Download Simon Piler’s ‘ground’ for free at:

quixodelic.com/site/ground

Here you go. First Quixodelic Record of 2012 in association with the excellent New Radish, and it’s my dear friend Simon Piler singing to you 6 songs of this-worldly folk-blues all the way from sunny Alaska. While the Daydream Generation continues to fade away and yours truly attempts to gather his bearings over the edge of the world, our interstellar lo-fi roster of acts are still obviously out there doing what they do. Neat little records like ‘ground’ are the sort of thing that makes me remember why once upon a time I loved doing this so much.

In many ways these tracks are the logical extension of ‘Lo Swing…’, stripped back to mostly just guitar and voice, more intimate and spontaneous on the ears, it features at least 5 of the very best Simon Piler songs you are likely to hear, including the epic ‘i praise homeless gods’. For all you crazy ‘KINGTIME’ fans, don’t get your hopes up – ‘ground’ is its opposite, right down to the lower-case letters. These are take-it-or-leave-it hymns to and from the wild landscapes of America and the equally wild landscapes of the human heart.

In Simon’s own words: “I had a mad weekend of it and ended up on the other side with a record album.  It was pretty crazy how all the pieces just sort of knit together and I woke up this morning with this sombre little guy neatly parceled on the computer in front of me. It’s called ‘ground’.  And it’ll be the first solo Simon Piler album since ‘theatre music EP’, I think.  The Atom Band have thoroughly departed, I guess.  Though I think that you will find they are not forgotten!”

“Mad weekend” however is a misleading concept – most of these songs it would seem have been bubbling away at the bottom of Simon’s mind for some time, and the music, lyrics, even quality of the recording are all testament to something that has been patiently and deliberately brewed (like all good dream-brews should).

Enjoy!

sydlane.bandcamp.com/album/with-your-shield-or-on-it

A couple of nights ago I felt like going out and finding me some new music, but then I remembered how I skim-listened to Syd Lane’s ‘Solstice’ from earlier this year (having still been immersed in the wonderful ‘Hypatia’ which fell from the clouds the month previous). And lo and behold, what should I find, but this…

‘With Your Shield Or On It’ – an album that (like everything she does) deserved a fanfare, but instead flew out under the radar on the wrong side of twilight. 17 new songs in the style of Syd, the voice hitting even stronger notes, the piano playing somehow even more fragile melodies, and everything sounding like it was recorded in a cathedral on the moon. For fans of previous recordings it does everything it needs to do – like opening a musical box you found in your great-grandmother’s attic, timeless tunes a la Simon & Garfunkel, but increasingly Syd, and so heartfelt that sometimes you feel like you might be intruding into someone else’s head and life.

I’ve listened to ‘With Your Shield…’ every night before bed for the last four nights and each time the lullabies keep me up towards dawn. With piano ballads aplenty it’s undoubtedly something for the softer side of your brain – my own favourite tracks are ‘He Don’t Trust’, ‘The Lost Art of Faith’ (amazing little piano coda), ‘The Men of Midnight’ (VU Pale Blue Eyes style murmurings with pure epic vocals), the haunting ‘Beautiful Sky’, and finally the gobsmackingly great cover of closing track ‘Both Sides Now’ where Syd’s voice arguably hits her finest spine-tingling heights*. Considering a previous Chansons De Geste song of hers called ‘Astride A Grave’ took several months before I realised it was my favourite song in the world next to ‘Strawberry Fields’, I fully expect sometime in the future to be floored by a track I’ve overlooked in the fog of small hour mind-wandering. This whole record shimmers with greatness, and you wouldn’t expect anything less.

In fact, if there was any criticism, then expectation might be it. As astonishing as the voice sounds, as beautiful as the combination of notes and harmonies are, there is nothing you haven’t heard Syd do before. Every record refines and redefines what she does so well and as much as you cannot help but fall hopelessly for the songs, but there’s always a part of part of me that would love to hear something different, something like a protest album, the same vision applied to the external world as she does so well with the internal world of feeling. But who am I to ask for anything like that? Just a humble fan is all. And anyway, you always get the feeling that the subject matter chooses Syd, not the other way around… so long may the songs of love and lost resound from her little faraway place in the world.

*For a far less cack-handed discussion of the song ‘Both Sides Now’ and why Syd’s version is so important, then look no further than my favourite independent music blog: thestreetlampdoesntcast.blogspot.com – Griff, Gordon, and Ray have been equally educating and amazing me for the last couple of years with their essays and musings on everything from indie-pop to discussions about depression, left-wing politics, the relationship between song and memory, and have even managed to make me re-think the 1980s as a musical vacuum. Blogs don’t last forever, so please show them some support, subscribe, comment, and keep the wind in their sails otherwise yours truly will have a lot less to look forward to reading every week. Who needs tabloid newspapers when you’ve got the Streetlamp, eh?

Just the sort of thing to shake up your winter blues:

transatmospheric.com/site/the-electric-cave/

HANDWITHLEGS return with an 8-track album of new songs, a fuzzy, fucked-up fusion of electronica, bad-ass drums, and distorted vocals, all fed back and forth across a floor of effects pedals. First track ‘NYA’ is arguably one of the finest tunes to have originated from Planet HWL, so give it a spin and see what you think. It’s free to hear and download, and only buttons on itunes.

Just a quick note to say that you can now purchase a CD copy of ‘Impaled Peach’ here: impaledpeach.bandcamp.com/releases

Here’s what Ed has to say about it -

“This is a CD that looks like a peach. Every time you stick it on a CD nub, you’ll be impaling a peach! It comes in a hand-assembled cardboardy slipcase that is 100% probably made from trees, so you know it’s good! It also has a hi-res print of the album cover glued on the front, which is good because that’s exactly where the album cover belongs. But wait, there’s more: it has a slip with the tracklist on it, hand-typedwriter’d and hand-photocopied. Last but not least, it has “Impaled Peach” written somewhere on it by my very hand, because I overlooked that important detail until the very end. I’ll probably throw a number on there, too! It might be the individual production number! This CD is WAY more unique than a vinyl!”

Download: quixodelic.com/site/impaled-peach/

It’s been a while so you know this must be important. Remember Impaled Peach and his ‘Helicobbler’ EP from early last year? 8 songs of melancholy pop goodness, oddities thrown together in the shape of a record, completely unplanned and yet brilliantly coherent. Well this time he’s only gone and done it again, but full-album length this time around, a staggering 17 track masterpiece, completely unplanned and yet… if this record wasn’t designed to fall together like this, then it really should have been.

Design is the key to describing what Ed (the guy behind the music) does. Songs are carefully crafted, odd and atmospheric, brimming with pop melodies, often intricate and bursting with good-old fashioned dark-humored soul. Heavily influenced by modern psychedelic bands like The Olivia Tremor Control, ‘Impaled Peach’ flies the same fuzzy path, but it has a much softer underbelly, kept up in the air at all times with soft 60s vocals, an orchestra of Beatle-esque guitars, and ukuleles. The word ‘Quixodelic’ was invented for records like this.

First listen I f**king loved it. Second listen I started to wonder if I wasn’t underrating what Impaled Peach has carefully crafted and thrown together in his front room. As far as lo-fi goes it is possibly fated to be one of those undiscovered gems that would have shone interstellar with the right people behind it. In the greater scheme of things you somehow feel like as many ears follow its magical trails across the skies, that it will always be one of those records you’ll proudly cherish in a lucky minority.

My favourite tracks? Oh, too many. I promise that there is not a weak song among the 17 and even the instrumental psychedelic interludes play their part. Try the undeniably epic ‘Moonless Sonata For Sun’ if you want to dip your toes in at the deep end and I’ll wager that you’ll want to go swimming around the rest of ‘Impaled Peach’ immediately afterwards.

11 out of 10.

‘Impaled Peach’ can be downloaded from Bandcamp for free and hand-made CDs are in the process of being… well, hand-made. More info to follow.

So that’s where he’s been!

Having suitably blown everyone away with last year’s whirlwind ‘Exercises In Futility’, Bobby Rogan and THE Fig Mints are back with not one, but TWO records – ‘Say Okay’ and ‘Songs For My Friends & Those Girls’. ‘Say Okay’ has been at the mastering stage for quite some time, so I’ve already had a sneak preview and a review will follow. Needless to say it is very good and a little bit different from previous Figs. ‘Songs…’ on the other hand has fallen from the sky as unexpectedly as a tiny meteor and is available for free download over at CLLCT (links below). I’ve had a quick listen and have a feeling that this might be an under-the-radar gem in the ever-expanding catalogue. Here’s what Senor  Bobby has to say for himself:

Alright, everybody! At long last, there are new Figs tracks available for purchase and download, both from the music section of the site.

Say Okay is the culmination of a year of songwriting and ridiculously tedious mixing throughout 2010. It’s been done for nearly a year now, and finally after all the mixing, remixing and monetary hangups, we’re able to bring it to you for a measly 5 buxxx! Of course I think it’s worth more, but be honest: who’s gonna pay more than 5 bucks for a DIY CD-R, no matter how fancy it looks?

Well, if you just said, “Why, I’d most certainly pay more than 5 dollars for your new songs, but thank you for being such a cheap date,” then I’ve got some news for ya. If you can scare up some more scratch, go to my Band Camp page here and buy the download with the option to donate a little more to the cause. Of course, you’ll still get the real CD in the mail; just make sure you drop a line and let me know where to send it!

Songs For My Friends And Those Girls is the newest of the new, and was written in a month or so between November and December of 2010. Not much time spent behind the wheel of this one; it mostly just spilled out of the various wounds that this past winter has inflicted, which are just now starting to heal. Read all about it at the Figs’ cllct page and download it for free in the music section.

This will be the Fig Mints farewell to cassettes and tape machines as the main recording tools. Of course, there will still be some lo-fi one offs and the like, including the upcoming releases of the two soundtracks for Zombek films that were recorded over the past couple years, but for the most part we’re going big!

So make sure you mosey on over to the music section of the site and scoop up some quality tunes for your summer.

Stay tuned, kiddies!

Free download: sydlane.bandcamp.com/album/solstice

Syd Lane has done it again. While some songwriters furiously vomit up hours of garbage in the hope that something, anything redeemable might happen, and others sit chewing on their guitar strings waiting for inspiration, she has been quietly amassing an increasingly awesome body of songs, honing and refining them until, like golden apples they are ready to drop from the tree.

‘Solstice’ is the second apple of a whirlwind year but three months old. Already we have seen the utterly compelling ‘Hypatia’ make all the right ripples in the deep end of the pond. Everyone I know who has heard that album says it is mesmerising, and if you missed it then please check out what the Godfathers of bedroom-indie-pop The Streetlamp Doesn’t Cast Her Shadow Anymore said about it here: thestreetlampdoesntcast.blogspot.com/2011/03/griff-says-hypatia-beautiful-brilliant.html To be brutally honest I’ve barely had a chance to digest it myself – three or four listens on the run, safe in the knowledge that together with Jason Raspa on mastering duties, she’s produced another impeccable shimmering poetic work of art, undoubtedly more polished than its equally lovable predecessors like the epic ‘It Begins In Beauty’.

The ‘Hypatia’ mastering process and Jason’s well-trained ear for detail meant that while it was still being cut and spliced, polished and diced on the other side of the Atlantic, Syd could return to and forge on with a record we first glimpsed as ‘The Solstice Sessions’ back in January 2010. With the creative hard work done, it seems that ‘Solstice’ was ready for consumption fairly quickly, and here we are, only a few weeks later with a second Syd Lane to digest. My gut feeling when I heard it was available for free dowload was that my brain just wasn’t ready for more. Songs like these should be treasured, and experience tells me that with Syd records being crammed so full of wonderful melodies and soaring vocals, it is really easy to miss songs that you can later fall hopelessly in love with (eg. ‘Astride a Grave’, and ‘Not A Poet Be’).

But here I am, listening to ‘Solstice’ on the run. I just couldn’t help myself. And yes, it is indeed another masterpiece. Frighteningly so, for everyone but Syd who no doubt is quietly building more songs from daydreams, somewhere out there. My first impressions on individual tracks are invariably wrong, but from this one I dig ‘I Couldn’t Tell Her’, ‘Simple Pleasure For The Complex’, ‘The Moon and The Liar’, ‘Their World of Fear’, ‘My Reach Exceeds My Grasp’ and… really, who am I kidding? I love this whole record from start to finish. There are no weak links in the daisy chain, the voice soars crisp and clear as it always does, the harmonies if anything are even bigger, the BJM-esque guitar carries us on waves while the piano rings out its mini concertos, and it is familiarly Syd-like… because you sense that she is slowly and surely carving out a sound that with every record is becoming more and more her own. Budge up Mr Barrett, someday someone will describe a song as ‘Syd-like’ and not mean you.

There are only so many superlatives you can throw at some artists, before they become meaningless. Awesome, it is. Brilliant, it is. Emotionally charged, yip. Catchy, yes. Epic, most definitely. Unintentionally cool, it is always that too. For those of you who are being sucked dry by life, I hope you find some space to catch ‘Solstice’ on the run like I did, and for those of you who have all the space that you need then I hope you can set some aside for both ‘Solstice’ and ‘Hypatia’… and ‘It Begins In Beauty’… and all The Loaded Whisper’s albums. The trajectory is upwards and it sounds (insert flurry of superlatives), so catch it while you can.

Well done Syd and thank you for doing what you do.

quixodelic.com/site/uberfuzz-live-now/

Ever wished you could go and get your head frazzled by the one and only Uberfuzz, but you can’t because they live in Rugby, and that’s like… thousands of miles away from wherever you are?

Well now, through the power of free digital downloads you can (sort of) be there. Just follow the link, grabbing classic Uberfuzz tracks like ‘Epistle to a Wayward Mother’ and ‘Oh, Child’ on your way, close your eyes and imagine you are there while Paul and Kelly do all the work. Believe me, it really works!

Dressed Like Wolves have got a new album out and if you’re a fan of lo-fi bedroom pop then you should download it for free while you can. These guys are really great at what they do with folky instrumentation, brilliant lyrics beautifully sung, and minimal, but perfect production. Check out their neat little promo video while you’re there. If this is the future of music, then we’re heading in the right direction.

dressedlikewolves.bandcamp.com/album/sometimes-youve-got-to-stop-caving-and-melt

Free download: quixodelic.com/site/category/syd-lane/

2011 is shaping up to be a vintage year… Rocketships of Love, Simon Piler, Fig Mints on the horizon, possibly some Burnouts, maybe even (gulp) a Warchalking record. And now, straight out of left field with flowers in its hair, a spring in its determined step, and more magical melodies than the laws of physics deems is possible to be contained on one record, is something truly brilliant.

Of course I’m talking about ‘Hypatia’, the latest offering from the inimitable Syd Lane. The big question for me was ‘How can anything possibly top It Begins In Beauty?’ and sturdier souls might have baulked at the thought of even attempting it. Thankfully Syd’s muse is alive and well and from a couple of listens I can already say that this record could very well top anything before it. Mastered by the super-talented kindred psych-spirit that is Jason Raspa (Frogville), these fragile psychedelic ballads now glitter like a studio album, lo-fi enough to still be considered a record of and for the people, but yet you feel like this was always how these songs were supposed to sound.

It’s too early for me to pick favourites and I know from experience that Syd Lane songs creep up on you and tap you on the shoulder when you least expect them – but from what I’ve heard, why not try Saro, or Deladis, or Kate, or… shit, who am I kidding? They’re all top drawer and the record’s on Bandcamp, so just stream it from start to finish will you? Better still download it in its entirety, share it with your friends, and throw a dollar into her online hat if you feel so inclined. I know her well enough to know that the last thing she does this for is money, but a girl needs guitar strings, right?

These songs might sound like a continuation of It Begins In Beauty, but like all her previous records and incarnations (The Loaded Whispers, Chansons De Geste) you can really hear her voice grow and songwriting skills maturing into something truly awe-inspiring. The basic premise remains the same (a good song is a good song), but there are new sounds like swirling organs,or bluesy guitar, drums, or even kooky 60s kitsch-pop that defines this as a record in its own right, rather than another daisy in the chain.

Thanks for the music Syd. (Salutes).

Free download: quixodelic.com/site/lo-swing-of-the-earth/#more-708

Many things go hand in hand: I won’t waste your time by listing them here but I will however waste it by introducing you to a new combination, namely Simon Piler and the Spring. Coincidently, two of my favourite things. The latter I like because it happens immediately after that darkest of seasons. It says ‘You have survived another year.’

I like Simon Piler’s music for many more reasons, most of which I have expounded somewhere along the line. For those of you new to these parts however, let me summarise it thus – pure lo-fi, folk-thriller, imaginary dancing, epic lyrics that cut to the heart of reality in neat-shaped Japhy Ryder-esque battle-stanzas, songs that rattle on the wind, that seep into the grass, that growl like gravel and flutter like snow, songs that bake like sun, and swish like great oceans on the shore of mind. Simon Piler does all this with minimal fuss. Listening to his records is like pressing your ear to the key-hole of a cabin in the eternal woods. He doesn’t make it up for fame or fortune, and like many of us, he doesn’t do it because he has to. He does it because curiously enough, he actually has something to say to the world.

Have a listen to ‘Lo Swing of the Earth’ with your springtime boots on and tell me if I’m wrong. What he’s saying might not always be obvious, but it pounds and murmurs at something grand. Always inspirational, try ‘Song’ a mediation on death – (will my spirit fly with me? into the sweet the dry the neverending). ‘Corn Soot’, a traveller’s anthem – (if you’re moving the earth moves you, it’s a form of intimate embrace). Or the mighty lines of ‘Zoroaster’ – (when I look up the moon is full again and Zoroaster casting on a boat shaped like an anatomically correct aroused goose (in his splendid fashion) and when he smiles his crooked teeth come spinning off the silken vapor layers of deep sleep and a stern bite out of reality). These are pomes that make you feel like a middle-aged dumb version of Kerouac who has wandered with a bellyful into a new and shimmering world.

Whereas lyrically it is unsurprisingly magnificent, musically it falls somewhere between two of the GREAT Piler albums – the accessibly lo-fi experimental-folk-pop of ‘Songs From Home’, and the wonderfully experimental weird-fi off-the-wall magic of ‘KINGTIME’. ‘Lo Swing…’ is more polished than either, more gritty and bluesy, but it has its own twinkling moments like the beautiful instrumental ‘Jack’, or the supercool howl of ‘Spruce Prayer’. Is it his best record to date? Give me a few months of listening, but I’ll tentatively stick my toe in the water and say ‘probably…’

But don’t just take my word for it. Lap it up, chew it around, spit it out, kick it on, roll it into balls of dirt between your fingers, let it catch on the wind, and lie down on the hilltop, a million miles away from civilisation. Spring is almost here. And the earth swings lo.

More Simon Piler:

www.last.fm/music/Simon+Piler+and+The+Atom+Band

nickfraelich.bandcamp.com/album/obnoxious-dancing-music

Something of an honour for me this one. Nick Fraelich first appeared on the tenth and final Daydream Generation compilation at the end of 2010 and blew my socks off with the experimental folk-pop of the quite amazing ‘Meta-Song’. Away from more traditional song structures, I also knew that he dabbled in the black magic of psychedelic electronica and had heard the brilliant head-fuck of ‘Trip Tent Sound Interlude’. So when a little birdie told me that he was working on an ambient/electronic record including collaborative remixes and was looking for submissions, I rooted around on my computer and unearthed an old improvised attempt at singing a book called ‘Shubunkins’. I shipped off a two track acoustic dirge that dribbled on seven minutes longer than it should of, and within a matter of hours received a ‘Nick Fraelich Pretentious Drone Rework’ back. Pretentious or not, it’s a million times more interesting than the original and hopefully doesn’t get in the way of an otherwise super-interesting record.

‘Obnoxious Dancing Music’ has got everything you’d want from an experimental electronic and predominantly instrumental record, plenty of beats and bleeps and bloops and a kaleidoscopic arsenal of effects. It also has a genius ‘hipster’ remix of Lenn9o9n’s smash-hit ‘Alli’ – the words ‘epic’ and ‘weird’ spring to mind, and the first song of 2011 to truly punch me in the eardrums and make me grin – a remake of The Sarcastic Dharma Society’s ‘Sanyasi’.

When I was growing up and falling in love with music, guys like Paul Oakenfold and Andy Weatherall were breathing life into bands like The Happy Mondays and Primal Scream. Nick Fraelich is like one of those guys, only much weirder, and way more beautiful. Hopefully this isn’t the last we hear of him making magical Frankensteins.

More Nfrae: www.last.fm/music/Nick+Fraelich

Download it for free here: http://quixodelic.com/site/category/rocketships-of-love/

Listen to it here: http://theuticaflowercompany.wordpress.com/soundtracks/

Rocketships of Love – UFC Space Soundtrack (Book 2) by quixodelicrecords

We make our way up to the Recording Studio. Whirrping, Clankzap, Thumpslash, and Rattlerattle seem to have the biblical flood in the Quixodelic garden under control, and are busy fastening down some translucent insulation panels in a tunnel around the collapsed aft mast, effectively cutting off the garden from the rest of the ship. ‘Any idea what caused the flood?’ I ask them as we step from the mast onto the sodden corridor outside the Recording Studio.

‘Clankzap’ says Clankzap. ‘Clankzap clankzap.’

‘Rain eh? Lots of fucking rain? Well, keep up the good work.’

The Journalist taps me on the shoulder and whispers ‘You could get in serious trouble for those robo-’

‘They’re pixies’ I tell him, and knock on the Studio door. ‘Paul, it’s me… Willoughby. I need to speak to you urgently’ I shout and knock louder.

The Journalist lights a cigarette and plucks a terrifying scythe from thin air. ‘Want me to… hack it open?’

‘Where the fuck did you get that?’ I ask him, scanning his ghastly Bermuda shorts, white sneakers, seventies body-warmer, safari hunting cap, and ridiculous orange plastic sunglasses that are far too big for his face.

‘When did you last see him alive?’ asks the Journalist, ignoring my question and pointing at the Studio door.

I last saw Paul Le Keux sixty four days ago, along with two ghostly characters called Joe and Delia, salvaging cables, keyboards, drum machines, moogs and VU meters from the wreckage of our Fishbus on Plum Island and lugging them up to the studio. Like two mighty planets in alignment, the opportunity had been too good to ignore. On one hand we had one of Earth’s finest undiscovered  experimental electronic space technicians (an alchemist making musical gold), and on the other you had us… a… a… a… well I don’t know exactly what we are, but we were about to journey for several months across deep space. Ours was a (space) ship crying out for a (space) soundtrack, and right here, under our noses, was the only psychedelic cowboy who could do it.

It wasn’t easy convincing him. We met up in a museum during the summer of 2010 and I let him read Harold Archaleus’ pocket-guide to the species of the Unimerse to see if it would inspire him. He thumbed through it and looked up from the other side of the original scroll of Kerouac’s On The Road and said ‘If you can get hold of that trumpet that blows up suns… then count me in.’

I laughed, quickly realising by the steely expression in his eye that I wasn’t supposed to be laughing and said ‘Eh… okay then.’

For the record, I wasn’t bluffing. I didn’t believe for a moment that such a thing existed, but nonetheless I would endeavour at some point to try and get hold of it. The previous year I’d managed to get together 21 magical artefacts to save the Unimerse, or Universe (I forget which), so one mad old mythical trumpet surely wouldn’t be that difficult to conjure up. Also I wasn’t really thinking about my end of the bargain too much, I was far too excited that PLK had agreed to make a Rocketships of Love space soundtrack for us.

First day back on the Mardi, Paul, Joe, and Delia disappeared through the Recording Studio door. Weeks passed and things were hectic. I got killed during a Battle Golf dream and that kept me out of the picture for a month, then just as I was finding my feet again, Smally only went and assimilated me, meaning that I had to share his head until recent unfortunate events which have left me looking like… never mind. Now, a sequence of equally unfortunate developments had led me back to the Recording Studio door, and suddenly I was very worried. First of all the Geng Star began to explode, then a Unimerse-wide warrant for PLK’s arrest had been issued for apparently causing it. Even though it didn’t exist, I had a horrible feeling that somehow he’d gotten his hands on that trumpet anyway.

CR-RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAACCCCKKKKKK!

The Journalist’s first swing punctures the door and before I can figure out what is happening, his scythe is ripped from his hands and sucked out into sparkly black space along with the remains of the door itself, our internal isolation safety mechanism kicking in as we’re pulled forwards crashing into a clear plastic barrier that has dropped down from the ceiling.

‘MY SCYTHE!’ wails the Journalist falling to his knees, his skeletal face pressed against the barrier, watching it twirling off into emptiness.

