the weekend………..with the drums right up at the front of the stage and in your face (and a guy in a suit……erm…….dancing on the riser where the drums usually are set up) and the sound bulked out with a load of additional musicians, The Limiñanas were gloriously loud and messy with a set that featured songs drawn mainly from their excellent  last record with a few choice cuts from 2016’s Malamore. 

The Black Angels are arguably the most important Psych Rock band of the last decade and the perfect choice to headline Fuzz Club’s first ever festival. Slowly crossing over to a more mainstream Alt-Rock audience (but on their own terms), they have been touring the world and other planets since last year and hitting the major European Alt-Rock festivals this summer. Road hardened from nearly a year’s worth of gigging, The Black Angels live have morphed into a mean, lean Psychedelic Rock experience that’s both utterly thrilling and absolutely mind bending justifying without a doubt their headliner status. With the addition of some well chosen older tunes, the set list comprised mainly of songs from Death Songs with the pulsing ‘I Dreamt’ and the sizzling ‘I’d Kill For You’ being particular highlights. With a barrage of eye popping visuals, The Black Angels are the consummate Psychedelic Rock ‘n’ Roll band playing an easy blend of trippy tunes and more guitar heavy Rock songs with a solid spine of Nuggets influences, retooling them for a modern audience.     

For a first festival from Fuzz Club this was brilliant……..Eindhoven may not be as expansive in terms of visuals and scope as Liverpool yet, but give it time. Both rooms sounded great which is always a plus and once the lights kicked in on the main stage retinas were duly frazzled. If it turns out to be a one off, then it was legendary.……….we are expecting the Fuzz Club festival to return bigger and better as the response from the PsychHeads who made it there has been more than excellent.........plus we have not had this much fun at a Psych Fest for absolutely ages and we could not recommend more you getting your ass to Eindhoven . 

THEE PSYCHEDELICATESSEN 

UFO ÖVER LAPPLAND - UFO ÖVER LAPPLAND (Sulatron Records LP, CD).

High up in their home in the Swedish wilderness, under northern lights, white snow and freezing blizzards, the self titled debut album from UFO Över Lappland was birthed from heavy jams, long motorik rhythm sessions and frantic freak outs during studio time as far back as 2012. It’s blend of sparse spacey drone outs and muscular Krautrock grooves, originally available as a 2016 cassette only release on the tiny Swedish micro boutique label Fluere Tapes, that now gets a full vinyl and CD re-issue with new artwork by the far out folk at Sulatron. It’s a welcome vinyl release of four excellent hypnotic tracks full of powerful rhythms, spacey sounds, pulsing bass, and tripped out guitars by a band that up to now have………erm………been flying well below the radar.

Easing into the glacial kosmic opener, ‘Keep On keepin´ On Space Truckin´’, UFO Över Lappland effortlessly mix the driving relentless rhythms of Neu! with bubbling synths and languid guitar…………it’s not pushing at the boundaries of Psychedelic Space Rock, treading a well travelled path but it grooves beautifully on the very edge of a hazily narcotic state of mind. The first side of the disc closes with the more experimental improvised deep space jam of ‘JaEDeJaE’ before we hit the mind blowing second side of this record. ‘Podzol’ is a instant stoned immaculate classic……beaming signals back to earth from a far distant galaxy, the track builds on layers of hum and static surfing the space waves before bursting into shards of fuzzed out guitar noise and raw primal energy before we loose the transmission. ‘Nothing That Lives Has....Such Eyes’ is just as good, a slow burning kosmische journey where no turn is unstoned until crashing into the heart of an exploding sun burning white hot. UFO Över Lappland is easy companion next to the likes of Electric Moon, Sherpa and Sun Dial in the rest of Sulatron’s excellent Acid/Kraut/Space/Psych Rock releases over the last few years and is well worth your time for side two alone. The CD release comes with a bonus track ‘Lemmy On The Beach’ where the clue is really is in the title………it’s a swirling bass heavy tune that sounds like Hawkwind’s stoner starship crash landing in Dusseldorf circa 1973. You can check the album out here…………..

https://flueretapes.bandcamp.com/album/ufo-ver-lappland

Due for release 21/09/2018 on limited edition white vinyl (500 copies) and on CD, available to pre-order from the usual groovy online traders or direct from Sulatron.

THEE PSYCHEDELICATESSEN