My heart is hiccuping with the certain knowledge that we were a fraction of a second away from certain death, and my jaw is scraping the floor with confusion. ‘WHERE… THE FUCK… HAS OUR RECORDING STUDIO GONE!?’

‘NEVER MIND YOUR FUCKING STUDIO!’ screams the Journalist, his bony hands suddenly wrapped around my throat. ‘I’VE HAD THAT SCYTHE FOR AEONS! HOW AM I GOING TO REAP? HUH? HOW AM I GOING TO FUCKING REAP MAN?’

‘You’re strangling me’ I gargle, and he releases his grip, sobbing.

Nothing here makes sense. Part of our ship is missing and the Journalist is crying about reaping. ‘Where are you going?’ he wails, on his knees in the corridor.

‘Bunkroom em… uh… eh…  fuck. I’m going to see Uberpaul. I can’t remember which Bunkroom he’s in. We’ll try them all until we find him.’

…

BUNKROOM 8

A tattered note continues to hang from a spider’s web on the door. I knock and try the handle, the door swinging open. ‘No, this isn’t it… this is the Chief’s room and – HOLY SHIT!’

‘What is it?’ asks the Journalist behind me.

‘There’s a giant crack in the middle of the floor!’

No sign of Becky or Oscar, but you can see the stars through the crevice that runs across the centre of the room. ‘Why isn’t everything being sucked out?’ asks the Journalist, lying down on his belly and cautiously putting his eyes to it. ‘This doesn’t make any sense’ he says.

BUNKROOM 7

There’s a picture of a bar of soap and a big metal wheel on the door of Bunkroom 7. ‘Fifeclub?’ asks the Journalist.

I knock and it opens an inch, The Amalfi Glow’s bright eye appearing. ‘Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying it’ he says.

‘Ritchie, have you seen Moppy and Jesus-cop-guy?’

‘They’re still hiding in the garden’ he says.

‘Shit. I knew it.’

‘You have a fox head’ he says. ‘It’s quite disturbing.’ He looks past me at the Journalist still visibly troubled by the crack in the room opposite and the loss of his scythe, and his eye opens wide. ‘YOU!’ he says.

‘Me?’ asks the Journalist nervously.

The Amalfi Glow slams the door.

BUNKROOM 6

Someone has scratched the words “This room = kindling” on the door. I think it was Flowpoetry. I knock, but nobody answers, press my ear to the door and hear nothing. ‘This is it I think’ I say, ‘stand back.’

I launch myself across the corridor into a flying kung-fu kick. I’m certain it would have smashed the door into pieces, only at the last second Uberpaul opens it and I plummet through, doing very painful splits into one of the weirdest scenes ever witnessed on the Mardi. Bunkroom 6 has been transformed. You could say that the Unimerse’s Most Wanted has taken an already trashed room, and then trashed it to the power of six hundred and seventy nine. Stalactites of strange black frozen slime hang down from the ceiling. Strands of floss cling to every corner of the room simultaneously dark and light thanks to a slow-burning strobe on the ceiling. The place is like a crazy claustrophobic junkyard, the entire floor covered with debris – a shattered bunkbed, keyboards stacked like jenga towers, dismantled machinery, windchimes the shape of moons, everything coated in a fine layer of red dust, a giant ouija board cluttered with spilled coffee cups and frayed cigarette ends protruding halfway up a large mountain of weirdness in the middle of the room. On the floor in the corner behind Uberpaul (wearing a cowboy hat backwards, with several weeks worth of stubble, old psychedelic dressing gown wrapped around him, jar of some strange amber and blue fizzy liquid in his hands, eyes hidden by impenetrably black shades) is a small colour television set with the sound turned down. He grins and staggers backwards, falling into an arm-chair buried under endless strands of shimmering tinsel and cables.

Something spiny slithers past my face and disappears under a stack of vinyl records with bites taken out of them. I watch as he knocks back the jar in one go and belches, a mirage of amber and blue musical notes hanging temporarily in the air before popping with fuzzy distorted jingle bell sounds. ‘I suppose you’re here for the space bugle’ he slurs.

‘Actually I was here to ask you where the Recording Studio has gone…’ I tell him, out of the corner of my eye seeing that weird white creature creeping around the corner of a badly burned mattress, ‘… what the fuck was that?’

‘What? You mean the Tingler?’

‘What the fuck’s a Tingler?’

‘I picked it up on Sh’Ackulll, after I accidentally ran off with this’ he says, holding up a long bone-like stick. ‘Just don’t get frightened or he’ll attach himself to your spine. Believe me, it’s uncomfortable, and gives you terrible headaches.’

The Journalist has walked up beside me and stares agog at the sight before him, a sculpture of lava lamps swirling in his orange sunglasses. ‘It’s the end of the world’ he whispers.

‘Here, take a seat’ says Uberpaul, using the stick to whack a space amongst the debris in front of the television set. ‘You’ve got to see this’ he says, pointing at the screen where two hairy aliens have abandoned trying to fit a triangular table through a circular portal and are now putting on inflatable sumo suits and throwing darts at each other. ‘It’s called Astro World’ says Paul, ‘it’s like the Chuckle Brothers… only not as funny.’

I wrestle my way through a half-eaten papier-mache model of a red and white rocket ship and switch the television off at the wall. Uberpaul growls and the Tingler pokes its bony antennae up over the top of a lemon cactus. ‘Paul, I need you to concentrate. What happened to the Recording Studio? It’s completely gone.’

‘Gone?’ he asks, twirling the stick round in his hands. ‘Ah yeah. So it is. We crashed it on Elon IV when I was picking up the space bassoon. Where is that space bassoon by the way? I mean, it’s not like you can miss it…’

The Journalist taps me on the shoulder and I turn around. His sunglasses are pushed up onto his forehead and his tundra-enhanced eyeballs are exploding from their stalks. ‘Something just attached itself to my spine’ he says through gritted teeth.

‘That would be the Tingler’ calls Uberpaul, clambering over the wreckage of the room. ‘You need to relax, or it will eventually devour you from the inside. So the Rah say.’

‘The Rah?’ I ask, following him up the small mountain of junk in the middle of the room. ‘Paul, what the fuck is going on here?’

He stops at the summit directly underneath the blinking strobe light and looks down. ‘We finished the record’ he says.

‘You did?’

He nods with a grin and reaches into his dressing gown pocket, throws down a CD called ‘UFC Space Soundtrack (Book 2)’ that the Journalist catches. ‘I hope you like it’ he says. ‘We travelled all across the Unimerse you know. Oh, by the way, I never said thanks for the space bugle. Also, I should probably tell you that I won’t be giving it back.’

‘Space bugle? What the fuck are you talking about? Paul, they’re saying you blew a hole in the Geng Star… the whole Unimerse is looking for you.’

‘It worked?’ he asks, slightly confused. ‘It really worked? Haha! Oh wow. Fuck.’

‘Where is it? The bugle?’

‘Huh? Oh, I can’t tell you that.’

‘You have to! That thing is deadly. In the wrong hands it could -’

‘No, it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just I can’t because I lost it.’

‘YOU LOST IT?’ yells the Journalist.

‘In here?’ I ask him, scanning the room.

‘What? No…’ he says smiling. ‘Somewhere….’ he waves his arms around above his head and falls backwards off the mountain of debris, landing with a crash on the other side.

‘THIS IS NOT GOOD!’ screeches the Journalist through gritted teeth, completely panicking, scanning the liner notes on the inside of the record:

Hypno-Blast Off!
A throbbing take-off into the unimerse, accompanied by a knackered rehearsal room drum set and lunar windchimes. Broadcasts from earth can be heard dropping in and out of the airwaves to give inspiration, advice and warnings.

Streamers
Whilst approaching the Akong Supernova, long, translucent neon tails of light can be seen arcing around the ship. “They look like streamers” Smalloughby Toad states.

The Tingler
A 2ft long creature made of bone which attaches itself to your spine from the inside when in the grips of terror. This can cause slight discomfort and headaches. The Tingler is thought to be of Rah descendancy.

Tribal Dust
After kicking about on Elon IV, I take a table knife to the heels of my boots to try and get the dried swamp sod out of them. The quick drying mud crumbles into a fine, sweet smelling dust not dissimilar to blackcurrant Double-Dip. The Bantl probably keep this stuff in their nomadic lock-ups as some kind of Shake n’ Vac.

The Killing Moog
Delia guides me to her old Moog thanks to a ouija board I was using as a coffee table. Analogue modular chaos ensues.

Robot
While orbiting Cylog, I contact Joe using the ouija board again. He points me toward a 1962 recording he made with The Tornados at Holloway Road that seems more than suitable.

Solar Bank Holiday
A rare moment of tranquillity ensues when I plan to venture out of the bunk to watch the UFC movie ‘Doom Cruise’. Bank Holiday flicks usually suck, but I’ve heard this film kicks ass. I can’t get out because my space bassoon has fallen from the corner and blocked the doorway. By the time I’ve pulled it out the way I’m too flustered to watch the film. I decide to try and meditate. Me and the giant woodwind instrument meld together and the spirit of Brian Eno can be felt in the den. I’ll watch the film next week. I reckon it’ll be a cross between ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ and ‘Barbarella’.

Astro World
This is the theme tune to an interplanetary kids show I’ve been watching in my spare time. Just think of a lunar Chuckle Brothers.

Optical Nerve-Nourishment, Commercial Consumption,
Kaleidoscopic Audio Treatment
This is the colonial planetary anthem of Omicron. It’s hard to stand up and salute to because it’s such a transcendental head-trip. It normally lasts for forty-five minutes. I don’t like standing for long periods of time so I just cut it down and put an old Casio drum machine on it to help keep it together. It works well as a meditative device and distraction from late night internet shopping… hence the title.

Oh! Glorious Temple of Ra
I’m no sportsman (which is why Smalloghby put me in this bunk) but when I stretch my legs, I like to make sure they’re well and truly stretched. On one of our many toilet stops, I walk around for hours and eventually find myself in the temple of Sh’Ackulll. One of the Rah spots me picking under my fingernails with the Staff of Rah. I have to leg it back to base with dirty nails.

Lunar Hillbillys Take LSD
I got bored one day, put my cowboy outfit on, dropped some lysergic acid and wrote an electronic country song for the ghost of Jim Reeves to sing on. We couldn’t contact him though.

Long Distance
The Greys are well known for their travelling and adventuring antics. While watching one of them running around the pitch I imagine them striding across the unimerse in slow motion with their long, lanky frames. They are exploring the ether on foot to a ‘Chariots of Fire’ type anthem which can be heard here (I think the LSD is still in operation).

A Space Bugle That Can Punch A Hole Through A Sun
No explanation required.

Heart
A song from 1966 by The Remains which I thought summed up my affection towards the jolly, artistic, creative and psychedelic crew of this fine vessel.

‘What’s not good?’ I ask him.

‘HE’S ONLY GONE AND ACCIDENTALLY STOLEN THE FUCKING STAFF OF RAH! AND LOST WAYNALDAM SONG’S LEGENDARY SPACE BUGLE!’ says the Journalist, his face turning a very pale blue. ‘HE’S BEEN FLYING ALL AROUND THE UNIMERSE IN THE RECORDING STUDIO WITH THOSE GHOSTS AND NOW… JESUS MY HEAD HURTS.’

‘Okay’ I tell him, ‘I’ve got a plan.’

‘YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!’ he whines. ‘IF I DON’T GET MY SCYTHE BACK THEN NOBODY WILL EVER DIE!’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘EVERYONE WILL END UP IN LIMBO.’

‘You need to stop panicking. He already told you that.’

‘YISS’ he says, turning purple and sinking to the floor.

From the other side of the mountain I hear Uberpaul slur ‘I’m all right!’

I close my eyes.

The two of them begin to whirl around the room. Lava lamps and bones. Keyboards and vital organs. Purple dust and brain cells. Round and round they go, revolving in a tornado that eventually sputters to a standstill, a solitary individual left sitting in the leather armchair in front of me. He looks up and I must admit that he looks vaguely like Uberpaul, only much gaunter, the orange and black sunglasses fused together, the cowboy hat now black and the right way around, the psychedelic dressing gown black too (although the luminous Bermuda shorts and white sneakers are still there). ‘I can’t believe you just did that’ he says.

‘You need to return the Staff of Rah before some kind of Unimerse War breaks out’ I tell him.

‘Well obviously I know that now’ he says.

‘What about the space bugle?’

He shakes his head and starts rummaging around in amongst the junk. ‘No, I still don’t remember. More importantly I need to get that scythe of mine back… aha, here it is.’

‘The bugle?’

‘No, this’ he says and holds up a familiar badly cracked mirror, held together with sticky tape. ‘Man I look… different’ he says, feeling his cheeks and examining his own reflection. ‘How long am I going to stay like this?’ he asks.

‘How long is Satan’s cock?’ asks the Magic Mirror.

‘Oh… FUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK!’ screams Ubergrim.

‘What? What is it?’ I ask him.

‘Nothing. F-uck…’ he says again. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Okay.’

‘What are you going to do?’ he asks me.

‘I’m going to listen to the new Rocketships of Love record’ I tell him. ‘Then I’ll tidy your Bunkroom for you.’

‘Thanks’ he says and salutes in the doorway. ‘However this ends.’

And I salute back.

The record of course, is fucking amazing.

It is music to get lost in. It buzzes and shimmers, it swoops and soars, there are beats and bloops and unidentifiable flying objects gliding overhead, it is fun, and it is jaw-dropping, and it is easily one of my favourite records of all time.

The room can wait, I’m going to listen to the record again. And again. And again.

Free download: http://quixodelic.com/site/the-best-of-the-daydream-generation-0910/

So here it is. The final page in the last chapter of the Daydream Generation, a 30-song compilation called ‘The Best of The Daydream Generation 09/10′.

Thanks to a terrible year in 2009, we only managed to put together one compilation and the traditional ‘Best of…’ felt pretty pointless. Now, with three DG compilations in 2010, as well as three Quixodelic Record samplers to choose from, this one has been the most difficult to put together yet. So difficult in fact that I couldn’t even narrow it down to a single CD of songs. The first 23 tracks were as close as I could get, but the last 7 were all so great and would have graced either previous ‘Best of…’ that I had to include them. Who knows if anyone even bothers burning downloads to disc these days, but if you do, then take your pick from the 30, or split them into two discs. Whatever you do, I hope you enjoy them. They were chosen for a number of reasons – the songs most commented on, the tracks most played, and sometimes just the ones I love the most.

We’ll be keeping Quixodelic Records going into the foreseeable future, but the DG compilations have always been such an important part of what we do that I’d like to bore you stupid with some thank you’s to everyone who has helped over the years, especially Tim, and especially Kris, Davyd, and Becky, my Cozy Home comrades, and all the bands and songwriters who have been with us from the very beginning, and those who would have been if they’d known about it. Most importantly I’d like to thank everyone who has ever taken the time to download one of these compilations. Seconds are precious and there is so much music out there, but you’ve invested yours in the little guys and girls of the music world. Sometimes the songs have been really weird. Maybe at other times they haven’t been so good. But more often than not I think we’ve helped show that there is a whole other world of words and melodies and sounds happening beneath the bottom rung that can feed your head and fill your heart and make you feel like things are far more interesting than they seem.

As a last goodbye to the comps, I’ve been trawling through the songs and compiling my 100 favourite Daydream Generation songs of all time (a ‘Very Best of The Daydream Generation’ would be impossible). I’ll be posting these in batches between now and New Year at the http://daydreamgeneration.com/site/dg100/ link at the top of the site.

Until whatever shape or form the next adventure takes, I wish you all the best.

Thanks again for listening.

Smally

Free download: http://quixodelic.com/site/daydream-generation-10/

So here we are, at The End.

Nearly four years ago when this little project started I really thought that the possibilities were limitless. Nine compilations, hundreds of songwriters, and thousands of minutes of music later, I still haven’t given up on the idea that mix-tapes can save the world. Just they won’t be my mix-tapes.

But before we go, here’s a penultimate collection of 38 tracks, some new, some old, some fragile, some bold, some voices and sounds you will recognise from compilations before, and a few who are new for your listening pleasure. Daydream Generation 10 is the usual two-disc curious assortment of lo-fidelity musical oddities. Here’s a quick overview of what you can expect to find:

ZOMBIE GIRLFRIEND HOSPITAL ATTACK FORCE going melodically insane on the brilliantly titled ‘Let’s Perpetual Camera’ from the forthcoming album ‘Positives’. If this guy isn’t the future of DIY psychedelia then strike me down with a bolt of lightning. Nope, no lightning. As I suspected.

BE BOLD BRAVE ROBOT are the sort of band who make me reconsider throwing in the towel every time I listen to their inventive pop masterpiece ‘Take A Deep Breath’. There are few occasions when you hear a band for the first time and know implicitly that you are going to love everything that they do. This is one of those bands.

I can’t believe it has taken me this long to get round to listening to NICK FRAELICH’s music. A heady collision of experimental electronic folk sounds and surrealist pop, ‘The Meta-Song’ is a track that slaps you in the face and demands to know why you haven’t discovered it sooner. Absolutely fucking magic.

Anyone who has been here before doesn’t need to be reminded how much I love the music of Syd Lane. ‘Astride A Grave’ is taken from thee album of 2010, ‘It Begins In Beauty’, recorded under the moniker of CHANSONS DE GESTE. We have a lot of great records in the Quixodelic Record Store, but this one is truly something astonishingly special with it’s soaring vocals, simple melodies, and heartfelt lyrics. And of all the great songs on it, this one is possibly my favourite.

IMPALED PEACH returns with ‘Autumntide’, a carefully polished slice of self-recorded psychedelic pop. This is the sort of guy fledgling musicians should set out trying to emulate for clarity and inventiveness of recording, capturing the dark psych of Olivia Tremor Control and combining it with soulful Cohen-esque tones. You’d expect nothing less really.

THE ANTELOIDS are the reincarnation of The Sound who were featured on Daydream Generation No9. Several years on and the development is quite stunning, the lo-fi Spiritualized influenced sounds of the past making way for a more polished high octane sonic assault on your eardrums, as shown here on the aptly named ‘Invasion of the Cosmic Monsters’.

Singing from a similar psychedelic hymn sheet, THE CURIOUSLY STRONG PEPPERMINTS return to the DG comps with ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle’. As much as I loved their first album (Endless Fields of Poppy), if this is anything to go by, then up and coming ‘Echoes From The Ultraviolet Fuzz’ (spring 2011, Sunshine Cortex Records) is upping the ante. Undoubtedly influenced by The Flaming Lips, the brains behind the band Mr. Soniclovenoize Jesse Miller promises that this is one of the more mellower tracks with the band going for a more noise-pop live-sounding feel.

Another psychedelic band with a big record on the way is THE RED PLASTIC BUDDHA. Having heard several tracks from ‘All Out Revolution’, it is safe to say that Tim Ferguson & Co are covering just about every version of psych-pop-rock imaginable, adding their own accomplished sounds to transport you back forty-three years and two seasons ago to the summer of love. And you’re all invited.

PHASETRON are a new name on the Daydream Generation and I can’t tell you much about them. What I can tell you is that their contribution ‘ For The Cape’, produced by the elusive W in Cape Girardeau, is nothing short of mind-blowing. It takes a talent, or a group of talented individuals to make guitar-pop sound original and quite unlike anyone else, but these guys have somehow managed it.

ALLAN DOUGLAS returns to the DG with a live version of ‘Pacifico’ from 2008’s much lauded album ‘Lipstick Pickup’. If anything, the live version so different from its polished studio version, that it might as well be a different song. Think Johnny Cash with an ability to hit the high notes playing country-blues on the run from the cops. That there were no amphetamines consumed during the making of this song is beyond me. It’s fierce.

You just never know what you are going to get with THE ORANGE DROP. Sometimes it is psychedelic bomb songs dropped on your head from twenty thousand feet, other times it is shoegaze walls of sound surrounding your ears in the equivalent of a musical ambush. ‘Ginger Girl’ is a softer, more studious side, complete with the predictably unpredictable fuzzy guitar sounds and mind-expanding melodies. It’s a weird old world we live in when The Orange Drop sound this sane.

There are several bands called ROLLERCOASTER out there, but there is only one who can make you feel like the Jesus And Mary Chain are alive and well and playing on through the generations. ‘Happy’ is… surprise, surprise a happy pop song from Helter Skelter, something a little bit different from the usual high energy psychedelic anthem we’ve come to expect, but still recognisable as the band we’ve grown to dig.

Here’s a new project called HONEYDRUM. This first glimpse of this band, a dark but oddly poppy track called ‘Don’t Worry About Boys’ suggests that there is plenty to get excited about. You can check out their web page at http://honeydrum.bandcamp.com and get information about soon to be released cassettes at http://honeydrum.tumblr.com.

The lovely Norman Chaplin, curator of the monthly ‘A Pile of Lo-Fi‘ compilations is not a one-trick pony. Not only does he have an ear and energy to put together such a brilliant project, but he also moonlights as LUNO, purveyor of anti-folk lo-fi experimental pop. ‘Dog Perspective’ on DG9 was such a cracking original little tune, and ‘Blank Slate’ is more of the same, a previously unreleased spoken word electronic ditty that deserves a home between your ears.

Appearing on a Daydream Generation comp for the first time, GHOSTS give us ‘Song For Disappearing’. Ben says that this is a song recorded in his old apartment on the outskirts of Paris last winter ‘about finding some new place that feels like home, and the exciting planning stages that precede such an escape’. It’s a catchy track, a mixture of electronic energy and intimate vocals that make this band well worth checking out.

Definitely definitely the last record I’ll ever make, ‘King’s Short Memory’ is the first of (hopefully) an album worth of tracks from THE PAINTED SHUTS. I owe a lot to Paul Burnout and were it not for him there would undoubtedly have been no more Wheelies recordings after ‘Oh Happiness’, and subsequently no Daydream Generation. I’ve worked with a lot of very talented people over the years, but collaborating on music with Paul has always been the easiest. Going by previous Painted Shuts recordings, we always start out in first gear, so it will get better. IF I can find that keyboard jack.

From The Painted Shuts to THE UTICA FLOWER COMPANY. Once upon a time they were one and the same thing, but now with the release of ‘The Utica Flower Company 2.0′ they are more like two bubbles within a bubble within a bubble. I’m very proud of being involved in this record and though it may not pack the punch of some other albums I’ve worked on, there is a whole iceberg of word-thoughts beneath every track. ‘Daydreamer Gasoline’ is W at his finest, stuck on an inflatable Ark on an infinite ocean and drying out from a fictional drug addiction.

There is a holy trinity of DEAD CANARIES tracks. ‘Ghost In A Photograph’ is one. ‘Bird Peach’ is another. Both have previously been featured on compilations I’ve put together. ‘Something’ is the third, and finally I’ve persuaded Jon of the Atom to let me use it. From the truly brilliant ‘Something Else’ in 2009, Katie Saul belts out a modern folk-anthem that even Jon himself can’t quite believe he wrote. One of my favourite songs ever.

You know FIG MINTS (OF YOUR IMAGINATION)? Bobby Rogan, master of the two minute musically-upbeat-lyrically-downbeat guitar-pop anthem? Well think again. ‘We Love You’ is the first single from imminent Fig Mints record ‘Say Okay’. It’s a noisy return to the sounds of the brilliant ‘Bad Choice Brigade’, only chugging under extra squalls of shoegaze sonic feedback. Something tells me that whatever he is making over on that side of the puddle is going to be epic.

Oh LENN9O9N… As the last DG comp fades out I will forever be haunted by the fact that he wouldn’t let me use the irresistible lo-fi ‘Nina’s Paw Got Stuck’. Three times I have asked him and three times he’s hawed telling me that the song in question is rubbish. Thankfully he has made up for it three times with tracks like ‘Treat It Like A Joke/Fan In Waiting’ – two songs for the price of one. An abandoned opening track for a solo record that is presently sitting on a back burner while he cooks up something special with Zakk Zielke, this is the aptly named Lenn9o9n at his very, very best.

It’s an honour and a pleasure to see Pierre aka CARTON SONORE return with an unreleased track from 2008 called ‘Dehors Il Fait Froid !’ (that’s ‘Outside It’s Cold’). A bustling cinematic instrumental, it’s the perfect music for staggering around in the snow, full of clacking clicking instruments, organs and what sounds like an accordion. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but either way I fucking love it.

A developing birthday tradition in the FAILEDSITCOM family, this song was written and recorded for his sister. You just can’t help but feel happy listening to Sam’s careful interweaving of hip-hop and folk-pop, murmured vocals, shimmering melodies, fluttering beats. Long may the birthday tradition continue!

So having recently fallen completely in love with DRESSED LIKE WOLVES’ ‘I Could Walk On Water, But I’d Rather Part The Sea’ (number one contender for my favourite album of 2010), it is a privilege to feature one of Rick’s demos on another DG compilation. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for anyone who loves hearing home-made lo-fi magic, then it is a must. Armed with an acoustic guitar, a glockenspiel, and a voice as pure as uncut drugs, ‘Anniversary’ is a welcome addition to the Dressed Like Wolves back-future catalogue.

No longer William Carpenter and the Towering Trees, and just TOWERING TREES, you would be forgiven for wondering what they did with Will. Thankfully he’s still there with his golden voice and observational lyrics, just they shortened the name to make it easier to write/spell/say. ‘Rude Sex’ is as fine as any William Carpenter song, a four-piece band set-up playing an old sixties style riff like a poppier version of The Strokes, and Will doing his thing over the top of it. It’s simply effective.

Finally. JAMES REDMOND has written a Christmas song. Upon completion of  ’Lonely Christmas Time’ at the 11th hour on deadline day, a team of crack commandos immediately removed it from under his nose and zoomed across the rooftops of Liverpool to email it from an internet cafe to me. Obviously it was worth the wait and has been duly added to the Smally family Christmas CD in between Slade and Bing Cosby. And for the 10th consecutive compilation Jay has the honour of being the last song in. Nobody else would get away with it.

‘The Birthday Party’ by THE GODFREY REPORT is another Allan Douglas project, an instrumental track for a film he recorded earlier this year. It’s pretty great stuff – like The Beach Boys on vacation in Nashville orchestrating a wild west themed horror show with guitars and swirling organs. If that doesn’t sell it to you, then nothing will.

SHADOW PUPPETS is a side project of Warchalking’s from several years ago that may or may not ever see the light of day. Seemingly on the operating table now for as long as I’ve known him, occasionally I hear drips and clips but rarely do I get a full song served up on a plate to feast upon. ‘Listen To You’ suggests that the wait might be worth it. Think a song plucked from the first Warchalking album, breaking into the recording studio after dark, hunched over the microphone with a mysterious full band in the shadows behind him. There’s even a guitar solo.

I’m so glad we got VINCENT NIFIGANCE back for a second compilation. With arguably the best record covers and album titles in the business, ‘Transistor’ is from ‘The Self-Fulfilling Secondary Stumbling Prophecy’ (see?). Noise has never sounded as infectious as this, sawing and hammering out a song with a melody that is positively unshakeable. A+++ out of 10.

What can I say about SIMON PILER that I haven’t said somewhere before? This guy has taught me more in the last year and a half than I learned in the nine years post-University before virtually meeting him. He’s a poet, a musician, an artist, and a magician, he was born from a dew drop and has a little theatre inside his chest, he wears a raven magic hat and has a little pointy beard that delights kids on aeroplanes… oh, and he spearheads the Atom Band, as you can hear on the typically folktastic ‘Swing Close To Me’. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

I’ll let Kellan Stover from WINTER PAINTED WHITE do the talking about his music. ‘I’m Kellan Stover. Previously the drummer for General Oglethorpe and the Panhandlers before leaving on amicable terms, I now focus on my solo act, Winter Painted White, that had taken the back burner for a while. While still a hobby, and no means my bread and butter (I’m actually an illustrator), I find songwriting and recording a very personal and cathartic process. It sounds contrived to say that I write songs for myself and those close to me, but for the most part it’s true. When your biggest fan is your girlfriend, you know you’re not breaking out or being added to a strangers playlist far, far away.’ Having heard five of his songs including ‘The Traveler And His Worn Out Shoes’ I can safely say that WINTER PAINTED WHITE is one of many really undiscovered gems that are glimmering somewhere out there and his music really deserves more attention.

There’s only so many times you can be told that a band are worth checking out before you make a little space to see what all the fuss is about. THE YATARIS are one of those bands. I’ve lost count of the people who have recommended I check out their daunting double-album ‘Mean Winter/Joyous Praise’ on CLLCT, and I wonder how many people there are like me out there, following the crumbs and still waiting for a space to open up? But if anything is going to kick us into gear then it’s tracks like ‘Africa’ – an acoustic indie pop punk adventure of a song, with one foot in the world of lo-fi and another in a place that is weirdly Yatari. Count myself duly kicked.

‘Everything’ was the last song I recorded as THE WHEELIES, testing out a microphone that I was kindly sent by JOTA to solve the five year problem of hiss. As you can see, it’s a Bright Eyes cover and I neglected to speak the speaking parts because when I talk I sound Scottish and quite silly. I used to sing my kids to sleep with this one until someone put a padlock on the strings of my ukulele and (perhaps deliberately) misplaced the key.

After 15 years THE REAL BURNOUTS have gone digital. Fully expecting to hear some sort of 69-track beast of experimental psychedelia, instead we get ‘Bubble Design Soundproof Machine’ a drum, four-note guitar, strummed chords, and the most beautiful lyrics you could ever imagine piece of musical simplicity and off-the-wall genius. Feeling is believing.

It’s great to finally have a JEREMIAH JAMES poem on a compilation. I’ve heard him read and read his stuff myself many times before and am always blown away by the Blakeian grandeur and consideration of Jer’s words and ideas. ‘Dev And The Tyger’ is one of those real poems of weight and meaning, loaded with observational emotion and as timeless a piece of spoken word poetry as I’ve heard.

Bear with me on this one. ROCKETSHIPS OF LOVE head honcho Paul Le Keux was picked up at a strip club in Rugby at the end of summer and flown into space with a mission to make a soundtrack for the second book of The Utica Flower Company ship adventure. Of all the people I know, he was the only one I could have asked to attempt it. Recruiting the ghosts of Joe Meek and Delia Derbyshire, the three of them have been locked in our Recording Studio ever since making the most incredible full-length space record. ‘Optical-Nerve Nourishment…’ is a track from this record and it is fucking epic. You can hear a selection of tracks from the new ROL at http://theuticaflowercompany.wordpress.com/soundtracks/

And to end the last open Daydream Generation compilation we have a guy who has been there from just about the beginning. His name is KEITH RICHARD CRAIN, but you might also know him as Sucks To LaLa Land, and before that River Speak English. As always Keith has contributed a Dylanesque folk-lullaby, this time called appropriately ‘It’s All Over Now’. It was just too beautifully titled and sung to not make it the last ever song.

And with that we’re very nearly done.

Thanks to everyone who helped put this particular compilation together and I will thank everyone at length next week when I put together the final comp.

This mix-tape might not save the world, but I hope you enjoy listening to it all the same.

s

www.last.fm/music/Zombie+Girlfriend+Hospital+Attack+Force

Always good to find something like this on the wrong side of a winter night:

“Because everyone’s an attention whore deep down inside, a completely unremastered, unremixed, unchanged set of recently released songs, presented for the first time on one easy-to-listen-to (although this is undoubtedly relative) playlist.

Now is your chance to hear all of your favorite Zombie Girlfriend Hospital Attack Force hits, including ‘Nemesis Closes The Holocene’, ‘Accidentally Watching A Light’, ‘The Words Are Alright’ and many, many more!

We are so confident that you will enjoy this release that we are offering a full refund to anyone who isn’t satisfied with this completely free release that you don’t have to pay any money for and therefore you won’t be able to get a refund because a refund of nothing is still nothing, dumbass.

This release will definitely go over with your friends and loved ones as well– nothing says ‘I love you’ like a bunch of pop songs that have very little to do with love, romance or anything at all, really.”

Genius.

(Finally) Available for free download!

here: http://quixodelic.com/site/category/the-utica-flower-company/

Okay, let’s do this again…

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UTICA FLOWER COMPANY2.0

Through the winter of 2006 and spring of 2007 I made a lo-fi psychedelic-pop record called ‘The Utica Flower Company’ with three guys from Cozy Home Records – Paul Burnout (The Real Burnouts), Bobby Rogan (Fig Mints of Your Imagination), and Luke Humann (Arthur Rules). It wasn’t released until a year later through the Cozy Home, but looking back I’m still very fond of that haphazard little collaboration.

The title track on the record was about a secret basement beneath a flower shop where ‘revolutionary people meet and records play for your soul’. In early 2009 I stumbled over an old email to Paul Burnout where I said that some day I’d like to start an actual Flower Company just like this. At the same time we were working on Quixodelic Records and had been referring to the collective, featuring artists from all over the globe, as The Utica Flower Company. So it wasn’t as giant a step as it sounds going out and buying a ship with the intention of sailing around the world.

On the 1st of May 2009, the Mardi set sail from Jacksonville with most of the collective on board. You can read about our adventures here:

theuticaflowercompany.wordpress.com

Now this is where is gets really weird. Eventually our imaginary ship sailed off the edge of the world and the four surviving Company members (myself, Simon Piler, Becky N, and Warchalking) escaped on an inflatable dinghy called The Ark with nothing but some cigarettes, rum, and a handful of salvaged musical instruments to keep us entertained while we drifted through the Unimerses.

Thankfully we had an old 4-track to capture the songs that have since been compilered and made available as ‘The Utica Flower Company 2.0′. These include (in my opinion) some of the most poignant songs Simon has ever written, three brand new Becky N tracks (fans of hers will appreciate that 3 new songs is nearly a year’s supply), a brilliant new Warchalking track called ‘Daydreamer Gasoline’ concerning the perils of smoking Rongovian tundra, two salvaged songs from cassettes made by some guy called Willoughby Toad, me re-singing the first Wheelies song I wrote in 2006 having ignored music for 9 nears previous, and all four of us singing together on ‘The Utica Flower Company Refrain’. It is understandably very different from his older sibling, limited by our lack of instruments and creative exhaustion from the previous year’s calamities, more folk than psychedelic, but crackling and popping with the same lo-fi genuine goodness. As different as it sounds, I am equally proud of the results and almost every song features some form of collaboration between its creators. I wrote ‘I’m In Love With You’ then Simon re-wrote the words before singing and played it six million billion times better than I ever could. Warchalking does backing vocals on Becky’s lovably diggable ‘Shark Ark’. I sing backing on Simon’s epic ‘Lung’ and duet with Becky on her ‘Things We’ve Done’. She plays accordion and Simon plays trombone on Willoughby’s ‘Ballad of Willoughby Toad’… the list goes on. Something that on paper should sound like a compilation of four Quixodelic artists somehow ends up sounding like a coherent-ish record and an audio postcard penned as a keepsake for ourselves.

Much of the coherence is to do with Simon Piler’s diligent mixing and mastering of the finished record, a feat which required him to sneak in and out of an alternate universe via a little door at the back of his brain throughout the summer at great personal risk to his own sanity. For this reason alone I hope you take a couple of minutes to download our imaginary little record and have a listen.

And we hope you like it.

Smally

You can download them for FREE over at

Quixodelic.com

THE MONDO-CITY MOTORPSYCHOS

Variable Lag EP

This little gem fell into my hands while I was putting Daydream Generation 9 together. Here’s what I managed to dig up on these guys:

“The MCMP hail from Las Vegas where they were chucked out of the casino circuit fore playing too sleazy. They now frequent bars at the less profitable end of the strip where their brand of garage’y 60’s R&B is both appreciated and reviled.”

FIG MINTS (OF YOUR IMAGINATION)

We Love You EP

Next up we’ve got… wait for it… brand new Fig Mints! (Ah shit, that doesn’t work, does it? You already knew it was them from the title…) Anyway, it’s still something to get excited about. Here’s what Bobby has to say about it:

“This is the single for a song on the upcoming album, Say Okay. It includes the new release of a song called We Love You, as well as a remixed release of What Happened to Holiday, which originally appeared on Daydream Generation #8; Venus (Don’t Believe In Us), which was previously only available aboard an imaginary sea vessel; and Missed Bliss, a demo for a different upcoming album tentatively titled Bad Age for the Underdog.”

…

Finally there’s two, yes TWO new records from Planet Le Keux. They are:

PAULO RHYTHM & HIS PHANTOM BLUES

Live At The Strip Club

A spokesman for Uberfuzz said: “This was recorded at Rugby’s’ The Strip Club and consists of Paul playing old blues and R&B numbers with a guitar, tambourine with his foot, and singing through a distorted old guitar amp for maximum blues dirgeness. It owes as much to groups like The Cramps and The Gories as it does to Leadbelly and Bo Diddley.”

and…

ROCKETSHIPS OF LOVE

Sonic Ashtray

Second full-length record from Rocketships of Love. If you don’t know anything about this project, here’s what it’s all about:

***PROPERLY WIRED…FULLY EARTHED…From Rugby, ROL is a celebration of all things electronic and operating outside of normal gravity fields. The transmissions you are receiving are all cover versions except the instrumental pieces and are salutes to fellow space travellers. These renditions have been used to develop the ROL sound (acheived predominantly by the use of a MicroKorg Modular Synthesizer, Boss Drum Machine, electronic toys and various effects pedals). Vocal performaces are delivered by Kelly Le keux of ‘Uberfuzz’, Matt Storer of ‘Uberfuzz’ (www.myspace.com/uberfuz2) and ‘Elfwood Prattali’ (www.myspace.com/prettyboybluei) to name a few. All songs are mastered by Regal 3/30***

This one’s so hot that even I haven’t heard it yet! So join me right now floating over to the store to download it… I cannae wait!

Download it for FREE at: quixodelic.com/site/category/warchalking/

Listen to ‘Diving Bell’:

Download audio file (Warchalking-DivingBell.mp3)

Finally…

The debut Warchalking record, written and recorded during 2007, now available as a free download zip at the link above.

Long overdue and probably the most played CD in my house, discovering this record in the summer of 2007 was as important to me as discovering the legendary bands and songwriters of the 1960s when I was a kid. Warchalking makes accomplished DIY music in various rooms in his house in Cape Girardeau – and this self-titled debut was his first attempt at writing a whole album by himself. It is a surprising and inspiring listen for any would-be songwriters with a unique vision who want to sing it to the world, but don’t know where to start.  I once described him as a ‘one-man orchestra’, but actually it is just carefully layered vocal harminies and simple acoustic guitars melodies combining to form an organic wall of sound. All nine songs are worth their weight in musical gold, but highlights include the driving brilliance of ‘Diving Bell’, and the haunting ‘Acts of Medicine’.

Dig in.

Find out more about Warchalking at: www.myspace.com/warchalking

Out Today

Download it for free at: quixodelic.com/site/category/motherbird/

Listen to ‘Blasphemy’:

Download audio file (Blasphemy.mp3)

I know what I like and I always like it. That’s why every so often I have to throw myself from the same old train to crash-land in the undergrowth of something completely different – something that pushes boundaries, that breathes poetry from the gut – something much, much darker. motherBIRD is all of those things… burning at the heart of the moonspun forest, fluttering always up ahead, out of reach, far enough away to be forever unidentifiable, mysterious, unfathomable, and impossible to catch in the jar of a few paragraphs. But I’m here, so I might as well give it a try…

I was first tipped off about ‘a really interesting songwriter’ from Sydney by the now sadly AWOL Splendid Isolation podcast back in 2008. Curiously I still feel exactly the same way I did when I first heard motherBIRD’s music two years down the line – it is unlike anything else going round… eerie and inventive electronic sounds with meandering guitars combine with a spellbinding voice, in turn carrying a blizzard of mighty words simultaneously hyper-human fragile and weirdly other-wordly.

motherBIRD is a very good musician, and a very great singer. But it is this poetry brought to life by the music that makes her such a unique and exceptional talent. Rather than the songs being mere vehicles for the words, the arrangements and the expressive scale of the voice takes the poetry to another level, where the song and the word are symbiotic and inseparable from each other.

‘How To Believe’ is a six-song introduction that won’t appear on the much-anticipated official motherBIRD release that has been carefully cooking for years rather than months, and is now finally fluttering towards completion. See thegrandcuckoo.wordpress.com for an intriguing and inspiring look behind the scenes at the making of this record. Our little demo, put together for Quixodelic begins with the spectral ‘Salvation’, full of electronic bells and muffled beats, part-whispered, part-sung vocals that close with the haunting ‘Now the devil wants to befriend me/Sends gift cards on the full moon’. As beginnings go, it is about as wonderfully strange a beginning as you can get. And thankfully, this record just gets even stranger.

More bells begin the brilliant second track ‘Blasphemy’, before distorted vocals and menacing beats kick in. On the spectrum of dark to light it is probably as dark as the record gets, claustrophobic and curiously fragile at the same time with its intricate sound effects and more prodigious lines like ‘Fly me a sparrow/Shoot it down with my arrow/Cupid got real mad/Curses the heart forever sad’.

The semi-spoken ‘Crossing Yourself Before The Fall’ is a cascade of mythological imagery and swirling psychedelic organs. ‘To the delighted delphic deity/A little spark brings a great flame after it/When it arouses a longing in anyone’ is one of my favourite lines from the record, complete with hypnotic trance-inducing delivery.

Despite being one of the most obvious home recordings, ‘I Heart U’ is also one of the most accessible with its rolling electric guitar, reverb-drenched hissing dreamlike voice, and cool chorus line of ‘I heart U for the last time’. You guess these songs were never designed to be catchy, but the atmosphere and words and moments like these will stick in your brain long after the record has finished.

Penultimate track ‘Before The Ascent’ is an experimental lullaby with soaring wordless vocals, giving way to the record closer, the beautiful, if lyrically sombre and reflective ‘Salvation’, a point of realisation with its stuttering beats, flickering electronic pulses and circumspect final lines that sing ‘Never one to fly/What a mess/I kept pretending/Child’. The first thing you’re going to want to do when ‘How To Believe’ finishes, is to go back and listen to it again to try and make sense of what you’ve just heard. It is a little bewildering, very different, quite intense, utterly bewitching, and…

…and you know what? This is to music, what ‘Twin Peaks’ is to television. Time for you to jump off your train in the moonlight and get lost walking backwards through the woods while the wheels on the track roll away in the distance.

Find out more about the newest addition to the Quixodelic collective at:

www.myspace.com/motherbirdtv

www.facebook.com/pages/motherBIRD/307871567253

motherbirding.wordpress.com/

You’ve got to keep your eye on the ball these days otherwise little gems like this fly under the radar. But never fear, you can download Simon Piler’s latest (re-released) record for free in its entirety over at your friendly local neighbourhood Quixodelic Record Store -

quixodelic.com/site/test/

Here’s what everyone’s favourite Simon has to say about this neat little 6-song record from 2008:

*** Another release for you from the Simon Piler back-catalog. Slowly yet surely, folks, slowly yet surely… ***

In 2008 I wanted to release three EPs simultaneously. It was sort of a way to have a joke at the expense of rigorously marketed music. In the end, the EPs weren’t released simultaneously, but I did eventually release three: ‘theatre music EP’, ‘Test’, and what would become ’songs from home’.

Test was originally entitled ‘Five Goddamn Love Songs’. I guess it’s for people who like love songs but don’t know the first thing about being in love. Do you think you are in love? Who are in love with? If you can answer the first question but not the second, ‘Test’ may be just for you.

Aye, thankee for listening!

Yip, nothing like some Piler songs to alleviate the blues and get the brain cogs whirring….

New album from the surrealist psychedelic pop pioneer who goes by the name ZOMBIE GIRLFRIEND HOSPITAL ATTACK FORCE. The new record is an epic double album called ‘Greenland’ and is available for free download in a variety of places. You can grab it in full here:

www.mediafire.com/?5nx0lzjmmoz

or have a listen before you leap over at CLLCT, here:

cllct.com/release/greenland0

I recently wrote a little review of the first two ZGHAF records, so I won’t go into it again so soon why I think this guy is one of a unique group of individuals out there making genuinely original and massively underrated music. If I was to sum it up in two words I’d go for ‘catchily insane’ and my spellchecker is telling me that ‘catchily’ isn’t even really a word. So instead I’ll copy and paste what Sing Sun Sing says about his latest (and probably greatest) record:

‘Greenland’ is the name of a country to the Northeast of Canada, and an abandoned amusement park in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The country has a lot of ice, and the abandoned amusement park has a lot of spiders.

I think it’s interesting that two places that are actually kind of bleak and depressing are named ‘Greenland’… I guess because it seems like a such a happily-ever-after kind of name. But then, I suppose that the amusement park is so overgrown now that it is a lot greener than it used to be… and thanks to global warming, Greenland is getting agriculture. Ironic!

In some ways, this sort of thing somehow relates to what I was trying to capture on this, my first double-yet-not-double album. I think they’re actually fun songs, but a lot of them involve the end of the world or death or apathy or banality or creepiness or depression.

Some people may not enjoy such things, and some people might think my album is a complete piece of shit (they’re wrong, by the way– I rock), but I think a lot of people would probably have a pretty awesome time at the abandoned amusement park… it’s a really magical place.

Also, I consider this to be my most Zombie Girlfriend Hospital Attack Force-esque album… and probably my best one!

Find out more about ZGHAF here:

cllct.com/art/zombiegirlfriendhospitalattackforce

http://cllct.com/release/2ndfanfareforelephant6

“This is the 2nd (Annual) Fanfare for Elephant 6, a logical continuation of the infamous Fanfares for Neutral Milk Hotel. As the result of a few months of constant labor from all those involved (38 unique artists), this collection is quite a colossus (40 tracks, over 2 hours). I entreat you to lose yourself anywhere within and return a more psychedelic person. Many thanks to the artists of the Elephant 6 Collective for the inspiration.” – EAB (Impaled Peach)

Listen to and/or download the 2nd E6 fanfare, orchestrated by Ed, with a healthy sprinkling of some of your favourite Quixodelicists covering various Elephant 6 bands – Impaled Peach (‘Love Athena’ by the Sunshine Fix), Fig Mints (‘The Secret Ocean’ by Elf Power), Lenn9o9n (‘Psychotic Feeling’ by of Montreal), and Dead Canaries (‘King of Carrot Flowers Pt.1′ by Neutral Milk Hotel). Well worth a couple of hours of your time.

A Quixodelic Record #3 – Download it for free today!

Here: http://quixodelic.com/site/category/quixodelic-records-sampler/

An unexpected something to kick-start or wind-down your summer. ‘A Quixodelic Record #3′ takes off where UFC1 and UFC2 left off, gathering most of your favourite Quixo-urchins under one roof to do what they do best – sing their little hearts out. Month on month since we started The Daydream Generation and built our own net-label, visitors to the site have slowly and surely been a-growing in numbers. Hopefully for those of you new to this corner of the internet, this sampler of bands/songwriters whose albums are available as free downloads in our Quixodelic record store will point you in the direction of some music you might like. The thing I love most about this particular project is that as well as being talented and/or original musicians, the people behind these songs are without exception some of the loveliest folk you’re likely to meet on your virtual travels. On the right of the page there are links to their various websites, so if you like what you hear then please take a few minutes to drop by and say hello and tell them what you think. Okay, so without further ado, here are 16 paragraphs about the songs that make up Quixo-3:

THE UTICA FLOWER COMPANY – Shark Ark

Three years ago Paul Burnout, Bobby Fig Mints, Arthur Rules and I wrote the original UFC record about a secret basement beneath a flower shop ‘where revolutionary people meet and records play for your soul’. On the 1st May 2009 the Quixodelic collective turned the concept into a fictional reality, setting sail on an imaginary ship called The Mardi, and writing a book/blog of our adventures over the last 13 months. The Mardi finally sailed off the edge of the world on April 14th 2010, and the four surviving members of the Flower Company – myself, Simon Piler, Becky N, and a tundra fiend called ‘W’ were cut adrift on a weird little dinghy with ‘The Ark’ penned on its side. With nothing but some conveniently salvaged musical instruments and our frazzled imaginations to keep us going, we drifted and wrote some songs. ‘Shark Ark’ is one of them, written by Becky for the soon to be (hopefully) finished epilogue record entitled ‘The Utica Flower Company 2.0′. Thankfully we are all now safely back in our own brains.

THE REAL BURNOUTS – Get Behind The Wheel And Shift It

One of my favourite Burnouts songs of all time, taken from the legendary ‘Transparent Mirror’ record, released by Cozy Home Records way back in 2005 (cozyhomerecords.com). The first time I heard this song it was live on the radio, mad brilliant voices recounting a comical tour of Rongovia before launching into an acoustic version of ‘Get Behind The Wheel…’ There were so many things about it that made perfect sense; the catchy melody, the surreal lyrics, the feel-good energy driving it along, and the realisation that music doesn’t have to be technically perfect to be completely perfect. I hope it is as life-changing for you as it was for me.

SYD LANE – Only A Dream

**Breaking News** Syd Lane has a drum kit. For fans of her soaring, soulful psychedelic ballads this is an interesting development. Presently locked away in her castle in the sky writing and recording a new album, the word on the virtual street is to expect something epic, and if this first glimpse is anything to go by, then the word sounds like it knows what it is talking about. ‘Only A Dream’ is everything we’ve come to expect from this multi-talented poet-singer-songwriter… plus drums.

FROGVILLE – Just Like Sunday

If the download numbers are anything to go by, then it would seem that finally perhaps the world is rightly switching on to Frogville’s 2009 pop-psych masterpiece ‘A Bug-Eyed Swamp’. And so, with Jason promising a second record/six-headed monster sometime in the not too distant future called ‘MK Ultraphonic?’, now’s as good a time as any to revisit one of the highlights from the first album – ‘Just Like Sunday’ – two minutes and thirteen seconds of just kicking around in sunshine melodies and diggable songsmithery.

KALEIDONAUTS – Suspended Animation

Unreleased track from ‘I Do Not Currently Own A Spaniard (Mine Died)’. I wrote this with Jon of the Atom in early 2007 and it was dropped from the record after he decided he didn’t like his music on it. We tried remixing it again in 2008, but it still wasn’t working, and I tried to resuscitate it once more in 2009 attempting to put together the long-lost third Kaleidonauts record ‘K2′. That all said, as much as it’s a lost cause of a song, and this original version involves my clumsy mixing, people who have heard it seem to like it, so now seems like as good a time as any to finally put it out there. Sorry Jon.

THE FALLING FLOORS – Eucalyptus

Having very recently been revived from a technicolour time-capsule buried under Carnaby Street in 1966, Manchester’s psychedelic-popsters The Falling Floors are thawing out working on a 7″ single and a third album scheduled to be released on cassette through the newly formed Chamber Records. ‘Eucalyptus’ is (possibly probably) my favourite track from 2008’s self-titled debut (it’s just there are a lot of definitely definitely great songs on there), like an apple that has fallen not so far from the Pet Sounds tree, and a perfect introduction to this band for you to sink your teeth into.

LENN9O9N – I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For

Honestly, I wanted to put Lenn9o9n’s lo-fi gem ‘Nina’s Paw Got Stuck’ on here for a number of reasons: A. It’s great, B. People really like it, and C. It shows a completely different side to his predominantly synth-orientated recordings. But as always the artist knows best, so instead we have the seriously short, but also seriously brilliant ‘I Hope You Find…’ and there is no denying that: A. It’s REALLY great, B. People are going to love it, and C. It is Lenn9o9n at his electronic best.

SIMON PILER AND THE ATOM BAND – Space Bottom

Soundtrack from a flight to the moon. The actual moon. It took me a few listens to fall in love with this song, but now whenever I look up at the starry sky I hear the ‘Space Bottom’ accordion hum its meandering notes and everything seems just that little bit more magical. Think our very own lo-fi ‘Space Oddity’, previously only available as a loop on a wrecked Fish Rocket that fell into the void. Simon says: “I’m glad to have a chance to say hello, as I’ve relocated once again. I’m back up in the crisp wilderness of interior Alaska these days, and certainly learning a thing or two about lupine. I burned my tongue on gunpowder tea. I burned my eyes on a blood moon swinging-apocalyptic through the dusky 3 AM skies. Songs keep putting out buds on my windowsill, so I’ve been making simple facsimiles with my newly re-forged Music Journal. That being said, of course, my first and foremost energies are focused on the mixing, mastering and packaging of the second Utica Flower Company album. It’s hard for me to comment on exactly how that makes me feel, but there is certainly a component of inside-outness to it. As if someone left open the back door to my brain. An alternate EXIT. I suspect I’ll be trying a few more special re-releases from my catalogue on CLLCT. I think it’s about time to bring ‘Short Score’s Album’ and the ‘Test EP’ back up to the surface of the reflecting pool. (My page is right here: http://cllct.com/art/simonpilerandtheatomband )”

FIG MINTS (OF YOUR IMAGINATION) – Me And My Brain

Bobby Rogan finally seems to have the balance right. While he continues to keep one eye on the Cozy Home, new record ‘Say Okay’ is brewing in the studio, and a Fig Mints album of covers has also been pencilled in for the summer. Three new songs have already been written for another record, tentatively called ‘Bad Age For The Underdog’. This track here, ‘Me And My Brain’ is an out-take from ‘Say Okay’, cut because ‘it wasn’t loud enough to fit in with the rest of the songs’. It is classic Fig Mints – astutely goofy, musically infectious, and well worth a couple of minutes of your time.

JAMES REDMOND – Lonely World

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded the new James Redmond album ‘3′ so far. Considering how good it is, there’s not nearly enough of you, but hopefully this little glimpse of beat-pop will be enough to convince a few more to follow the crumbs. ‘Lonely World’ is the closing track on the record, somehow upbeat and poignantly melancholic at the same time, the sound of a songwriter at the top of his game. All I am saaaaying… is give ‘3′ a chance…

THE WHEELIES – A Question Mark of Stars

This song might sound a lot like me, but I can assure you it’s not. Salvaged from a plastic bag in a secret compartment above the cupboard in Bunkroom 2 on that imaginary ship again, it was written and recorded by a ghost in a ragged fox costume called Willoughby Toad. Like the ship, he’s long gone, but since I found the cassette, I figured I might as well put my name to it. Unlikely to ever be released anywhere else. Thanks Willoughby.

WARCHALKING – Let’s Start A Country

Too good a version of this song for it to not be available somewhere on the internet. Written and recorded for Kaleidonauts ‘Tigermouse’ album in the summer of 2008, this was Warchalking’s first take having written the words around my song idea. Stripped down from the finished ‘Let’s Start A Country’ that featured both Jane Gilmore and myself on vocals, this is the stark VU-esque version that blew me away when I first heard it. It also gives you a glimpse of what it must be like to hear Warchalking perform it live. Lucky fuckers of Cape Girardeau take note.

BRENDON HERTZ AND THE BURNT ORANGE CRAYONS – Mail From You

Put me at the pick-and-mix stand and I’m always going to start with fizzy cola bottles. ‘Mail From You’ is the fizzy cola bottle from Brendon’s 2009 contribution to ‘The Invisible Box-Set’. As albums go, ‘Sacrifice’ is about as diverse as it gets – folk, pop, funk, spoken word Beat poetry, ballads, electronica – very nearly imploding with styles and ideas. So that’s why I’m playing it safe and choosing fizzy 60s pop, a little bit Beatlesy, with brilliant frazzled vocals that are guaranteed to stick to your teeth.

FAILEDSITCOM – Cafe Oto

From Sam on ‘Cafe Oto’: “An attempt at mixing field recordings with traditional melodies. All the drum sounds (as well as the more “wobbly” synth sound) come from some recordings I made in the cafe which the songs takes its name from. It’s not great I’m afraid…”

From me to Sam: “What?! Not great?! It’s bloody brilliant. It clatters and clanks. It rolls and sparkles. Is it winter? Is it summer? Is it spring? Autumnal? Or, like the song itself, a little bit of every season in harmony? Crockery and lullabies. Coffee pots and hip hop. What’s there not to love about that?”

UBERFUZZ – Hello Satan

Man, I forgot how much I dig this song. ‘Hello Satan’ is Uberfuzz firing on all cylinders, the twin engines of Le Keux and Storer going for the jugular with a riff-led riot of psychedelic-blues. As songs go, it doesn’t get much more bad ass than this tale of walking with a devil that ‘looks like Johnny Cash’. Taken from 2007’s brilliant ‘Drowning In Honey’, songs like this are the reason why all six Uberfuzz records are essential listening for fans of fuzz.

DEAD CANARIES – Bird Peach

Last but by no means least, THE Dead Canaries masterpiece ‘Bird Peach’. Like The Beatles medley at the end of Abbey Road, or The Stone Roses ‘I Am The Resurrection’, every credible band should have a ten minute epic song like this. From boy/girl motown pop to fiddle-enhanced blues, and from Radiohead experimental guitar freak outs to its catchy rolling indie encore, ‘Bird Peach’ is an EP in itself, Jon of the Atom throwing everything – including the kitchen sink – at it. And it’s absolute genius.

Out Today! A new album by the one and only James Lee Redmond…

Free download at Quixodelic Records here:

http://quixodelic.com/site/category/james-redmond/

Listen to ‘Weekend Train’:
Download audio file (JamesRedmond-WeekendTrain.mp3)

Every generation needs its heroes. Most of mine were doing their thing half a century ago, forging melodies, splashing paint, and building mad roads of word. It is a rare thing indeed to be able to call one of your peers a genuine hero, but for me, James Redmond is exactly that. It feels like half a century has passed since I was first pointed in the direction of Dirty Ticket with their tongue-in-cheek two-minute synth-pop song brand of musical anarchy, and tracks like ‘Sticker Book’ and ‘Inner Disco’ have happily haunted every ‘Best of…’ mix I’ve made since 2007. Since then, it’s been an honour to have played Florence to solo songs like ‘Talk’ and ‘Movin On’ (arguably my favourite song from the Quixodelic catalogue), songs that came perilously close to never quite making it out into the public domain. In fact, the gradual metamorphosis from melodic anarchist to a mature songwriter crafting lo-fi anthems has been apparent for anyone paying attention to the last two albums. ‘Lo-fi’ is perhaps misleading – self-produced, yes, but these songs have always transported me well beyond the boundaries of how they were recorded whenever I put the headphones on. These songs are placeless, and inevitably also timeless.

A hard man to reach at the best and worst of times, to suddenly hear Jay talking excitedly about a third record called ‘3′ (haha), with a couple of studio recorded tracks and an actual running order was a really good sign of things to come. There aren’t enough superlatives I can throw at ‘3′. Like a long lost record from your Grandad’s dusty vinyl collection, it is seeped in the tradition of 60s Mersey Beat, with elements of pop, folk, soul, and blues all coming together in the shape of shining pop songs. It’s a K.O in the first round of a record, an injury time winner when you’re down to ten men and even the most devoted fans have all but given up hope, a quite staggering masterclass on how to write perfect pop, heavy on emotion and light on its feet, with harmonies and melodies you feel like you must have heard somewhere before, but deep down know that you haven’t.

There are a couple of familiar tracks – a stellar reworked version of the impeccable ‘Will She Meet Me?’, the haunting grandness of ‘Tell Me’ (does anyone else make the self-recorded intimate confession song sound so BIG?), but everything else is brand spanking new. The real hits of the record include ‘Weekend Train’ (a song that sounds like it was stolen from the ‘Rubber Soul’ sessions), the ukulele-led brilliant closing nostalgia of ‘Lonely World’, and the epic ‘Sad Song’ with heartfelt lines like ‘Major to minor/The smiles turns to tears/I say goodbye to those years’. Threads of loneliness, regret, and making mistakes run through the blood of this record, but in the quiet, melodic contemplation it also sounds like a cathartic attempt at putting the past to bed, holding your hand up, and starting over. Fans of synth-pop anarchy might be disappointed at the lack of bones they are being thrown, but for the rest of us, ‘3′ runs much deeper than the small-hours drank-too-much and smoked-a-load medley’s that have gone before. Here the ghosts of Brian Wilson, John Lennon, and David Bowie shuffle in the wings while someone sings their heart out, like from time to time every one of your heroes has to.

3 stars out of 3 from Florence.

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Find out more about James Redmond at:

www.myspace.com/jamesleeredmond

download: Garden
download: A DISASTER

Two records long overdue in the Quixodelic Record Store, finally available for you to download as zips for free. It is no secret how much I wholeheartedly dig the music of Simon Piler and The Atom Band. ‘Songs From Home’, ‘Heimdall’, and ‘KINGTIME’ are musical adventures, heavy on substance and sprinkled with palatable and mischievous experimental bluesy-folk dust. Now add to that ever expanding catalogue, ‘Garden’ (2007), and ‘A DISASTER’ (Unknown) – both records have their own counterpart plays as handy pdf’s tucked away neatly with the downloads, and are essential listening for anyone who enjoyed the last three records.

Here’s what Simon himself had to say about them:

A DISASTER was recorded in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on the edge of the Great Plains.

I had recently befriended a friendly mythological Texan by the name of Scarytoes. He plays some thumping drums on this album and helps me sing sometimes. Very stretchy.

I like this album because it’s mostly done with tape, and that keeps the songs simple. It’s dry and has definite country spirit, but still stays dreamy. I don’t like it because it’s not much of an album; more of a collection of songs – and it’s pretty long, I can barely make it through in a single run and I often find myself skipping around. A lot of these songs are among the most beloved I’ve ever written or recorded. Mainly, ‘Big Arc Blues’, ‘Mullein Blues’, ‘thistle walking’, ‘Whent’, ‘diffuse/combust’, and ‘Ptolemy Blues’. HURRAH PTOLEMY! EARTH ON A STRING!

Oh, there is also a play, my second (ultimately failed) theatrical work. There’s a link if you’re interested in reading. The album is sort-of a soundtrack to the play.

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garden. was recorded at The Dream Factory during the summer of 2007, throughout which I lived in a vegetable garden near Lake Mendota. I grew beets, carrots, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, strawberries and tobacco.

Most of the season I couldn’t find work. (Later on I was running sound at the King Club, which turned out to be an incredible brain-bender of a job… But that’s an entirely different story.)

This is the first of several re-releases I’m planning to upload. I chose garden. to start with because I think it was a radical departure from my early recordings – mainly, it was an autonomous mythological organism. And arguably documenting the apex of vitality in my life. My first album about death. My first album about love.(Sort of.) My first album about flowers.

There was also a play that was written in parallel. I’ve included a link to it if you’d like to read. While it doesn’t follow the album exactly, a good number of the tracks show up in some form or another. I’ve never released the play (and it’s never been performed,) so you’ll have to let me know what you think…
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Find out more about Simon Piler and The Atom Band here:
http://cllct.com/art/simonpilerandtheatomband

download: Helicobbler

Listen to Same Mistake and Catch Us:

Download audio file (SameMistakeandCatchUs.mp3)

This record has been floating around on CLLCT for a couple of months now, so you may have already had the pleasure of hearing it. Me, I waited for a bit of breathing space before feeding it into my ears. I wanted to wait for a gap so as I could give it my full attention, really because I felt like it deserved nothing less. Of course I’d already heard the excellent and lyrically complex ‘Ilium Bromide’ on DG7, and been completely knocked out by the simply beautiful uke song ‘Psycholicopter’ on DG8 that once and for all proved that you don’t always have to deliver something cutesy and confessional with that particular instrument. Both tracks suggested that whenever a full-length recording from Impaled Peach finally emerged, that the songwriting and musical textures were going to require more than a passing listen to properly dig it.

As it is though, this 20-minute 8-song EP is less a full-length release and more a collection of original compositions, some for collaboration projects, others sung for the fun of it, gathered together and released in a hurry, and it actually can be easily dug from little more than a quick spin through it. There are textures and depth, some exceptional production techniques, simple pop harmonies, words sung with verve and harmony, and more key changes than the most burgled house in your neighbourhood. In a nutshell, there is something pretty much for everyone… pop-psych fanatics looking for a quick fix, lo-fi folk enthusiasts wanting to hear what is possible if you put enough into it, even poets with a secret thing for slide guitars and Beach Boys layered indie rock and roll.

Try and count the influences behind these songs and you’ll be there for a long, long time. Elephant 6 bands like The Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Of Montreal are just the obvious ones. If there’s one thing that Edward Alan Bartholomew (the guy behind the name) does exceptionally well, then it’s sucking up the sounds and styles and techniques of his favourite musical ancestors, digesting them together upon the bedroom floor, and spitting them back out in a seamless fusion that sounds quite like many things you have heard before, but not exactly like any of them. Tracks like the aforementioned ‘Psycholicopter’, or the really immense ‘Same Mistake/Catch Us’ (arguably one of my favourite songs so far in 2010) are the sort of tracks you catch yourself singing hours later. Pretty much everything you could want from several records is somehow crammed into this collection – distorted driving guitars, vinyl crackles, intricate riffs, unpredictable songs in other languages that effortlessly change in tempo without warning. On the surface you might be looking at eight songs, but actually you might be getting as many as twenty wrapped in verses and choruses and carefully crafted shifts that very rarely sound anything like their counterparts.

On ‘Helicobbler’, Ed himself said ‘I was originally planning on using most of these for a longer release, but the project has lost momentum and these songs have gradually become their own thing. I also have newer ideas to pursue and wanted to get these out of the way for a fresh start.’ To hear snippets from the newer ideas, as well as some genuinely great cover versions, and to get an insight into the making of some of the songs featured here, you can spend a few productive hours over at:

http://eabarth.tumblr.com/

It might have taken me a couple of months to finally get round to listening to ‘Helicobbler’, but then I always knew that once I did I’d be listening to these songs for as long as my ears continue to work and my appetite for melodic DIY sound adventures persists. Next time we get something from Impaled Peach I’ll be digging out my sleeping bag to spend a night on the virtual pavement with my download finger at the ready. Marks out of ten? Who gives a flying fuck about marks out of ten? This record is a little glimpse of something that might very well be genius – whatever number you want to throw at it.

Ed’s own notes on the songs:

Heels Over Head
An of Montreal fueled night turned into a groggy, lethargic morning and a wake up call from the landlord.

Head Over Heels
A foot fetish? In response to complaints about Neutral Milk Hotel’s distortion.

l’Orangerie
A place I’ve only visited with Google Maps.

Same Mistake / Catch Us
Two songs heavily influenced by Olivia Tremor Control, together at last in the same key.

Ilium Bromide
A compound produced when Paris steals Menelaus’ wife. Features at least four key changes.

Orange Thirst
Originally devised for the Colors album. Features Sam Wallinga on accordion and some prose I wrote about orange juice in high school.

Same Mistake Again
The Olivia Tremor Control influence is more recognizable here (Fireplace, Shaving Spiders).

Psycholicopter
About a girl I talked to on the phone a few times a few years ago. First song written on ukulele.

Lenn9o9n – Relining Graves

download: Relining Coffins

Listen to Alli:

Download audio file (Lenn9o9n-Alli.mp3)

From the first time I heard Lenn9o9n cover The Beatles’ ‘Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey’ I knew I was listening to something quite extraordinary. Everybody knows that the synthesizer maimed popular music in the 1980s, but here was somebody who might actually make you rethink electronic pop music completely. Not from choice, but necessity (think a 26 year old American travelling the globe with a keyboard strapped to his back, currently alighting in Italy), with the exception of impassioned vocals drenched in precision effects, electronic beats and synthetic melodies are the exclusive body of these songs, manipulated into something that somehow sounds completely organic. In a nutshell, Lenn9o9n makes synthesized music sound not only exciting, but also credible. It is the past colliding head on with the future, drawing on the same resources as all your favourite retro psych guitar bands of the 21st century, lo-fi gone hi-fi, The Killers without The Cure, The Strokes with substance, or even the Man himself if he he’d still been around, plugging the white piano into the wall while sparks fly from his fingertips.

‘Relining Coffins’ is literally the beginning. If you move in similar circles to me, then you’ll already have been blown away by Lenn9o9n tracks like ‘Ausdruck’ or ‘I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For’… only you’ll not find any of those songs here. As the title implies, this six-song EP is about revisiting songs that were previously recorded between 2007 and 2008 and reworking them. The results are a very likeable and worthwhile introduction to what Lenn9o9n is capable of as a musician and songwriter. Undoubtedly there is much more to come, but even so as a standalone concept record, ‘Relining Coffins’ does exactly what it needs to do and a whole lot more.

Opening track ‘Aren’t We All’ is a short atmospheric intro that leads into the really brilliant ‘Alli’ – a sonic pounding song with its chorus line of ‘She’s the girl who makes the boys cry/Or at least she’s the one who likes to try’. Of the six songs, it is arguably the most recognisably Lenn9o9n – catchy and atmospheric, a dark form of pop music. ‘A Bitterness In Your Heart’ is another short lullaby with a motivational speaking sample closing it out and leading into fourth track, the wonderfully electronic and psychedelic ‘Little Bird’ combining frantic vocal harmonies and Joy Division drums. Penultimate track ‘Love is the Curse’ is a meandering synth piano tune carrying a melancholic short song. Record closer ‘Fresh Start’ is probably my favourite of the six, the intricacy and fuzz of the arrangement escalating into life behind upbeat drums, swooping synth strings and telephonic vocals singing ‘We can start again.’ Very much a record of odd and even songs, or atmospherics and anthems, ‘Reling Coffins’ ebbs and flows like a little ocean, lullabying before crashing up on the beach of your ears, and repeating the process until the final sparkling notes of ‘Fresh Start’ fade away.

Looking back, this might not be the Lenn9o9n masterpiece, especially if a full-length record materialises towards the end of the summer (as promised). But then it was never intended to be a masterpiece, more an interesting experiment of trying to make something  out of long buried tracks with new experience and techniques behind them. As an interesting experiment it undoubtedly exceeds all expectations. Tracks like ‘Alli’, ‘Little Bird; and ‘Fresh Start’ are immense bedroom anthems and so refreshingly different from everything else going on in the lo-fi music world right now; yet their immensity is not because they are different, but just because they sound so fucking good. Judging by this recent video:

you can expect to hear more than just keyboards on future releases, but for now at least after hearing this, you might just wonder if it really was synthesizers that maimed the 80s or simply the people who were operating them.

*Post-note: In no way do Quixodelic Records advocate synth-only recordings. Keyboards are dangerous machines in the wrong hands and for every Lenn9o9n there are countless 80s impersonators continuing to maim the ears of listeners today. Please exercise extreme caution if you feel inspired to follow in these electronic footsteps.

Find out more about Lenn9o9n at:

http://cllct.com/art/lenn9o9n

Long overdue, but finally here are three of Syd’s records recorded as The Loaded Whispers from pre-’Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth’. As always, they are free to download, but if you do then please take the time out to drop in at Syd Lane Music and let her know that you liked it. Because if it’s not about the money, then it’s got to be about the love, otherwise it just won’t work…

If you’re new to what Syd does then if you read on, we’ve got a brilliant guide to all of the records she’s made, written by her co-conspirator Jeremiah James. For those of you who already love her own unique brand of psychedelic-folk soaring songs then it is an equally enlightening, heartfelt and enjoyable read.

Nurturing Empty Screams

download: Nurturing Empty Screams

Sola

download: Sola

The Loaded Whispers – s/t

download: The Loaded Whispers - s/t

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Sola….

A new voice has arrived not quite fully formed but ready to lay it on the line for anyone bold enough to go with the feeling. The album was recorded on a very low quality pc mic with only a voice and an acoustic guitar late at night as people slept. This is where Syd first realised she had something to say and nothing was gonna stop her until she heard in her songs what she longed to hear on the radio. Sola like the albums that have followed holds a steady atmosphere all the way through sure of it’s own desire but nowhere near where the composer wanted to get to. It’s a collection of raw poetic songs that showcase ….Syd Lane….’s unique view of the human condition. There are some very intricate songs that I hope will one day become more whole but that like everything else is down to the inimitable ….Syd Lane….. A beautiful first shot at trying to say what needs to be said
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The Loaded Whispers….

I worked with a friend of mine to get a little studio set up for Syd in one of the bedrooms in our little home and this was the first album recorded using a piano as a midi controller for the soundcard on the pc. There are very brilliant songs here that soothe and caress at each and every listen. “Insouciance” and “Enlightened” are as loose and rocking as I could ever hope songs to be. “Bedroom window view” and “She talks to rainbows” well you listen and tell me what you think? Everything is still raw but there are glimmers of pure astral beauty that would become more fully realised the further Syd travels along her path
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Obliterate The Myths….

Sadly this record has all but been destroyed for Syd but I really love it. I think it’s a phenomenal achievement under the circumstances(which are far too boring to go into) I pray to the universe that someday Syd will return to this album and hopefully re-record the songs. This was Syd’s steepest learning curve so far and that learning had nothing to do with music or the art of recording and everything to do with empty promises and human deception. There are songs on this album that still stop me completely in my tracks in particular the way “In time we’ll return to the earth” finds it’s groove and “Nothing here is fair” brings this listener to a place I find incredibly difficult to leave. It also has one of Syd’s biggest pop anthems that has yet to be fully realised. Great album
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Nurturing Empty Screams….

Syd has now entered her very own heart of darkness and returned with some of the most guttural songs she has ever written. This record was a huge exhortation of pain fear grief and disillusion. An album that rightly deserves to be placed alongside Lou Reed’s “Berlin” John Lennons “Plastic Ono Band” and Primal Screams “XTRMNTR”. This is a fucking remarkable record bookended by two songs of desperate longing. It also contains a response to Ian Browns brilliant single F.E.A.R that really stands up to anything Syd has ever done both musically and lyrically. This was a record that showed a whole new Syd ready to battle the darkness head on and shirk no responsibility in doing so. This was a songwriter with something universal to say. It also marked a new studio setup which allowed Syd to record very quickly and keep moving as fast as she felt she needed to
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Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth….

This for me was the album where Syd became interested in pushing her songwriting wherever it wanted to go. She became more and more interested in communicating quickly and directly with her muse and the results are there for all to hear. A stunning collection of songs that are wildly disparate but hold together beautifully allowing the listener to journey with the composer/performer through the golden age of popular song as directed by the unique vision of ….Syd Lane….. I would like to state once and for all that everything Syd does in terms of recording music and writing songs is all done alone with no input from anybody else which when you look back over her 5 years of recording shows an unparalleled ability to do whatever she wants to do and make it fresh exciting and consistently brilliant. Her quality control is one of the most important things to her and she’s determined not to repeat or rest on her laurels.
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It Begins In Beauty….

An absolute masterpiece from start to finish. I still can’t believe how this album makes me feel loved, lost, scared and inspired all at once with an infinite amount of other emotions experienced as the songs wash over me. This is the work of an artist in complete control of her craft. Each song creates a world of it’s own that never excludes but rather welcomes the listener while at the same time challenging your ability to keep up with the idea’s contained within. I absolutely believe that this album will always show me that human beings only real legacy will be their connection with great art and the fact that so few people have heard this music is a real shame. “Not a poet be” and “You kept me humble” are my current favourites but these are only two of twelve reasons to weep for joy. We’re alive and where there’s life there’s hope man but you won’t find that in jobs/money/things.
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The Solstice Sessions….

A tantalising and intriguing peek into Syd’s ideas for her next full album. Recorded in a couple of hours on 21st December last. The date has particular significance as it’s the ancient pagan festival for the shortest amount of daylight hours in the northern hemisphere. This date was clumsily and crassly manipulated into the roman calendar as Christmas time. Listen and enjoy Syd’s songs stripped to their essential components and be ready for when they re-appear in perhaps completely different forms. Thank you Syd we are all in your cosmic debt.

by Jeremiah James

The Falling Floors – s/t

download: The Falling Floors

Listen to I Wanna Be Your Friend:

Download audio file (TheFallingFloors-IWannaBeYourFriend.mp3)

Every so often a band comes along and completely blows you away. The Falling Floors are one of those bands. It didn’t happen straight away for me. I first head from this Manchester psychedelic-pop outfit back in late 2008 when they contributed ‘If You Say No’ to Daydream Generation 5. It was a spiky, upbeat little anthem of feelgood guitar pop music, something plucked from 1966 full off ‘ooh-la-la’s’ and a melody so infectious that it was almost shameful. It hinted at good things, but it took a lot longer for me to dig around enough to find out just how good.

Arguably one of the real stand-out records from the Quixodelic Invisible Box-Set, ‘Hey! Midnight’ packed a deeper, more experimental psychedelic punch. The pop was still there, but frequently it was buried under brilliant layers of drone and backwards guitars. To think it was written and recorded in just a couple of months made it somehow even more incredible and I think that’s when the kaleidoscopic alarm bells began to ring in my brain. What Jolan and his fellow Floors are able to do is not just imitate all your favourite bands from the most immense decade of music, but to consistently produce songs that sound like they have been genuinely transported from another time and place, when things were much simpler and music was untainted with a world-weary cynicism.

The discovery of this self-titled full-length 10 song record appearing magically one winter afternoon on CLLCT was the proof that ‘Hey! Midnight’ was no fluke. If anything, this debut recording made sometime in 2008 is even more catchy, jammed with so many great songs you feel you have heard somewhere before, even though you know you are hearing them for the first time. ‘If You Say No’ is just the tip of the iceberg. Sitars zing, guitars riff, organs swirl and drums roll. Cool rolling basslines underpin every track and vocal harmonies sing songs like ‘Eucalyptus’, and ‘I Wanna Be Your Friend’ into a world that once you tune into, you just can’t leave until the very last note of the immense ‘Goodnight Sleepyhead’ rings out. Eastern tinged tracks like ‘Chambers’ and ‘Theme From Daishishi’ are musical jewels, spaced-out sounds that make you want to kick off your shoes, take some LSD, and find the nearest field or dance-floor with enough room to freak out on.

The most beautiful thing about The Falling Floors is that they make it sound sincere. If you know where to look then the psychedelic sounds of the 21st century are dime a dozen, and in most cases it sounds forced or intentionally retro. Cool for the sake of coolness. With these guys they really sound like they can’t do it any other way and are having the time of their lives while they do it. It’s the real thing… and it’s happening right here and right now. You might have missed the 60s, but if you’re anywhere near Manchester then you could do a lot worse than dropping in on a gig. However, if like me, you’re a million miles away from Manchester then a record like this has got to be worth taking a chance on.

My new favourite band of 2010 and I can’t champion someone much more than that.

Yours sincerely, completely blown away.

Find out more about The Falling Floors at:

http://cllct.com/art/thefallingfloors

download: Her Blameless Mystery
download: Of Life's Declivity

It’s not often I have to run to catch a musical bandwagon, but for this one I really had to sprint. I’ve been championing CLLCT a LOT in the last few months, but this guy and his music is a single-handed shining example why this little DIY goldmine is already outsinging corporate giants like MySpace and LastFM. It would seem that most people over at CLLCT know, and have known how great a songsmith and soundsmith FailedSitcom is for quite some time. But try googling “Failed Sitcom music” and you’ll be scrolling through page after page of homages to something involving Kelsey Grammar.

Trundling murmurs of quiet approval with occasional claps of genuine mind-blown wonderment have been steadily rolling in since CLLCT resurrected. The acclaim for the two existing EP’s, ‘Of Life’s Declivity’ and ‘Her Blameless Mystery’ may in part be to do with the fact that the guy behind them (Sam Durkin) tries to take in as much new music appearing on the site as he can. I must confess I took the slightly cynical view when I twiddled my thumbs as the bandwagon rolled by with a grin. I instantly bought the philosophy – attempting to fuse folk-pop with experimental hip-hop beats – but time was short and I couldn’t help but wonder if much of the hype was to do with Sam’s presence. I had a couple of minutes and played a song. It sounded great and I grinned back, putting my head down as the trundling passed. It took for Simon Piler to ask me while we were putting together Daydream Generation 8, ‘Obviously you’ve invited FailedSitcom?’

And obviously I hadn’t. I lifted my head, muttered under my breath ‘Ah shit Smally’, and ran. I caught another couple of songs and they were as great as the first one I’d heard months previous. I emailed Sam and thankfully he was as interesting and diggable as the music he’d been making. I downloaded both the records and was totally blown away. Take one song, any song from either EP and I guarantee you’ll think it’s good. Take more than one song and listen to them back to back and I guarantee that it will click in your brain. Take a whole EP and you’ll be hopping into your finest running shoes to catch up with the rest of us.

The philosophy is that of sound collage – seriously cool electronic beats underpinning the sparkling organic sounds of glocks and ukuleles, guitars and mad percussion. Add to this the softest of voices singing shimmering little stanzas about things someone loves and you’ve got yourself a recipe for something that will someday undoubtedly knock Kelsey Grammar off the front page of a Google search for all the right reasons.

I started with ‘Of Life’s Declivity’. Clocking in at a surprisingly short thirteen minutes, these eleven songs are a bright-eyed trip through an autumnal dream, ringing melodies over complex supercool beats, zips and zings of sound, all topped off with the murmur of soft poetics. An obvious comparison would be Animal Collective, a band I am frequently told I should listen to. But having downloaded one record and not been overly impressed, for now at least I’m happy to stick with this little EP. ‘Of Life’s Declivity’ is so together that it feels wrong to single out tracks like ‘To The Bowsprit’, ‘Mushrooms’, ‘Horse Chestnuts’, or ‘Locus Amoenus’ as my favourites. When I first heard this record and obsessively played and replayed it for the next 48 hours, I found myself wondering ‘Where can FailedSitcom possibly go from here?’ The only answer I could come up with was ‘More of the same please’.

Surprisingly and fortunately I was pretty wrong. The much loved ‘Her Blameless Mystery’ is still very much FailedSitcom, but compared to its brief, deliberate, and concisely beautiful counterpart, this 12-track EP is a glorious sonic avalanche of adventurous sound. At the time of hearing it, I didn’t realise that it was a collection of songs recorded over the course of two years, but that just makes it an accidental great record, the shifting of styles being one of its biggest strengths. Whereas ‘Declivity’ is a shooting star that melts in the sky, ‘Mystery’ is a piebald nebula of ideas engulfing your ears. Here, the robotic charm of ‘Data-Byte, Sound-Byte’ sits happily alongside the catchy ‘Matthew’, and the familiar folk-electronica fusion of the lovely ‘You Should Revise’ is not out of place on the same record as the eerily infectious closing ‘Much Like A Gherkin Creepy’. After one listen I was convinced that ‘Of Life’s Declivity’ was THE record to download. After two listens, I started to feel like ‘Her Blameless Mystery’ was more adventurous and perhaps the real accidental masterpiece of the two. From three listens onwards I have reached the only conclusion possible that both records are little classics in their own right and well worth a chance of your precious time.

So there you have it. Kelsey Grammar, if you’re reading this then feel free to quake in your google-boots. My ears are ringing and my heart is singing with the sounds of two cracking EPs as I catch my breath from the sprint. The Quixodelic Commune is one genuine and seriously talented songsmith better off. It is a privilege to have FailedSitcom on board to please take the time to download one, and inevitably both of these records. After all, bandwagons are always more exciting when you get on at the very beginning.

DAYDREAM GENERATION 8 – OUT TODAY

Free Download: 38 tracks of the finest lo-fi folk pop psychedelic electronica and ‘other’ we could find from great little bands & artists & uke-strumming urchins all around the globe in two neat zip files of mp3s. Enjoy.

CLICK HERE

And here we go again. It’s been very nearly three years since the words “Daydream Generation” jumped into my head triggering the endless quest to go out and find the very best undiscovered DIY music there was to find, to cook the songs together in a couple of sizzling zips and serve them up to you on a virtual plate, dear and often strange listeners.

For several months back there I forgot why I was cooking – the compilations were almost getting too easy to put together, feedback was fading, and it was like “So what? Another compilation?” But putting together DG8 (with the help of Simon Piler and Becky N on recruitment duties), I remembered what it is I love about doing this – discovering new music that blows me away, bands and names that people on your street are unlikely to have heard of, yet more often that not, are as brilliant, and maybe even more relevant than whatever the mainstream decides is the flavour of the month. Music is like fast-food these days – mass-produced, served up lukewarm and tasteless with a fanfare of advertising and a side order of apathy. The thing I love best about home-cooking is that it is free – not free in the download sense (although this compilation is), but free in the sense that song-writers can take chances, and make music for the love of making music, free to throw whatever they can find at the backs of the cupboards of their minds into the creative frying pan. I think DG8 was the compilation that re-ignited my excitement and like the various cooks and kooks who appear here, I’ve always loved that we can take chances with the mix. On Daydream Generation 8 you will find songs to fill your belly, and songs that will leave a really weird taste in your mouth… but everything you will hear comes with the guarantee that it was cooked with love, and not to sell something big and shiny, or make somebody a quick buck. In particular thanks to the David-esque might of a little site called CLLCT putting our 8th compilation together has been less like mining, and a lot more like walking up to a big crazy tree and plucking colourful fruit from singing branches. Many of the bands and artists featuring on this compilation have been lifted from such shimmering limbs and without that site, I’d have been back crawling through the tunnels of the fallen Goliath that is MySpace hoping to find something, anything, someone, and all the while thinking ‘all this narcissism… the world is fucked.’ We could have made a thousand compilations from what we have discovered on CLLCT – and who knows, quite possibly we will.

But enough of all this small talk. Let’s get down to business and let the music do the talking. Without further ado allow me to introduce the 38 bands that make up Daydream Generation 8:

ADRIAN AARDVARK

Someone Else

I wonder how many of the world’s iPods kickstart on this guy? If “Someone Else” is anything to go by then the world could do a lot worse.  Belted out with unreserved punk angst, this track treads the precarious tightrope of insanely catchy and flat out insane, and manages by the skin of its teeth to make it over to the other side intact. Songs like this are rarities, stolen from the seabed of a nightmare at the shadowy end of pop, and there is no doubting the sincerity. AA+

Adrian Aardvark on CLLCT

AKRYLLIC LOVE

Smiling Today

Let’s get through this and not mention the age thing, alright? If you haven’t heard of Akryllic Love by now, then I’ll bet you my matchbox house that someday (even if you hadn’t read this) then you would have. This is the kind of song-writer that someday you’ll tell your grandkids about, and somebody you might just be hearing a whole lot more from on this Quixodelic corner of the internet real soon. AL’s contribution ‘Smiling Today’ is (as expected) a two minute slice of slightly experimental DIY pop brilliance. This guy makes the idea of expressing yourself in an originally entertaining way look easy, each song like a bubble blown down the brain lanes. The most frightening part? He’s only…

Akyrllic Love on CLLCT

ASSAULT SQUAD SAFETY SCISSORS

To try and break the fickle hearts of the romantics who wanna sing along

There’s something incredibly endearing about the whole Assault Squad Safety Scissors package. Mostly just one guy and his guitar singing really great pop songs, Oklahoma’s Andrew Allingham has an eye for really neat cartoon art, very interesting song titles, and melodies that make you stop and realise that you’ve vanished for the entire time you’ve been listening. Sometimes it feels like the world is awash with Lo-Fi bedroom pop songsmiths, but hey, that’s a good thing, right? Especially when they sound like this.

Assault Squad Safety Scissors on CLLCT

BECKY N

Coma Dream

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again just so as you know that I mean it. These compilations just wouldn’t be the same without a Becky N song. It would be like the Generation without the Daydream. ‘Coma Dream’ is taken from her second EP ‘4am Video Games’, recorded as part of the Utica Flower Company’s Invisible Box-Set project. A dark, twisting almost-spoken almost-sung tale of a poetic adventure that sounds too eerily real to be a dream, this song, with its urgent finger picking and claustrophobic intimacy is exactly why so many people can’t help but utterly dig her music.

Becky N on CLLCT

BESPECKLED EGG

Summer Fruits

Years from now, this will go down as “the DG compilation where we finally gave into the ukulele”. Leading the 4-string nylon charge is Bespeckled Egg, singing out a poem about summer fruits (and apples). It has a meandering and innocently infectious life of its own, like a small pop jazz trumpeter searching for melodies and finding them and losing them again, before whispering one of the most curiously catchy little qualifiers you might ever hear on record. Walking past the fruit stands in your local grocery store might never be the same again. *Today this has been my favourite song on the entire compilation… I’m not saying it still will be tomorrow, but it’s always today that counts.

Bespeckled Egg on CLLCT

BETHESDA ANN

Birds

Now this is a spellbinding voice. All the way from a part of Texas where apparently they have pine-trees and may or may not wear cowboy hats, Bethesda Ann has a way of singing that sounds like it belongs in another world. ‘Birds’ is one of a whole load of great songs that appear on her record ‘Everything Is Gold’, a smoky, crackling, dreamlike ballad that defiantly defies genres on the needle-strewn forest floor. I’ve heard this song about twenty times in the last week and it still isn’t losing its other-worldly charm. If you’re not mesmerized by it then I will eat my own hat.

Bethesda Ann on CLLCT

BRENDON HERTZ AND THE BURNT ORANGE  CRAYONS

Sacrifice

From Brendon Hertz’s brilliant album ‘Sacrifice’, the title track in all its melancholic reggae glory. For the Invisible Box set we crammed together 12 records and from all of them this song was undoubtedly one of my favourites. I’d love to say it is representative of Brendon’s work, but actually every song of his is different, like a genre-hopping untraceable beat poet of the 21st century so if you like this and go looking for a reggae record, then go look somewhere else. If however you’re looking for a bit of everything, then now you know where to look.

BRIAN AND THE WORLD

Song For Elm Street

Ah, this guy knocked me clean off my cloud the first time I heard him, and when he sent me ‘Song For Elm Street’ (having clambered back up to cumulus heights) it knocked me straight back off again. Some people have to battle against every gene they inherited to make something of some audible worth, but there are others like Brian (far fewer in number) who sound as if they were born to write brilliant songs. It almost makes you nervous when you stumble across someone with such natural talent, like standing at the top of a musical flume that you know will hurtle downwards forever, making it near impossible to listen to anyone else for several months. Definitely one of my favourite songs from three years worth of compilations.

Brian and the World on CLLCT

BROKEN MONO

Day By Day

As much as I love hearing something specially recorded for these compilations, I also like it when we provide a home for a long lost song. Grizzly psychedelic veteran of the DG compilations Broken Mono (you know the one I mean, cat’s head, Hendrix riffs) managed to dig up this ‘oldie from the days of 4-track’.  ’Day By Day’ is a much more traditional guitar pop song than we’re accustomed to hearing from planet cat, but it’s just as kind and catchy to the ears.

Broken Mono on MySpace

THE CANADIETTES

Both Wearing Dentures

The songs of Cordelia Hazel sound like they belong to the middle of the 1990s. It is an interesting and maybe not even deliberate way of looking backwards to look forwards. While just about every man and his girlfriend and her dog try their best to recreate the sounds and sights of the undisputed heavyweight decade of music (60s), The Canadiettes are content to strum simple acoustic chord patterns for Cordelia to sing her lovely songs over. ‘Both Wearing Dentures’ is a pretty good example of how to pack a melodic punch just by sounding like yourself, and it’s very, very diggable.

The Canadiettes on CLLCT

CHANSONS DE GESTE

Not A Poet Be

Well everyone knows what I think of Syd Lane’s voice and songs so I’m not going to bore you by telling you how amazing both are again. Instead I’ll tell you about ‘Not A Poet Be’ from the recent Chansons De Geste record ‘It Begins In Beauty’. Originally this wasn’t one of the songs that leaped out of it (in my defence that record is packed with melodic gems), but over time I’ve increasingly found myself involuntarily hearing it between my ears, the soaring notes and weight of the words… DIY probably isn’t ever going to sound as pure as this again, so love it while you can.

Chansons De Geste on MySpace

CHELSEA MARIE

The Sixth Thing That Happened To Me

It’s a feat in itself being able to not take yourself too seriously and yet still produce relatively serious songs about being. It would seem that Chelsea Marie is happy to grab a guitar, press play on the tape recorder and just let it run while she pipes out unashamedly cute little existential folk songs. ‘The Sixth Thing That Happened To Me’ is a rare moment of the sort of song-writing genius that happens when the tape runs, something so simple and yet pretty fucking profound, the sort of song that snapshots a whole generation in little more than two minutes, bursting with fuck ups and hope for the future. Keep the tape rolling.

Chelsea Marie on CLLCT

COOTIE SHOT

Bluetooths

I think this picture pretty much sums up the music of Cootie Shot, lo-fi pop on the living room floor with friends kicking around in the background. Once in a while you get a combination of voices that fit like both halves of a 2-piece jigsaw puzzle, and when Kia and Spence start harmonising over the uke’s on this brilliant little song about the corporate zombie technology that is bluetooth headsets, everything slots into place. Cootie Shot are the kind of band that should inspire everyone to learn a musical instrument and sing their hearts out about the universe around them. I don’t think I could ever get tired of listening to this.

Cootie Shot on CLLCT

THE CURIOUSLY STRONG PEPPERMINTS

Transcendentalism is Like Wow

From time to time you’ve got to take your hat off to ambition. The Curiously Strong Peppermint’s man behind the songs Jesse Miller, once said ‘I somehow have to top mid-60s-era Bob Dylan’ and as far as I’m concerned you can’t aim any higher than that. If ‘Transcendentalism…’ is anything to go by, then they’re at least on the right road. With a swirling, ringing, popping multi-coloured full band sound, this is pop music getting the full psychedelic treatment, producing something curiously fresh sounding. Taken in ample doses this sort of music is very good for getting your ears to breathe. Long may they walk backwards in this direction.

The Curiously Strong Peppermints on CLLCT

DEAD CANARIES

Karl Marx Lives In Lafayette Louisiana

I’ve spoken about this one at length in a recent review of the two new Dead Canaries offerings ‘Golden Sounds’ and ‘Modern Day Carpetbagger’. ‘Karl Marx…’ is one of the real stand-out songs of the two records, a bluesy Kinks-style surrealist anthem with Jon of the Atom drawling out his distinctive vocal, the song itself breaking into Beatle-esque sections. You all know what I think about this band and these records. Just go and download them and love it for yourself. It’s free!

Dead Canaries on MySpace

FAILED SITCOM

Mortlake

Ah time. There’s just not enough of it and this guy more than anyone reminded me of that. Just half an hour more a day and I’d have realised several months ago how amazing the music of Failed Sitcom actually is. For a long time I just considered him to be the friendliest person on CLLCT, but from the first few seconds of this song I quickly realised that he’s also one of the most talented. Living proof that it is possible to fuse folk-pop with hip-hop beats, ‘Mortlake’ is a shimmering soundtrack to a dreamlike daze with fragile and seriously loveable vocals, perfect brain fodder on a cold sunny morning staggering to the bakers and nearly getting knocked over twice. The next free half an hour I get, I know exactly what I’m going to go and download.

Failed Sitcom on CLLCT

THE FALLING FLOORS

Do You Feel Uptight?

The Falling Floors are fucking flying. I mean, if Jolan and Co keep improving and climbing at this rate over the next couple of years then we’re going to be so high up that we’re staring at the new ‘Revolver’. They were great to begin with, blasting out psych-tinted pop and roll painting by numbers little anthems… but if brand new track ‘Do You Feel Uptight’, and it’s frighteningly good predecessor (the album ‘Hey! Midnight’) are anything to go by, then you better buckle up because we’re in for a seriously bumpy ride upwards. Quick look out of the window to your left and through the clouds you will hear destination all-out psychedelic sunshine pop. Assume the crash position, because this is going to be fun, fun, fun.

The Falling Floors on CLLCT

FIG MINTS (OF YOUR IMAGINATION)

What Happened To Holiday?

Ladies and gentlemen I do believe this suggests that Bobby Rogan is recording again and for anyone who has ever listened to and loved a Figs record this is extremely good news. Rumours are the new record is going to be called ‘Say Okay’, although I may have just dreamed this up. Did I just dream it up? Hang on, let me check my email. No, I didn’t just dream it up and this toasty slice of home made pop would indicate that whatever it is he’s doing is going to be fucking great.

Fig Mints website

FOLK SINGING FATTIES WITH A TRUMPET

Trapfap

Some day Cameron Clarke will make me “An Introduction To The Various Musical Manifestations of Cameron Clarke”, but until that day I’m going to have to be content to steal minutes of more records than some collectives put together between them. This guy is really a one man song machine, and Folk Singing Fatties… is a file-sharing side project – ‘two dudes’ making great acoustic folk songs with comical lyrics (I hope) and a trumpet (apparently). ‘Trapfap’ is sung with poker faced brilliant harmonies and actually made me cry with laughter when I figured out what it is about. I’m not even sure if that’s cool. But it must be if Cameron’s connected to it?

Folk Singing Fatties With A Trumpet on CLLCT

FOXES IN FICTION

Snow Angels

Foxes In Fiction is a musical project from Warren Hildebrand, based in Toronto, and ‘Snow Angels’ is taken from a split EP he did with Glow Worm. As expected from anyone I’ve ever stumbled across based in the psychedelic capital of the world, his songs are predominantly electronic, but splashed with liberal lashings of that seemingly geographical specific sonic druggy spaced-out vocals. The results are supercool tracks like this, complimented with equally cool artwork. Well worth checking out if you like your experimental electronica.

Foxes In Fiction on CLLCT

GENERAL OGLETHORPE AND THE PANHANDLERS

Mary

Now this is a band to get excited about. Okay, so their name takes a lifetime to type, but that’s my only gripe. If this first track from their first demo ‘Mary’ is anything to go by then this four-piece from Georgia have got a bright melodic future ahead of them. The traditional drums and guitars format is given some bite and originality by the harmonic interplay of seriously amazing boy/girl vocals and a sweeping accordion that riffs away throughout. In many ways it sounds like an accomplished band who have been playing together for years, so it’s even more impressive that this is the first thing they’ve recorded together. Remember the name and if you need to write it down on the back on your hand then you might want to roll up your sleeve.

General Oglethorpe & the Panhandlers on MySpace

HANDWITHLEGS

I Hate Bugs

Now you know the world is getting weirder when HANDWITHLEGS records a pop song, but this here is no ordinary song, it is a song with a story. I’ll let him tell you it: “A few years ago J was studying in Germany and she bought a one-song CD off the street that just had this song on it, along with a photocopied insert with no information whatsoever. It’s been one of my all-time favourite songs since”. All I’ll say on this is that ‘I Hate Bugs’ is extremely catchy and it should come with a warning label. Which I why I just said that.

HANDWITHLEGS on Transatmospheric

IMPALED PEACH

Psycholicopter

‘Psycholicopter’ has grown on me more than any of the songs on DG8. I liked it from the first time I heard it, but I must have been in a rush because when I finally sat down in a quiet space and really listened to it from start to finish I was blown away by the intricate little uke melodies and understated vocal harmonies. Plus any song that goes ‘Ba Ba Ba’ convincingly at some point is always going to be a winner. Anyone who knows the guy behind the moniker (that’s Impaled without an ‘i’ by the way) won’t be surprised to hear something so poignantly assured, but for those of you who don’t then feel free to enjoy at an exponentially increased ratio to listens.

Impaled Peach on CLLCT

JAMES REDMOND

Tell Me

Here’s another guy who doesn’t need any introductions, throwing a bowling ball of melody your way. Fresh from my favourite cover on the White Christmas Album (‘Don’t Pass Me By’), Senor Redmond promised to attempt to get a new song to me by deadline day, but did. So you’re just going to have to make do with this little bowling ball of melodic magicalness he threw in my direction A LONG TIME after the deadline had passed. I’m sorry, I love a whole load of you, but I can’t think of anyone else who would get away with sending something in so late. Prepare to be a bowling pin.

James Redmond on MySpace

JOHN LUDINGTON

All The World Is Fin

John Ludington is more than just one of the most popular artists from the Daydream Generation compilations, and he’s a lot more than a simple singer-songwriter. New tracks appearing straight off recording sessions for a new record on a mountain-top are complex, surreal beatnik stories of characters, with involved guitar structures and vocal melodies that rise and fall and zigzag between the octaves. ‘All The World is Fin’ is the title track from his forthcoming record and if anything it is even more surreal, and even more complex than anything that has gone before, like how Nick Drake would have sounded if he’d run away and joined the circus in his teenage years…

John Ludington on MySpace

LENN9O9N

Ausdruck

It seems almost fitting that the guy with the coolest name in music might also resurrect the synthesizer as a credible musical instrument. Okay, I exaggerate a little (but not about the name) – the synth can be okay in doses, but to build entire songs and maybe someday a complete record out of that 80s machine of death? ‘Impossible’, I hear you say. Enter Lenn9o9n – an American in Italy who builds up layers of rhythm and synthetic sounds until it doesn’t just sound credible, it actually sounds amazing. ‘Ausdruck’ is dark and melodic, as much a composition as a song and a dangerous precedent. So remember kids: Synths are lethal equipment in the wrong hands. Listen to Lenn909n and if you can’t imagine yourself making music as immense as this, then please stick to the uke.

Lenn9o9n on CLLCT

LOGAN GREENE AND THE BRICKS

Why Am I Lonely?

And now somebody who makes country sound cool. Logan Greene is a singer-songwriter from Tucson Arizona who knows how to write a tune or two. Capable of kicking up a shitstorm of pop electrically, or strumming you to sleep in your Great Grandfather’s rocking chair, here we’ve got him doing the former, backed by The Bricks causing hippies to clumsily line-dance into one another while tripping over bongs and rushing home barefoot across the fields to dig out their Gram Parson’s records.

Logan Greene & The Bricks on CLLCT

MAUREEN SILL

Trip (to Heaven)

Taken from the record ‘In Four Hours I Will Feel Completely Different’, this song of Maureen Sill’s is one sixth of why this little record is so great. Struggling to pick a song from it, I went and downloaded all six and for seventy-six hours it was all I could listen to. These very lo-fi and very brilliant folk pop songs are the real deal – acoustic guitars strum, drums roll, and everything pushes the songs forward while Maureen sings poetic snapshots of the world over the top (and apparently without a microphone). It is put simply, a lovely and utterly bewitching listen.

Maureen Sill on CLLCT

OLD KING

Let’s Go Outside

This is the first thing I’ve heard from Manchester’s Old King and the early prognosis is very good. Okay, so anything involving Jolan from The Falling Floors is going to have some credibility straight away, but these kids are a different entity. ‘Let’s Go Outside’ is a reverb drenched shoegaze/psych track full of shuffling drums, drone/fuzz, ringing guitars, chiming bells, and deliciously drawled vocals. As they said in the business, one to watch.

Old King on MySpace

THE ORANGE DROP

Urban’s Front Yard

You’d be forgiven for thinking that we got this song from one of the three Orange Drop records of 2008, made in the eye of a psychedelic hurricane, when the world was there for the taking and anything seemed musically possible. But then they split up and went and formed new bands… didn’t they?Well actually they did, but now they’re back (woo hoo!) and psychedelic as ever. There are videos out there, and new songs emerging as the supersonic threesome/foursome start to stretch their hibernated limbs. ‘Urban’s Front Yard’ is a shiny new instrumental, and something of a shoegazer anthem. The psychedelic troubadours are back…

The Orange Drop on MySpace

PINEAL INDOLE

aHH ooOOoo HHa

A comp just wouldn’t be a comp without a shot of lo-fi psych-pop noise experimentation and on DG8 it falls to the brilliant Pineal Indole. Describing his project as ’self-indulgent’, actually this contribution sounds far from it. The brilliantly titled ‘aHH ooOOoo HHa’ is a fuzzy scuzzy lalalala-song with beats and bleeps and plenty of effects, loads of fun to listen to and the kind of thing that makes you wish you could rewind the hands of time back to the days of bong.

Pineal Indole on CLLCT

THE REAL BURNOUTS

Accused of Babbling

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder… along come The Real Burnouts. Now the Burnouts are weird at the best of times, but ‘Accused of Babbling’ from the album ‘Endeavouring To Make God A Liar’ is chomping on the limits of sanity. Personally I love it. There’s nobody quite like these guys to throw you a curve ball, then a fast ball, then another curve ball, and finally swallow the ball whole and run away into the woods to never be seen again. Currently promoting the theatrical masterpiece ‘The Disinfection of Walter’, complete with puppets, psychedelic lighting and live actors at a theatre probably nowhere near you, it means a lot them taking time out to throw us a song-bone like this.

The Real Burnouts website

SEALOVE

My Life Is One Big IDK

From ‘Mondays at Sunday Creek’, this song is just one example from two albums worth of examples of the Lo-Fi pop cuteness that is Sea Love. I imagine that it must be near impossible for anyone to hate this one-girl band’s music, with kooky little folk songs and catchy melodies played on a pink ukulele. ‘My Life is One Big IDK’ is a twenty year old’s wry look back over the shoulder of life with a shrug and a grin.

Sealove on CLLCT

SIMON PILER

Kochia

Here’s a rare glimpse through the giant telescope of time at Simon Piler pre-Simon Piler and the Atom Band. Salvaged from a solo EP called ‘Test’, this track ‘Kochia’ is one of a handful of somewhat atypical not-so-experimental Piler magic. Simon himself has conceded that ‘Test’ is perhaps his most accessible piece of work, straightforward (or rather more straightforward) folk guitar song structures with the much more typical all-guts Piler vocals. Here, you can borrow the magic telescope for a couple of minutes while you listen to it, but please remember to return it to Dr Simon Piler c/o Cabin 5, The Mardi, somewhere N/W of Antarctica. Thankee.

Simon Piler on CLLCT

STOMACH ULCERS

Free

Jordan is the lead singer and guitarist in Canadian band N/A, and Stomach Ulcers is his solo project. Frequently found mooching around on old couches in the middle of nowhere solving near unsolvable crimes, when he does turn his hand to picking up an acoustic and strumming his thoughts, he does a pretty good job. ‘Free’ is a mellow and tongue firmly planted in cheek folky-grunge song about not wanting to face up to the future and about loving mooching around. I think he pretty much sums up almost everyone I knew fifteen years ago in a musical nutshell.

Stomach Ulcers on CLLCT

TUCK SON

Chakra

Michael King makes seriously interesting music. The last man onto the Daydream bus, in a fog of smoke, clutching a battered tape recorder and a grin under his arm. ‘Chakra’ is a kaleidoscopic dance of ghosts around a fire in a living room that melts away revealing ancient trees with spooky faces, while the lamp in the corner becomes a setting sun a-blazing. The whole thing sounds like a lot of acoustic instruments making an electric sound as outside in the street Tuck Son drops himself into a seat near the back of the bus spilling the grin and pressing his face to the frosted glass of the window while the engine begins to rumble. And meanwhile back in the living room the ghosts dance on.

Tuck Son on CLLCT

WEIRD RIBS

North Cave

This compilation’s compulsory electronic seven minute soundscape is brought to you courtesy of Weird Ribs aka Joseph Cox. Everybody from time to time needs a track like this in their lives – something to be to, something that makes you want to close your eyes and balance on ledges, go outside barefoot in the cold to count the stars, or simply lie there really wasted in space to breathe.

Weird Ribs on CLLCT

THE WHEELIES

Pinocchio

Well it looks like this is it for me. I’m not saying I won’t rummage around in the back catalogue for a song if we’re seriously short on a compilation in future, but hopefully that’s not going to happen and our quixodelic inbox is so full with contributions that I’ll be knocking people back rather than scrabbling around at the last minute for tracks. After fifteen (or is it sixteen?) years The Wheelies are finally no more, and this is the last song I/we ever recorded called ‘Pinocchio’. I was very unhappy when I wrote it. But I’m happy now.

The Wheelies on CLLCT

______________________________________

Okay you’ve read everything you need to read, now GO AND DOWNLOAD THE COMPILATION ALL OF IT BOTH DISCS SUPPORT THE LITTLE GUYS AND GIRLS OF THE MUSICAL WORLD – YOU WON’T REGRET IT

Thanks to everyone who helped put Daydream Generation 8 together, especially Simon and Becky.

See you all again for another sometime soon.

smally

Download DEAD CANARIES

GOLDEN SOUNDS and MODERN DAY CARPETBAGGER

at http://cozyhomerecords.com/08/artists/dead-canaries/

for free

Jon of the Atom and his travelling band of musical troubadours return like migrating free-form birds with two brand new albums – ‘Golden Sounds’ a year-long continuation of the upwards musical trajectory and an epically wretched record to make, and ‘Modern Day Carpetbagger’ apparently written and recorded over ‘a long weekend reading John Wilmot’. As always I go into these recordings with my eyes closed, fully expecting the unexpected from the ‘bastard child of Beck and Brian Wilson.’

This adventure began some two years ago when Dead Canaries burst into being with the acclaimed collaborative ‘Critical Mass…’ Throughout 2008, its follow up ‘Something Else’ accidentally fell together, fusing disparate songs and sounds from different internal/external places and passing players. The question after the dust had settled from ‘Something Else’ and it became clear that something of an inadvertent masterpiece had emerged from months of recording, was… where the fuck could Dead Canaries possibly go from there?

Thankfully, this is Jon of the Atom we are talking about. Sometime in 2009 he upped sticks, left his native Ithaca and jumped on a box-car to Louisiana, where he assembled a new team of singers and musicians to help realise what we now hear as the first half of these two recordings – the immense ‘Golden Sounds’. I first heard a rough demo of this record in the autumn while Jon wrestled with band conflicts and eventually decided that he ‘hated it’ and went back to the drawing board. This early version of the record was actually pretty great… lots of backwards stuff, the same experimental take on traditional folk-pop songs from the two previous records, and random instruments galore sounding darkly golden in nature. Four months later it is redone and as usual he was right to redo it. This version of ‘Golden Sounds’ is twice as big and twice as darkly golden, the songs more intricate and ironically even more expansive, an adventure of a record that takes you by the hand and leads you underground where notes blow triumphant and voices sing in claustrophobic harmony, where freaky rolling, clunking instrumentals bind simply brilliant songs together, and anything becomes possible. Tracks like ‘Prince Edward Island’, ‘Seven Bell Peppers in a Row’ or ‘It Wasn’t Calm’ shows a maturity of song-writing, the sound of someone who knows exactly what he is doing and is doing it with technically ease. There is order in this chaos – dark and mysterious one moment, bright and gentle the next, ‘Golden Sounds’ is the kind of record that only Dead Canaries can make. Jon himself hinted at perhaps some sort of finality when he described these two records as his ‘Abbey Road’ and ‘Let It Be’, but when great things like this are going on, and when you think the boundaries can’t be pushed any further, he does it again. I guess we can only hope he keeps doing it.

‘Modern Day Carpetbagger’  suggests that he will. Where ‘Golden Sounds’ seems carefully planned and deliberate in its melodic head-fuckery, this second helping of Dead Canaries is much looser and chaotic in the way it plays out. Truthfully my iPod screen is fucked so there is no way of me telling which songs I’m listening to. One of the downsides of this is that after ‘Hunting of the Bilge Rat’ on ‘Golden Sounds’, and due to the fact that so many songs instrumentally melt into each other, I’m unable to tell where one record ends and the other begins. This is particularly challenging when it comes to writing a review. However…

It has its pluses. For a start, play these records side by side start to finish and they sound exactly like a double-album should sound. ‘Modern Day Carpetbagger’ may have been recorded in a long weekend (I find it difficult to believe that anyone could record something so emotionally potent with such technical proficiency in such a short space of time), but in many ways it is ‘Golden Sounds’ equal. ‘Karl Marx Lives In Lafayette Louisiana’ for example, is my favourite song on the two records, gear-shifting like The Beatles and punching like The Kinks. Plus anyone who heard Jane Gilmore sing ‘Honey Pie’ on the White (Christmas) Album will be pleased to hear it find a home here. Just to clarify – we’re talking about my least favourite Beatles song, a track that until now I’ve not been able to listen to without my toes squirming from the ends of my feet to hide in old brown shoes. The Fink/Gilmore and Fink/Saul vocal combinations are as creatively special as ever and from time to time on both records you hear them materialise (the acapella ‘Prince Edward Island’ for example is a stroke of absolute genius, and the reworked version of ‘Low Down Adela’ is as mighty as anything Jon has cooked up previously). The liner notes suggest that there are many other singers, musicians and songwriters at work here, but they rightly come and go like whispering ghosts, plucking things, wailing things, chiming things. What these things are and who does what is all just part of the collective conundrum that is a global orchestra of participants who are bewildered to be along for the ride, the professor conducting via satellite link-up from his basement laboratory, winking back over his shoulder at us the audience, while simultaneously bellowing ‘Clarinets blow! Girls sing! Funny little percussion thing rattle! Horns explode! Drum roll! Catchy piano melody kinda noodle along! Uke plink! Guitars strum! Here, let me throw you some weird guy talking about whale song being sent into space…’

Some records you have to tear from the imagination into reality (Golden Sounds) and some fall out like they were meant to be (Modern Day Carpetbagger). Both are great records… you should give them a try.

download: It Begins In Beauty

Then from out of nowhere,  CHANSONS DE GESTE’s “It Begins In Beauty” landed in my crowded in-box. My initial reaction was ‘Oh well, if I’m really done, then there’s no harm in downloading this and digging it for fun.’ So download it I did. And dig it I did. Only I kept on digging it, and though new music continued to pour with alarming frequency into my brain through my headphones, from time to time I felt drawn back to this record, like somehow I’d been magnetized to its melodies.

Anyone tuned in to what we’re doing here surely by now knows how great The Loaded Whispers are. Chansons De Geste is the latest Syd Lane of The Loaded Whispers manifestation and instantly you’re thinking that a name change means something – upheaval and change, a new direction, or quite possibly an experimental noise instrumental record to fill a creative gap in time. But actually it is the complete opposite. Chansons sounds to the untrained ear like the culmination of what she and Jer were doing on the four previous Loaded Whispers’ releases. Where the melodies flew before, now they soar. Where once it sounded soulful, now it sounds spiritually incandescent. And before where the distinctive poet voice reached for magical notes, now it brushes the magical notes aside and bursts upwards into incomprehensible stratospheric heights of song.

On the now seemingly final Loaded Whispers record “Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth”, you could sit back and listen to Syd’s voice dancing across the sky, on “It Begins In Beauty” it seems to have somehow vanished out of sight, up above the clouds. In a weird way it’s like a butterfly in reverse – the more developed the songwriting and sound becomes, the more it sounds like Syd, confidently emerging from some cocoon as herself.

Please excuse these clumsy metaphors… it’s the inevitable by-product of the finished record, guided by the mighty muse. The songs themselves, albeit framed in this epic sound (quite remarkable considering this is a home recording project), are extremely personal, autobiographical, and philosophical – as genuine as it gets. You get the feeling that going into a big studio with a full band would kill the fragility and honesty out of tracks like “Not A Poet Be”, “Ontario Place” or “Astride A Grave”. Make no mistake – it is one thing to write a solitary timeless song and then to record it in such a way that it captures it perfectly, but it is another to write a whole record of them. From start to finish these are gut-wrenchingly beautiful words and tunes and I don’t think anyone of us will fully understand just how incredible a record it is until many, many years from now. On “Artists…” I got addicted to listening to “Sick of Writing Sad Songs”. On “It Begins In Beauty” I could get (and have been) addicted to listening to five or six of them, and expect the rest at some point to take centre stage in due course.

Don’t believe me? Well take a listen to “Ontario Place” for yourself:
Download audio file (OntarioPlace.mp3)

The gravity of this great little record was enough for me to seriously reconsider walking away from this adventure forever. It wasn’t an immediate revolution and there were other contributing factors, but these psychedelic pop ballads soaked in reverb carrying candid poetry on shoulders of song hooks gnawed away at my conscience over days and weeks until finally all that was left for me to do was say “Ah fuck it. Who am I kidding? People need brilliant life-affirming, comforting and inspiring songs to keep going and here I am sitting on a record like this…”

So bearing in mind that I’d already been sent a life-changing record from across the Irish sea and was struggling to keep my feet on the road of finality, it was something of a killer blow to receive this in my in-box a month later:

download: The Solstice Sessions

A SYD LANE solo album, recorded on the run, the bare bones of  the process behind “It Begins In Beauty’s” songs. Sure, the subject matter of these confessional hymns are sung from the same page as its older, more mature and intricate sister, but “The Solstice Sessions” is like a more playful and less self-conscious younger sibling. It perhaps doesn’t pack the same punch, but from a fan’s perspective it is a wonderful insight into the song-writing bubble, sounding less psych-pop and more folky and just as important.  Credit must go to her partner in crime, Mr Jeremiah James, maybe not such an audible presence on these recordings (though contributions to “Astride A Grave” help really make that song), yet you sense him there every step and note of the way. I’ve got a feeling that without Jer then Syd herself might be content to simply make music for the love of making music, and you and I would be none the wiser. So hats off to him.

If you’ve never heard The Loaded Whispers before then I’d recommend you work chronologically starting with “It Begins In Beauty”, because it truly is a featherweight champion of the world, and save “The Solstice Sessions” for when you’ve had your fill. If you’re already a fan like me, then you might as well close your eyes, or flip a coin and download either first. They both have a place off the beaten track, like leaves of technicolour skin, or trails of poem in the sky. I fucking love pretty much everything that comes out of the Lane/Jones studio, and I’m betting a change of direction that you will too.

Visit Syd Lane at:

http://theloadedwhispers.com and

http://www.myspace.com/chansonsdegeste

But for a laugh and out of curiosity I put out the feelers anyway, adding the ‘Christmas’ part with the idea that the project would be done in time for the 25th December. Thankfully I managed to persuade one Edward A Bartholomew from DG7, the E6 townhall, and the Delandoper collaborative website to coordinate the whole thing. Seriously, this guy has done an immense job against the sort of hitches that would have put me in an early grave. Try ‘I’ll do For the Benefit of Mr. Kite?’ for just one example.

And here you go – 32 tracks, 27 artists, and so many great new takes on songs from such a legendary record. You can catch up with all your favourite Quixodelicists – Simon Piler, Warchalking, Uberfuzz, Brendon Hertz, Fig Mints, Jane Gilmore, The Wheelies, Rocketships of Love, Broken Mono, and James Redmond, as well as discover a whole festive battalion of new artists that it is an absolute pleasure to be involved with.

Happy Christmas to all of you.

Much love

Smally x

• CLLCT
• Mirror 1 (Sendspace)
• Mirror 2 (delandloper)

DOWNLOAD IT NOW FOR FREE

Just click right here

Not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14, but 15! brand new Quixodelic Records for you to love or loathe. Genres range from folk-pop to psychedelia, and from electronica to experimentalism. With that many records there surely must be something for everyone.

Contributors to the box-set include Uberfuzz, The Falling Floors, James Redmond, Becky N, Frogville, Simon Piler and The Atom Band, The Real Burnouts, Brendon Hertz and The Burnt Orange Crayons, The October Terminus, The Painted Shuts, The Amalfi Glow, Periwinkle Periscope, Shine Shut, Handwithlegs, and The Wheelies.

For a for review of all the records go here

A little retrospective mix-tape I made for CLLCT – featuring various great songs from all your favourite quixodelic artists that have previously released records in the store or been featured on The Daydream Generation compilations. Nothing new, but a lovely listen nevertheless.

Download the zip here

Listen to the record & hear plenty of more great music over at www.cllct.com

Download it for FREE today

here

Listen to SET YOUR SENSES FREE from THE REAL BURNOUTS “Copious Maximus”:

Download audio file (TheRealBurnouts-SetYourSensesFree.mp3)

I was recently asked to list my five favourite bands of all time and quickly reeled them off – The Stone Roses, The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, The Beach Boys, and The Real Burnouts. Most of you will have heard of the first four, but not so many of you will be aware of the fifth. I mean this list sincerely, and include The Real Burnouts not for gimmick, nor for some kind of pretentious alternative musical one-upmanship, but simply because each of them at some stage have made music that changed my life. If The Roses ripped my head open with their indie anthems and The Beatles saved my brain with a song-writing masterclass, if The V.U took me somewhere dark I never knew existed, and The Beach Boys showed me the stratospheric heights that melody and harmony can reach, then The Burnouts showed me that there was a whole other world to discover, beyond the radio stations and shiny music magazines, happening on the bedroom floors and in the secret basements of the universe. This experimental and reassuringly original psychedelic band from Utica, New York, made music sound alive again by kicking down the doors of possibility in their grotesque painted masks and goofy hipster clothes, with twisted words and unpredictable tunes. From the first time I heard their druggy anthem “Set Your Senses Free” (as revalationary as  experiencing mind-altering psychedelics for the first time) I pretty quickly discovered that nothing was what I’d always assumed it had been, and nothing could ever be the same again. It really is an epiphany to discover that the songs and sounds that actually matter the most are rarely on the radio or television, nor do they frequent the shelves of your local independent music store, or get magically handed to you when you least expect it. The music that actually matters you’ve got to go out and find for yourself.

Whether any of us like it or not, a revolution has smashed through the heart of the music industry at the turn of the 21st century. The tidal wave of recording technology is as important a change for creative culture as the youth revolution of the 1950s were. Now it is possible to cut out the corporate middle man and go straight for the jugular of open ears. Now, the budget-less bedroom bound songwriter can record their ideas and share them with an audience on the other side of the globe within a matter of minutes. Now, the means of production in the form of four-tracks and software programmes are affordable (even free) to anyone who has something to sing about. You can design your own covers, sell downloads, or mail your own CDs. You may not make a living from it, but even in that there is a purity, honesty, and fire in the DIY recordings of this generation. Undoubtedly there always has been, but never before have we been able to capture and share it with each other so easily. I can’t speak for you, but I know myself whose thoughts and experiences I’d choose to listen to if it came to a choice between the decadent rock-star writing from a air-conditioned tour bus that eventually stops at some clinical beach-house, or the people like us who struggle and sometimes succeed, who try to make sense of the world around us from the battle-scarred terrain that is the front-line of actuality. The Real Burnouts in that sense are perhaps fortunate to find themselves in the thick of the wave that finally broke the dam, because this is the kind of band that record company executives could lose a lot of sleep over. As well as being musically brilliant, they can also be frighteningly different (the first time I heard their name mentioned on an internet forum, someone wrote “The Real Burnouts scare me”), and even to this day I’d be inclined to agree with that assessment. These guys are the unwitting pioneers of a time when Lo-Fi became not just the preserve of the sixties garage band, but a movement in its own right. They were there as wasted teenagers trading home-made cassettes on the streets of Utica in the mid-90s, and although the recordings are infinitely more sophisticated, it is still the same principle over a decade later – just a much bigger street. With podcasts and collectives, social networking sites and rapidly shifting advances that cater directly to how the artist wants to be heard rather than how the corporation wants to package a commodity, it is hard to see this revolution failing. The death knell of the vacuous celebrity has been well and truly sounded, and though the world can’t hear it yet, the heroes of a tomorrow a long way from today, will not be pretty poster puppet youths with fuck all to say, or winners of talent shows regurgitating elevator music. The heroes will be bands exactly like The Real Burnouts.

I’ve pestered the creative driving force (Paul Burnout) for the last couple of years to put a record like “Copious Maximus” together. There’s a Utican cardboard box in my bedroom containing every available Burnout record to date (most of these are available through the brilliant little Cozy Home Records). It’s a gargantuan back catalogue – from the twin giants that are “You Won’t Know Until You Find Out” and “Transparent Mirror”, through early offerings with wonderful names like “The Penis and Vagina Syndrome”, or “It’s Not All Hot Chocolate”, right through to the insanely magical “A Lull In Void”, and more recently the subtle and relatively melancholy “Post-Show, Post-Traumatic, Ultimate Mundane”, and “(In) A World Not Unlike Your Own”. With a bit of searching, a few clicks of a mouse, a well-intentioned word to the right people or a little loose change, anyone who digs this band as much as I do shouldn’t find it difficult to assemble the entire collection. The things is, that the first time I ripped through the records back to back I was struck by how many Burnouts songs were missing from them. Tracks like the aforementioned “Set Your Senses Free”, or the spiky psych-punk “Girl You’re The One For Me”, the goofy pop of “Psychological Sacrifice”, sixties-tinged anthems like “Be Right Where You Belong” and “Whenever Will I See You There?”, even the more off-the-wall efforts like the spoken “Wild Sarsaparilla” – all of them seemed to be curiously missing in action. If anything, the scale of lost tracks is perhaps testament to the band’s prolificness – barely a year goes by without a new offering, and a natural consequence of this is that some songs get left behind, fall by the wayside, or just about vanish into the aether forever. Paul himself explained where they’d gone – “to me they were all bits and pieces that didn’t quite fit on albums, and others, to me, were too good compared to other songs on albums to be used”.

Two years of pestering later and here they all are. A 34 track collection of the finest and strangest Real Burnouts recordings that didn’t make it onto the records, hand-picked from the cutting room floor. “Copious Maximus” is lo-fi home pop’s accidental answer to “The White Album”. A coherent collection of songs recorded over four years of arguably “golden age” Burnouts, like a jigsaw of several puzzles that mysteriously piece together. The psychedelic riotry of the band format (all your favourite Burnouts are represented – Luke, Bobby, Katie, Dustin, and Pat) goes hand in hand with the more introspective poetic ramblings. Alternative versions, collide with undoubted hits, drums and synthesisers burst into flame, and everybody wakes up the morning after wondering what the fuck has just happened. Don’t get me wrong – this music isn’t for everyone. It isn’t always obvious, and if you don’t get it the first time around, then chances are that no amount of working at it is ever going to get you there. But for those of you like me, who have been blown away by the honesty, originality, and pure experimental expressiveness of this band in the past, then this is a must have recording. Forty years ago today The Beatles released “Abbey Road” and just about everyone knows it. Forty years from now the chances are that The Real Burnouts will still be a cult group beyond the periphery of the canonized musical pantheon. The great records of our generation are like fleeting gems that flare for a short while before burning out in your brain, to be discovered many years later in tattered old Utican cardboard boxes. So dig well before it burns out.

Smally, 17th August 2009

Find out more about The Real Burnouts at: www.therealburnouts.com

Get more Burnouts recordings here: www.cozyhomerecords.com

Download it for FREE today!

It’s been a while, but here we go again. Back from the dead thirty-eight-song-stories high and breathing musical fire, it’s the seventh DAYDREAM GENERATION compilation. Everything you’d expect from one of our free compilations – tunes you can shake your sticks at, psychedelic sonnets, folk weirdness, electronic circuitry for the earballs, and things that go pop! in the night.

Here are some of the people you might find on there, some you may have heard of before, but even better if you haven’t: ROCKETSHIPS OF LOVE, WARCHALKING, AKRYLLIC LOVE, FROGVILLE, JAMES REDMOND, SUCKS TO LALA LAND, WHITE GUYS JUMPING, THE FALLING FLOORS, THE SPACE BETWEEN THINGS, CODY HIGH SCHOOL, BROKEN MONO, BRENDON HERTZ, A NOBLE GHOST, THE PAINTED SHUTS, THE INVISIBLE MOUTH, ALLAN DOUGLAS, CHANSONS DE GESTE, SOCIETY, VOLCANO, FIG MINTS (OF YOUR IMAGINATION), THE REAL BURNOUTS, E. A BARTHOLOMEW, SIMON PILER AND THE ATOM BAND, JOHN LUDINGTON, VENICE GAS HOUSE TROLLEY, THE GROSVENOR SUITE, THE RED PLASTIC BUDDHA, ROLLERCOASTER, THE ORANGE DROP, JOSEPH RIDE, BECKY N, MOUSEY BROWN, THE WHEELIES, THE OUT FAMILY RAVEN, OLD NORTH, THE ARTIFICIAL SEA, UBERFUZZ, and DEAD CANARIES.

Download it for FREE right here

Here’s one for your summer-sun-addled minds. Looming in the wake of this year’s folklore masterpiece “Songs From Home”, Simon Piler and his merry Atom Band are back with an eponymous album recorded in the Florida springtime. Somewhere between folk and experimental, bolstered by samples and strange instrumentation, this collection of songs is  a fascinating jungle of ideas, where the thin line between dreams and reality gets rubbed out in the firey poetry of sound snapshots.

You can download it: here

I was still so wonderfully perplexed by this record after the fifteenth listen, that I figured the only way to get to the bottom of it was to virtually corner Simon and get him to explain it all as best he could. What follows is arguably the most inspiring descriptions of the inner workings behind a record that I’ve ever read. You’d be well advised to savour every word.

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So before we begin, let’s talk titles. You previously said you weren’t sure whether this new record was going to be called ‘Heimdall’, or simply self-titled. Which is it going to be, and what is ‘Heimdall’ anyhow?

Well, it’s officially self-titled, but the front cover’s imagery is a self-portrait in the guise of the Norse god Heimdall.  Heimdall is the herald of the gods in those legends. From his celestial perch he’s capable of hearing a single leaf fall to the earth or seeing a single blade of grass move. He uses his horn, Gjallar, to mark the arrival of the gods, and to warn of danger.  However, the most notable (and ultimately final) sounding of the horn announces the ‘final destiny of the gods’, Ragnarok.  If you listen, Gjallar sounds several times throughout the album – most notably during This Too Shall Pass, Bars, and again at the reprise of This Too Shall Pass.  When it speaks, it speaks calmly, and it says, “THIS IS THE TIME.”

This Too, Shall Pass
The apocalyptic jazz opener – I really like it. It’s got this sinister soundscape behind it, rumbling electronic sounds and gathering thunder effects and this all-out vocal take. Like a lot of your recordings, it’s very lo-fi and simple – I noticed for example that it seems to be entirely in mono. Is that a conscious decision? How do you go about mixing and mastering songs?

They are indeed mono, but really that’s just the result of my recording setup – I’ve only got one audio input into my computer, and that’s where I did a good chunk of my mixing and mastering for this album.  I like to use the freeware program Audacity.  It doesn’t ‘color’ the recording as much as Garageband does, and also makes it easy to fabricate patchworks of tones.

Lyrically, it’s the complete opposite – philosophically monstrous. “This is the time for the gentle-hearted person / Do not be fooled / If you think you’re right / Please think again” – made me think about how especially in the West we are living through a time of relative physical safety, and to embrace this and make the most of it, for there will be more sinister times to come. It’s a poetic call to disarmament. What’s it really about then?

This Too Shall Pass is a song about living one short life, like you and I are both doing right now.  And you know, apocalyptic jazz just might be the appropriate epithet for this song.  The organ track is sampled from a gospel organ tape I found at a rural thrift store.  It was a very rich sounding recording, but unfortunately it was destroyed only shortly after I snatched that part.  I came up with the melody while singing in the field, pondering the ability of human beings (like us) to survive on very little.

I really do feel that there is a new hour rising, a time of conflict due to excessive waste. As a young ecologist, I am becoming aware of the struggle between an organism and it’s resources.  We are a society of indulgence, but frankly, I see an enormous number of young people (that is to say, organisms) in my generation who really do want to live simply and to tune their lives and families to their own environment.  So it is a song of readying and preparation.  A song that calls for people to stand their ground against grotesque marketing and to ready themselves for the difficult uphill struggle against their own over-consumptions.

The ‘gentle people’ of the song are the sensitive people of this time.  Sensitivity, in a sense, is part compassion and part to do with observational acuity.  I know that anger and pridefulness won’t be the vehicles of change because they cannot supply the thoughtfulness that is needed to overcome serious challenges.  I am worn out with anger.  I don’t need to speak priggishly or in a manner that makes me appear superior.  I just want to enjoy sounds or smell my food before I eat it.  I don’t want to have a TV barking commands in my home.  I want to remember my dreams.

Well, I Just Wanted To Tell You That I Like to Dance
Rolling folk instrumental with peculiar rhythms, bleeps and a cool little “Yeah!” halfway through. It’s funny, but this is the kind of track that you could easily let happen and dig, but when you actually stop to listen to it you notice so many things stacking up, and making it what it is. It sounds like a workshop of sounds – so what weirdness exactly did you put into that mix? And how does an instrumental like that form?

This song is one of my favorites on the album, probably because it came together very effortlessly, and because it is, in fact, a dance.  I’m very fond of my dances and preludes.

It’s got a good number of layers, but maybe not as many as you’d expect.  It starts with a reversed tape sample, then washing machine / bottle cap percussion, synth, guitar, $0.50 recorder, and voice.  Intermittently there are sound-sculptural elements and of course, the splendid sample of the kids shouting, “Yeah!”  I got that fromfreesound.org.  (Actually, I get some of my better samples from that site.)

I think this one started the way a lot of my songs do; that is, as a systematic rhythm in my veins.  I usually have a rhythmic idea first, then just record different synth voices or guitar improvisations on that pulse until I get something that I like. At that point, it’s only a matter of figuring out subsequent overdubs, and I’ll admit, there’s a lot of effort put into figuring out parts that aren’t too redundant.  I’m really pleased with the sound sculptures, because they let me get sounds out of my head that aren’t possible on a physical instrument.

Blue Pants, Green Shirts
More disharmonious, experimental folk with surreal visions of “sewer saints” in green shirts and blue pants. It’s not one of my favourite songs, but in the context of the whole record it’s another dimension and that’s one of the things I love most about your albums, that they go all over the place in terms of style and substance and yet the transition and feeling of the record as a whole is one of continuity. Plus this is a great example of how you have a unnerving poetic ability to just open up and go for it vocally, like sung spoken poetry. Is that a honed skill or an innate inner voice that has always been?

I’ve always been a poet, but I think that’s because I’ve always been a dreamer.  That’s not to say that I haven’t honed my skills at crafting words or tuning their metrics to music.  I was lucky to have Adam Pergament to study and practice with when I did; I do credit him as a major influence to my own poetic style.

This song deserves an explanation as well.

It’s one of the first and the clearest of the dream-songs that arose.  In order for the dream to make sense, though, I need to make a short detour:

When I was younger I came up with the story of ‘The Homeless Sewer Skaters’ - a group of drifting ascetics (a bit like whirling dervishes) that had magical ice skates they wore all the time that allowed them to skate pretty much anywhere.  They understood the magic of streetlights and when they danced, they made understandings of space into physical visions for those in attendance.  The short musical sketch for my failed play, Metropolis, details the arrival of a young man to the ultimately bureaucratic city, Metropolis, and his involvement with the Homeless Skaters.

This year (three years after the original story was formed), I had a dream that involved The Homeless Skaters again.  The images are as clear in my memory as if I had experienced them in my waking-life.  They had become a omnipresent group of roving people – and I knew almost every one of them.  Their eyes were deeply sunken, and they were all very pale, because they lived in the sewers.  People would treat them so cruelly that I had a hard time believing it.  But their new leader was so harsh and disciplined that he brought an incredible willpower to his followers. His name was David Geppinger.  He rallied the group and drilled them until they were practically a militaristic street gang.  They called themselves ‘The Sewer Saints’ and wore blue pants and green shirts.

I watched things become more and more maniacal, but when my good friends joined the order, and I couldn’t believe it.  While sitting in an airport/exposition center, I witnessed the group march in and start harassing people into doing what they wanted.  Finally, David Geppinger and his group came up to me.  I stood up, and they started to push me around.  I fell back into my chair, but instead of physically hitting it, I went right through it into this all-encompassing purplish-red glow.  I didn’t have a body or anything anymore, I just floated in this colored field.  It was at that point that I felt my hand grasp around something, and I suddenly existed again. I held my hand high, and in it was The Bolt of God!  (My phosphorescent recorder.)  I said to him with a forceful and direct energy, “David Geppinger, this is the flute that will call your death.  There is no denying this.”  There was a general murmur in the crowd and an sharpening of malicious faces among The Saints.  I remained unwrinkled.  Their faces changed when I said, “I give it to you as a gift.”

Abyss, Capable of Charm
This one’s pretty insane and for that I really like it. “As you and your friend wrestle deathly underwater in an argument over the way you’ve been living your life recently” – there’s something about that line leaps off the record. Is this a surrealist song, or is there hidden meaning in it?

This song is the second of the major dreams described in the album.

I was back at my alma mater in Madison and my good friend (and member of The Atom Band,) Brendon Hertz, was on the dock with his Father and Grandmother.  I remember it being near sunset, the sky densely pink and orange.  There was a pressing and heavy saturation of colored light on every surface I saw.

Brendon didn’t care for my current state, and he berated my inability to feel, observe and think at the same level that I had used to.  I rebuked his criticisms.  I was very sour to him.  At some point I remembered seeing (in my peripheral vision) a large seal-like creature sitting on a rock not even three meters from the dock.  It was wearing a blue athletic jersey and it just watched us with a goofy, toothy face.  I felt leery of it the entire time.  Brendon and I fell into fighting.  Almost instantaneously, we tumbled into the water – wrestling and socking each other while trying to get to the surface for air.

Something bit my leg.  It didn’t hurt, but I could tell that damn seal had sunk it’s teeth really far into my quadriceps.  I came up for a breath, and I can very clearly remember what I said to Brendon at that point.  I said, “Look.  Your Dad’s arm is orange.”  That was my argument; my logic to prove to him that I was, in fact, still trying to pay attention to the details of this life.  I think that it was probably a thin, bitter argument, but it did stick in my mind as being as real as anything I could feel in my waking-life.

From this dream I gleaned a fine thought, and probably my best while in Florida:  You are alive while you are asleep.

Where do you stand in relation to the divide between those who are content to let people “take what they want” from your art, and those who attempt to communicate precisely their experiences and ideas? Is there even a divide at all? And if you turn right can you re-enter reality as easily as you leave it?

I’ve come to accept that people who hear my music won’t be able to figure out everything exactly how I had imagined it.  But, then again, isn’t that the joy of imagination?  I really just hope that my music can stimulate people in some way or another to think, to dream, or to feel for themselves.  I write from experience almost always, but I don’t really think understanding the experience is important – just the potential that the experience could channel a vitality to people who listen.

Chicago Soul Food (The Hungry Ghost)
Meandering (possibly) improvised keyboard exploratory instrumental. Is something like this planned, or does it just happen? I mean, do you sit down and think “Okay, I need a keyboard instrumental, let’s see what I can cook up”, or are you just noodling away and think “Hey, I should record this”? It sounds to me like intermission music – like you’re sitting watching a film and three scenes in all the lights come up and this starts to play. I’ve been thinking a lot about track structure of records recently (actually it’s been a recurring theme of the last two years thanks to The Daydream Generation). How do you approach structuring a record like this, and do you have any particular philosophy about it? One of the reasons I ask is that this record gathers momentum as it goes, and it’s a very strange, maybe deliberately strange start?

Oh, you’ve nailed it.  Intermission music.  This song signals a transition in the album, notably, a dissolution from dream sequence into waking-life.  It’s supposed to be soothing after the chaos and romp of the first few tracks, especially for people who are listening as they are going to sleep.

I don’t really decide how an album is ordered until the very end – usually after I’ve recorded more than enough tracks for it.  In other words, the tracks are all recorded before I’m making decisions about their inter-album relationships.

Figuring out the order of the album is very much like composing a song.  There is always a natural sequence, and sometimes it takes a bit of rearrangement to maximize the contrast during transitions.  It’s probably my favorite part about making an album – taking my favorite recordings and puzzling them into a larger picture.  I was just reading that music has a much more diffuse meaning than speech and takes a longer time to convey that meaning.  I do know that an album is the amount of time I personally need to present a full sequence of ideas.

Big Bay
Folky rolling acoustic summer soundtrack with a great little vocal melody and faraway pulsing beats. I really love this one – it’s a side of your music that you fully expect to put in an appearance at some point and as always you don’t let those of us who love this side of what you do down. On saying that however, I get the feeling that you probably could produce a whole record of “songs” like this, but that wouldn’t be any fun for you? It has that very “American” folk feel to it, something I think that people can only authentically produce if they live and breathe the land. Are you aware of your traditional musical roots, or is that an unconscious thing? Curiously, as much as I like the politicized folk music of America, I’m not a great fan of our own Scottish folk music which generally involves singing about glens and lochs and girls with ginger hair.

I’m glad to hear that it sounds American – this song is really tied to the land that I was conceived upon.  That is, the area surrounding Tampa Bay.

My grandfather and grandmother are (were?) among the multitudes of people who flock to Florida to spend the chilly winter months.  This year, when they were only three or four hours away from their final destination, my grandpa decided to keep pushing on instead of stopping to rest.  He and my grandma ended up getting in a very serious car accident.  He ended up a with a suite of life-threatening injuries.

It was weird for me because I got the news while I was on the road to Florida myself.  When I got there, I drove straightaway to Tampa to visit him in the hospital.  Most of my time in Florida actually correlated to his subsequent (and amazing!) recovery from the accident, throughout which I ended up driving the stretch to Tampa Bay pretty regularly.

I will be honest, I think this song is about all those people that have something that shocks them into realizing how much their families or friends mean to them, and the reciprocating love that human beings can show for each other during hard times.

Whoa, waves.  (Which I have heard that lochs have.  Or sometimes ginger hairs.)

Cracker Cowboy
Haha. After all that stuff about American folk here you go with a song about a cowboy. More experimental folk – you sound vaguely Dylan-esque at times, but there’s another element to it, almost a theatrical circus sound that carries it away from where he was it. Does that make sense, and why is that?

Yes, it does make some kind of sense.  Let’s see…

Bob Dylan was from Minnesota, originally, and so I think that any resemblance I have to him is derived from two parts respect and one part locality; especially in the tonality and linguistic flair of his voice.

The circus part stems from my ridiculous love of clowns.  I know they’re very badly received by society today, and I think that largely reflects a fear of uncertainty that our age clings to.  Our ABSOLUTE UNDERSTANDING of the world in this GLOBAL AGE is mocked by the social power of the enlightened fool.  You can’t  be lost anymore.  Or amazed.

I am a clown.  I hear and feel the humors of space born of uncertainty, and I situate myself in such a way to transmit those humors into a document.  A record of time and space.  A record you may be listening to right now.

But, wait a second!  What is this circus business?  The Cracker Cowboy was actually a pictorial tribute on the wall of the (only) bar in the small Florida town I lived in.  So the song is a tribute to a tribute, I guess.

How do you go about writing a cowboy song – or any song for that matter? What I’m really asking I guess is how do you choose subject matter for lyrics, and while we’re there what are the recurring themes of the album?

Characters like The Cracker Cowboy are capable of singing through a voice of their own.  He just popped out of my head fully fledged with his silly country anthem to boot.  The tinky loop I started with was largely responsible for the end result, I think – sometimes a loop is good enough to build on, and this one was awkward and funny in an appreciable way.  Not too much substance to it, but some rather odd spaces, at least.

Let’s see, themes…  Definitely dream, and the superficial difference between dreaming and waking-life.  That gets sticky quickly, and we’re tumbling into the boundaries between myth and non-storied life.  Or death and being alive.

It is also an album about the United States of America, specifically the State of Florida.  That is a real place, amazingly.

Bird
Spoken word poem intro gives way to folky acoustic experimental soundscape, complete with possibly whale sounds (?) and whizzes. What’s “Bird” all about then?

Here’s the third big dream of the album.  If you can follow along with the words, you might recognize that Bird was an entity I met in my dreams.  She is startling because she doesn’t represent any real world analogue for me.  In a way, she’s the first person I really got to know while I was asleep.

The dream went a little like this:  Some friends and I were waiting for a special show to start in a bar-room. It was going to be spectacular; I could tell by the hum in the air.  There were supposed to be monster trucks driving on the bar, itself.  Prior to that, a poetry reading was supposed to happen.  (I guess this was the hip kind of monster truck venue…)

Bird just walked up to me and started talking.  She was all-enveloping.  From the first moment I met her, she understood me like she was reading a book – sweeping across my face with an absolutely clairvoyant gaze.  She absorbed anybody she spoke to like that.  It was weird, but I felt like I had known her for twenty years after twenty minutes.

Apparently, we were way too early for the main event, so we went for a walk down the crooked sidewalk and into a narrow, wooden building of impossible passages.  Bird could disappear and reappear through them seamlessly.

Much later on, when the monster motors were just memories in my mind, I stood in a moonlit, sandy space with my grandfather and admired a scalped old pine.  A pack of tourists were inspecting it the next morning; except they didn’t know what to make of the stringy nest stuck high in the tree.  Grandpa and I knew it was Bird’s work.

Incidentally I like it a lot – it confirms my belief that you have a natural poet-voice. Do you ever play this stuff live? I can just see you in my mind cinema hustling at spoken word events or open mic nights.

I do occasionally play live, though it’s quite rare.  Honestly, I have a great desire to assemble a physical band with complements to the Atom Band.  That would convince me to play-out with more vigor.  Making waves for people can be a serious undertaking.

Bars
This is my favourite song on the record, there’s always a point within it that makes my brain jump to attention – not a particular point in the song, just at some point I get the inevitable “Oh, what’s this one again?” feeling. Curiously it sounds like The Pixies on a folk trip with all the parts fitting perfectly – the electric guitar lines, floating recorder, tapping rhythms, and chime of bell. Vocally it’s right on the money – raw and ragged but full of fire. Where the fuck did a song like this come from?

Well, like most of us, I’ve spent far too much time in bars.  The weird thing is that I don’t even really like them.  I do like music, though, and they tend to go together.

I’m very quiet at bars.  I like to think and listen to the roar of voices in them.  I don’t drink much.  And though I can’t completely take credit for the thought, I usually liken our attraction with bars to flies congregating around sweet, sticky stuff.  From there, the progression to moths and streetlamps follows pretty clearly.

Analogously, I tend to be a drunkard-of-streetlamps at night, spinning and bouncing around between them.  I like to walk aimlessly around the backs of buildings and empty spaces.  Good thinking in those spots.

In a way, this song is a cheer or lament for all the people who are also intoxicated by streetlamps.

Extracting Sunlight From Cucumbers
It’s the comical-serious “If I was…” folk song and possibly one of the most instantly accessible things on the record. “If I was a musician I would be a singer hawking words of no interest to you / my voice sounds like it’s made out of glue (glub glub)” – that line, and the way you present it makes me grin every time I hear it. But it begs the questions: 1. Why “Extracting Sunlight From Cucumbers”? and 2. If you could be anything, anything at all, then what would you be?

1.  In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver visits the Grand Academy of Lagado and meets a half-insane researcher who claims to have been ‘extracting sunlight from cucumbers’  for the past eight years.  It was originally intended as satire of contemporary science, I believe, but I appreciate it more as a mixture of pure dream-like mania and science.  The hilarity of some fellow meaninglessly grinding cucumbers into a pulp for eight years is splendidly hilarious to me.  Both extremely diligent andfutile.

2.  I would be an scientist and an artist.   Preferably at the same time.  Working on that.

This Too, Shall Pass
Bluesy reworking of the opening track, but blink and you might miss it. What’s the longest track you’ve ever put out on a record? And what’s your thinking about song length? Two minutes keep em hanging on for more? Epic ten minute free for alls? Or just however long the song takes?

My earlier songs were much longer – most were at least three minutes, some up to six or seven minutes long.  I think the award for the longest song on a record goes to ‘Red Truck Pulls Up’ off of One-Hundred Consecutive Lines to Dewdroplets (2004).  It’s a meandering delay-feedback experiment that clocks in at 11:33.  (“Oh wow!  This effect pedal is really cool!  Hey, now check out what this knob does…” ) Sometimes Chime experiments would feature 30-minute fluxes of song, though they were medleys of many poetic works.

These days, though, I resonate with a song that does what it needs to do in about two minutes.  I like frankness, though I often struggle to be frank.  I like my insanity highly concentrated, and honestly, I think a two minute song can seem pretty long depending on the content material.  Take ‘Chicago Soul Food’ for instance.

Light Eternal
As much as I personally love “Bars” I suspect that to your everyday man on the street, that this will be the record’s obvious stand-out song. I know the chances of your everyday man on the street finding himself in possession of a Simon Piler record is reasonably unlikely, and being your everyotherday man on a beach I don’t profess to speak on behalf of the masses – just this is what my hunches are telling me. It’s a folky lullaby to close the curtains, really beautiful poetic imagery over stripped back acoustic guitar. Is this your favourite song on the album?

In some ways, it is my favorite, yes.  It’s one of my only songs that has gotten consistent, quiet, contemplative comments from people.  Of course it’s fun to know that someone has thoughtfully enjoyed something you’ve created.  Then again, I could also say that Abyss is my favorite, though it would be for a much different reason; mainly that it is a very bizarre but excruciatingly planned song, and moreover, I think that it works in spite of all that.

I wrote Light Eternal for two non-related people.  (And interestingly, two people whom the ‘everyday person’ might not relate with.)  The first was one of my friends from Sioux Falls who has lived for many years with a diagnosis of Schizophrenia and has bounced in and out of state hospitals. He was an incredibly hardy bicyclist.  The second was a tough and likable Wisconsinite woman I knew at the same time; ultimately the only lesbian I’ve ever gotten to know well.  Both of these people had the solitary-person’s low, roving spirit.  I felt a kinship with them for that reason.

And while we’re here at the end, what did you learn from making the record? What new things did you try?

As far as learning goes, Smally, I’ve had a boom.  I think my musical voice is continuing to improve through better choices of arrangement.  This album represents another step towards consolidating my thicker, multi-voiced tracks into stylistic and ultimately meaningful pieces.  That might sound chalky, but I really do believe that in order to do something musically stunning, you either have to have strong notational skills (written composition) or a high-quality mechanism of arrangement in conjunction with a series of musical rules (improvisational composition).  And I do consider myself an improvisational musician.  Besides that, I also took a few steps in understanding relative loudness in application to sound sculpting.  Software is a powerful tool for synthesis and manipulating sounds, and I think I’m getting better at using it how I’d like to.

And ideally what would you like people to take away from it?

Take what you wish, but try listening to it as you’re falling asleep.

**(I also wanted to say, “Thank You” for making this album possible for everyday people to get ahold of. While I had the chance, you know.)

Find out more about Simon Piler and The Atom Band at: www.myspace.com/simonpiler

Namu the Disco Whale

CYP2D6

Out Today!

Download it for FREE from our Quixodelic Record Store: here

So here’s one from left-field. For the first time here’s a record by an artist that I can’t tell you anything about. A 4-track EP called “CYP2D6″ that accidentally fell into my hands and an intense sound adventure full of distortion, samples, bleeps and things you’re unlikely to have heard anywhere before.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Namu the Disco Whale, then all I can suggest is that you hit the search engines and hopefully will have more luck than I did.

www.therealburnouts.com

Why not take some time out of your busy lives and click on the link above? Disappear down the rabbit hole of The Real Burnout’s universe, with news about a shiny new record – (IN) A WORLD NOT UNLIKE YOUR OWN – videos, words, pictures, and the expected unexpected, you’ll be reluctant to ever climb back out again.

THE LOADED WHISPERS

Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth

DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE TODAY

download it at Quixodelic Records

Every once in a while a record lands in your life and blows you away. This is one of those records – an intelligent and heartfelt collection of folk-psychedelics, with songs that will linger in your mind like ghosts long after they have played. Dublin’s THE LOADED WHISPERS are probably as great as lo-fi musicians get, combining the brilliant poetry of Jeremiah James and the unmistakeable mind-blowing voice of Syd Lane, over fuzzy stripped-back psych guitar and dancing piano keys. “Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth” is a perfect introduction to what they do, with so many stand-out tracks that all you can do is let the record play out from beginning to end. And that really is the truth.

Find out more about The Loaded Whispers – here

DEAD CANARIES

Something Else

DOWNLOAD IT FROM THE QUIXODELIC RECORD STORE FOR FREE: here

Full tracklisting:

1 Going For A Ride

2 The Pump Got Caught In My Trouser Leg

3 Something Else

4 The Shortest Hour of the Day

5 Song For #6

6 Kim’s Unfinished Ride Home

7 Doli Lemon

8 Something

9 Nothing Else

10Vindaloo Was Her Name

11 Don’t Mess With The Gear Box So Far From Home

12 Tim’s Bajo Story

13 The Hoborchestra’s How & When

14 Nothing

15 Who Knew?

16 Black Hole

(C) + (P) Dead Canaries

A Cozy Home Record, 2009

This much anticipated follow-up to 2008’s brilliant “Critical Mass: Flying Things Vs. Crawling Things” is available to download from today from our little musical curiosity shop. “Something Else” has been available for a couple of months over at Cozy Home Records, but we know how pressed for time your average surfer-collector is, and this record is that great that we collectively decided to host it here as well. I’ll save babbling on about it here and instead just post a review I wrote a while back for a magazine we just couldn’t get off the ground:

I guess you’d have to live with and probably even sleep with the new offering from Dead Canaries for a month before passing serious judgement on it. But as it happens I don’t have a month, and even if I did I want so badly to stand in its corner and shout about how great it is after only a handful of listens, that I don’t think I could wait that long. It was with the same excitement that I bought the long-awaited second Stone Roses album that I eagerly followed the breadcrumbs back to the Cozy Home record store where the second Dead Canaries record “Something Else” was waiting for free download. It never even crossed my mind that I’d be as disappointed as I was when I first heard “The Second Coming”, simply because Jon of the Atom and his musical friends seem to have been chemically inoculated from making a bad record. From The New Wave Dirt to JOTA solo projects and onto last year’s critically-acclaimed underground Dead Canaries debut “Critical Mass: Flying Things Vs. Crawling Things”, it’s been an upwards audio trajectory, conversely going irretrievably deeper into the rabbit hole of musical possibility. Whoever said that there is nowhere original for guitar music to go has obviously not been fortunate enough to stumble over the same  aforementioned breadcrumbs.

http://www.myspace.com/yourpsychtunes

1 Because it’s FREE

2 Just to confirm to yourself that Psychedelia didn’t die after all. It just went out into the desert and slipped through the cracks in the earth – and has been making an interstellar spaced out racket underground ever since.

3 Those kids at YOUR PSYCH TUNES sure know how to put a compilation together. They’ve been doing it for over 2 years and every one of the compilations to date have been a carefully hand-stitched fusion of familiar sounds and brand new bands guaranteed to get inside your head. Chances are if you’ve only been paying attention to mainstream music for the last couple of years that you won’t have heard of any of these bands before. Which makes it all the better doesn’t it? You can be the weird kid in the school playground and turn your nose up at the popularity of The Black Keys, or you can simply keep it all locked away in the swirling, burling confines of your own head.

4 So as you can remember just how fucking great THE SHIVAS are – I mean, those kids are on fire with “Look So Good, Be So Good”

5 It’s the ideal soundtrack for any strange old day.

6 Because it’s always a good time for a change, to dig new music and follow the songstreams wherever they run. I for one will be checking out the likes of JEFF SYLVA (beautiful acoustic Arthur-Lee-esque “Syllables”), STATIC CLING (holy shit what a voice), MEMPHIS GRAHAM (sitar-led pysychedelic perfection of “Colour”), and KIM AND THE CINDERS (“Loved To Death” is bluesy supersensory brilliance). But don’t take my word for it, there’s undoubtedly something for every psych-lover or even if you’re new to the genre packed into this record.

7 Just to hear THE RED PLASTIC BUDDHA do “Clouds” again. Ahhhhhhhhh.

8 Speaking from experience, the only reward for running a project like this (aside from the kick of discovering new music) is seeing that people are taking 10 minutes out of their lives to go and download whatever you’ve put together. It can be a thankless task at the best of times, but as long as their are people like Your Psych Tunes in the corner of the little psychedelic guy & girl, then we’ve got a fighting chance. On the other side of the coin, here are three hands worth of talented musicians giving away their songs for nowt – and you can’t really argue with that can you?

9 If you like Volume 7, then you’ve straight away got another 6 Volumes (all equally as aurally vibrant) ready-made for you and available to download for FREE as well. That’s at least half the summer taken care of.

10 Because UBERFUZZ are on it.

UFC1

Out Today

Ever wondered where to start with the 19 records we’ve released/co-released or re-released through our very own QUIXODELIC RECORDS?

Well wonder no more. For those of you new to this musical curiosity shop of free downloads, then why not try on The Utica Flower Company’s first ever sampler (imaginatively titled “UFC1″)? A single track  lifted from each of the records, songs I’ve been listening to far too many times since the first ever Quixodelic Record (Warchalking’s “Stratum”) burst from The Void in March 2008. Dig on the psychedelic sounds of bands like ROLLERCOASTER, THE ORANGE DROP, UBERFUZZ, CODY HIGH SCHOOL, BROKEN MONO, and ROCKETSHIPS OF LOVE, sing along with the lo-fi folk/pop of JANE GILMORE, KALEIDONAUTS, SUCKS TO LALA LAND, BECKY N, SIMON PILER AND THE ATOM BAND, THE WHEELIES, THE PLAYGROUND and JAMES REDMOND, or even try putting something genre-defying like DEAD CANARIES or WARCHALKING into your ears. And if none of that floats your boat there’s always the magic of FIG MINTS (OF YOUR IMAGINATION), or the weirdly wonderful secret and anonymous DAYDREAM UNDERGROUND. In a nutshell that’s something for almost everyone and everybody they know, and hopefully will point you in the right direction before that download-trigger-happy finger starts a-clickin’.

Just click here

to head to our QUIXODELIC RECORDS store if and when you’re ready

Oh, and if 19 free tracks are not enough to convince you to have a listen, for the first 50 downloaders we’ll be giving away our exclusive… wait for it…

UTICA FLOWER COMPANY FREE CUT OUT AND KEEP TOP TRUMPS

No shit.

And you thought a cut out paper moustache with Sgt. Pepper was cool?

Smally

Out Today!

Now this is exciting. Been a long time since we first heard and were blown away by River Speak English’s “Puzzle Piece” on Daydream Generation 2. A year and a half later and we’re made up to be hosting one half of the aforementioned collaboration’s debut record. “Well Under Thirty” is a collection of Bob Dylan covers by Sucks To LaLa Land’s Keith Crain – as well as being a beautiful introduction to this talented singer/songwriter, it’s arguably as great a collection of Dylan covers as I’ve ever heard. Listening to the 8 tracks featured was like discovering Bob Dylan all over again.

You can download it for FREE at the Quixodelic Records link on our site right now

& find out more about Sucks To LaLa Land at www.myspace.com/suckstolalaland

The boundaries of home recording equipment have been removed for quite some time. Long gone are the days of four-track cassette machines and bouncing; the art of scotch-tape over the protection tabs on Michael Bolton tapes given as gifts from far removed relatives because the store was closed seems almost lost. Digital interface, non-destructive editing, primitive pitch correction, and a galaxy of on-board effects at “reasonably affordable” prices makes analog craft boxes seem archaic and knucklish. The mix tape is gone, the mp3 era as arrived, and the wake created a great wind that set the lo-fi dream ship to sail into the great abyss we call “The Island of Forgotten Toys.”

Or so it was thought.

The latter half of this decade has seen a rejection of this silly idea. While digital recording is nifty and allows for a palette far beyond the capacity or need of many modern musicians, its missing the charm, the soul of tape hiss and natural distortion, the blood of bobbles in the takes, the mistakes that make a song human, the warmth that makes a song honest. This is not necessarily a new idea. Guided By Voices did it way before anyone thought is was cool. Lately bands the likes of the Black Lips and Wavves have been poking out of the mire and grabbing the affections of many purists and old-schoolers. For every group noticed for doing something “new” there always lies a subculture that understands the principles as well or better than the flagships that give it awareness. Fig Mints (of Your Imagination) is a shining example of a band that not only has had a solid grasp of this new ‘old’ sound, but have been at it for several years, culminating to this record, “Exercises in Futility”. It’s from this frame of reference the title is apt.

On the surface this album is unbridled and unkempt. Things are slightly out of tune or minutely out of key. Instruments are pegged and microphones are flattened out by the immensity of the sounds that pummel them. This is the future, ladies and gentlemen. Like track 2, A Change of Season, this record is the sonic equivalent of skipping class with your friends and mocking the world as it toils around you. Its unbounded and focused, yet is fenced by morals and codes that culture seemed hasty to forget. These songs call for normalcy in the midst of hurry, with the understanding that often the express route to normalcy can include a level of self-medication, most clearly represented in the opening track, The Well-Worn Road. What may be most striking about that particular song as well as the rest of the record is its consciousness. The Fig Mints are well aware of what they’re doing, much to our benefit. We are all entrenched in a field of voices, and “Exercises in Futility” sets up camp and is perfectly content to stay where it is and wave to the passing cars.

This is not a complicated record. The songs are ushered and unrelenting, moving like freight in the night. Guitars are towing ever further, yet are not overpowering. Even the solos are conservative and well shaped while commanding and necessary. The understated and restrained rhythm section plants its grooves like furrows in black soil, emerging from its toil to bomb the universe into bending at its every whim. All the while the vocals talk you through, calming and inciting, and always in the drivers seat. The range of the album is great, yet cohesive. Its tantric nature easily takes the mood from darkly introspective (Strung Out Sentries) to warmly reflective (the Stooges-esque My Days At University). The movement of the record as a whole resembles the behavior of a house party. At first all talk is intimate and the ideas are big, the songs are pointed and relaxed, often without drums. As the room fills up, songs like Undead Idea Mines convey a letting go, an acceptance of our own weirdness and the weirdness of others. Further down the line, as the room gets looser, the vibe descends into a lo-fi fuzz fest of whirl and rock and roll, particularly with Don’t Stay There and Its All I Can Do (To Stay Awake).

Down and dirty Ariel Pink kids will love this record. Black-shirted rock kids will love this record. Literate post-secondary astronauts that have learned to enjoy poverty will love this record. “Exercises in Futility” is eerily relevant and strongly appropriate for its time and season.

Wilford Benevolus
Junior Rock Analyst and Amateur Spokesperson for the League of American Wheelmen, Intl.

For more info on “Excercises In Futility” go to: www.cozyhomerecords.com

Out Now!

Here it is! Two years, two states, one retrospective outtakes EP, and five relocations after “Hugs and Smiles” hit the virtual shelves, Fig Mints are back with “Exercises In Futility”!

At the moment, the album is available only through mail orders for $8. Suffice to say, it’s worth it. The songs are his best yet, and it’s been reported that Bobby is only interested in breaking even with the money that he spent putting it out, so show some love and email bobby@cozyhomerecords.com for info on how to buy a copy, or just send your name and address with the payment to:

The last time I felt this way about a debut EP was when Ride dovetailed harmonic white noise into my fifteen year old head like some new configuration of sounds for my life. Then it was the introspective wall of shoegaze, now it is something resembling ghost psychedelics, an intricate tapestry of familiar instruments heard through the tunnel of an aural kaleidoscope. With “Songs About You”, The Space Between Things finally begin their ascent into the wider public consciousness, while giant storm clouds of praise no doubt jostle for position in the wings. This is what musical free-climbing sounds like, scaling the dark face of the universe, a one-man team of musicians with songs as profound as the sounds he produces. Ideas balance on the ledge of melodies, precariously beautiful and intricately menacing.

There is no pomp or calculated swagger about Chris Hobson or the music he makes, everything is about simply being as the four tracks feel their way forward collectively, yet each one is immense and sure-footed in its own right, cascading, ambiguous, explosive, and understated. “Liquid Thought” pulses and murmurs. “Love’s On The Run” is TSBT at its majestic best, travelling over bass and guitar lines while the earth pauses immobile in sudden snapshots outside your window. “Moving For Protection” is arguably the highlight, fusing electric and acoustic forms with haunted jaw-dropping melodies. Closer “NYC Lights For Her” oscillates and peels away like layers of a dream… in the vicinity of My Bloody Valentine, only these songs are ultimately like nothing I’ve heard before. Comparisons are useless and trivial – all you can do is stand back and listen as it leaps across the precipise of possibilities, digging the details and seemingly infinite strokes and touches in search of some impossible sonic perfection.

But for a first offering this comes frighteningly close to some shimmering ideal. After all, self-recorded records are supposed to be clumsy, are they not? Minus the overt blemishes of fluffed notes and human hiss, “Songs About You” sounds somehow other-wordly and sophisticated, testament if anything to the rigours of mixing and mastering it has been subjected to. And I’m led to believe that this is but the tip of the iceberg (or foot of the mountain depending which way you want to look at it) of a vast body of unreleased work, making it all somehow even more exciting. All that’s left to say is I hope that you love it whoever the “You” of the title is, hit from Toronto in a spectral daydream vanishing into the gathering clouds stacking up beyond your shining upturned eyes.

You can download “Songs About You” for FREE (Yes, FREE!) at:

www.thespacebetweenthings.com

or check out their MySpace page at:

www.myspace.com/thespacebetweenthings

*for a further fix of TSBT why not download Daydream Generation 5 and Daydream Generation 6, featuring “Bare Hands” and “Postcard Crimes” respectively…

Simon Piler and The Atom Band

Songs From Home

download: http://www.daydreamgeneration.com/MP3/SongsFromHome.zip

It’s been a while, but finally here we go. 2009, and in association with NEW RADISH, Quixodelic Records are pleased to introduce SIMON PILER AND THE ATOM BAND’S brand new record “Songs From Home“. Lo-fidelity experimental folk music for the aimless spring mind, alive with poetry and adventurous sound-stitchery. And FREE of course.

I’ll stop the superlatives there and save them up for the interview I’m about to write, but why not gift yourself the time and patience it will doubtlessly take to wade through my clumsy sentences and just click the DOWNLOAD button above…

Find out more about Simon Piler and The Atom Band here:

www.myspace.com/simonpiler

Out Now!

The long awaited follow-up to 2008’s “Critical Mass: Flying Things Vs. Crawling Things”, Jon of the Atom leads an ensemble cast of lo-fi experimentalists on the cool as fuck audio adventure of “Something Else” - jangling toy keys, drawled harmonies, kicking live drums, and exploratory soundscapes. A little bit of something else for everyone for FREE download over at www.cozyhomerecords.com

THE BEST OF THE DAYDREAM GENERATION 08

download: Best Of DG 08

“The Best Of The Daydream Generation 08″ is a collection of tracks from the 3 DG compilations released in 2008, as voted for by you the listening world. And perhaps unsurprisingly, you have pretty fucking great taste.

All the songs are copyright the respective artists.

A Quixodelic Record, December 2008

BROKEN MONO

Tulk

download: BROKEN MONO - Tulk

1 6th Age Wonder

2 Brain Hotel

3 Comming and Going

4 Dark Cloud

5 I Don’t Know

6 My Soul Moves Sideways

7 River Runs Dry

8 Rose Morning

9 Searching For Stanley

“Tulk” was recorded in about 1854 on a steam-driven PC - Broken Mono

Broken Mono on MySpace: www.myspace.com/brokenmono

A Quixodelic Record, December 2008

FREE DOWNLOAD TODAY!

(and tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on…)

The Daydream Generation digs deep, the commune swells and sounds even more psychedelic than it did yesterday, and yes you can believe your eyes, that really is the one and only BROKEN MONO you’re seeing in the Quixodelic Record store. “Tulk” is the riffing musical matador like you have never heard him before. Recorded “In 1854 on a steam-driven PC” miraculously these recordings have survived the onslaught of time and have been generously laid on a plate for your feline ears to lap up.

So what are you waiting for? Head to the QUIXODELIC RECORDS link at the top of the site and lap away…

(review to follow)

Free download

Of course we’re not the only ones out there putting together free download compilations – but of all the others I’ve found, this one stands up head and psychedelic shoulders above the rest. Yes, the good people of Your Psych Tunes are at it again, bringing you a mellow slice of wintry psychedelia. Go forth and download your little hearts out.

See Your Psych Tunes on MySpace for more info

www.myspace.com/thedaydreamunderground

Where to start with this?

It’s always been a part of the Daydream Generation’s short-lived history to orchestrate seemingly random, near-impossible, and hopelessly pointless projects. Way out beyond the periphery of financial considerations, we’ve built a maze of profiles that nobody ever finished (or was interested in), survived the technological headfuck of an online music festival, kickstarted a makeshift record label with it’s own chaotic collective, and released countless free records for you to download, compilations, Best Of’s, EPs, LPs, debut albums, unreleased features, and even compilations of compilations. So on paper at least the idea of starting a secret underground musical collective may have sounded completely random, probably impossible, and almost certainly pointless, but there was a quixodelic vibe of familiarity about us even bothering to dream it up in the first place. Without any real research or consideration whether it would actually work or not and not even knowing what the purpose of such an underground society would be, I got back on the horse and sent out a load of invitations to anyone I thought might be interested, and even a few that I suspected would not. And so The Daydream Underground was born.

Once the hard part of getting on the horse was out of the way it quickly became apparent that such a society without a coherent philosophy or purpose would drift away like the Maze before it, so I turned my attention to conjuring up some kind of “mission” that would hopefully unite the secret anonymous members of the underground. After a few seconds I settled on the first thing that came into my head, the idea of a collective record of instrumentals from as many of us as possible, each recording under a pseudonym, anything goes, the madder the better, “a record of sounds that run like paints on a Jackson Pollock painting” I think I said. In my mind I imagined a psychedelic/experimental journey of ideas, textures, sounds you’ve never heard before, and sounds you’ve never heard together before, colliding and captured on a single disc…

…and two weeks later here we are. “Into The Ewigkeit” is everything I imagined and a bit more. From your armchair to a wild west showdown, from the robotic sounds of subterranean secret basements to snake-infested Iowa, from Paris to fuzz, from handclaps to glockenspiels, and all the way to the skies of World War II – it is a dark record, thick with the fog of ideas, and quite possibly the first chapter of a great adventure into the unknown.

And so about the people who have contibuted to making this record I really can’t tell you a thing. I don’t know how many contributors there are, or even where they are from, very occasionally I recognise a sound that I’ve heard somewhere before but for all I know the tracks that make up the first ever Daydream Underground release are from the same person operating under 16 different pseudonyms. Whether this is a global project or 16 people that just happen to live on my street, or your street… your guess is as good as mine. I don’t know whether these are people I know from previous DG compilations, or if they are new to all this, and I don’t even know how to find them to say thankyou. But for what it’s worth, here are the founding members of the secret musical society:

LOUIS LA WAYE & THE OH OOH OH’S

OH NO NOT THAT FUCKING LLAMA AGAIN

THE PURPLE OHM EATERS

ARMCHAIR SUPERMAN

FINKBRAU

JIM PINE

LANKIE & THE SEVEN SCARED LADS

DIP

OLD MEN USE CANES

NEBULALA

SHORT PANTS IN WINTER

JONNY BALLS

THE WAY IT IS

THE CRYSTAL MONOLITH

and

GLOWHEEL

So head to the QUIXODELIC RECORDS section at the top of the site, click to download, stick it on your iPod or burn it to a disc, and please remember to strap yourself in because the ride could be a little bumpy and then some.

If you like what you hear please check out our MySpace (link above) and if you want to get involved in any future underground projects then check out the following link:

http://www.groups.myspace.com/thedaydreamunderground

Secretly yours

DQ

]]> http://daydreamgeneration.com/site/the-daydream-underground-into-the-ewigkeit/feed/ 2 http://daydreamgeneration.com/site/rocketships-of-love/ http://daydreamgeneration.com/site/rocketships-of-love/#comments Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:53:07 +0000 daydreamgen http://daydreamgeneration.com/site/?p=242

Out Today!

Rocketships of Love

Electronica – Experimentalism – Microcorg Modular Synthesizers – Covers – The sound of space – Production Transmission – Blast Off – Rocketships – Rocketships – Rocketships of Love

You’ve heard Uberfuzz climbing for stratospheric anthems, now hear Paul Le Keux and the Rocketships of Love freefalling through the atmosphere of your mind. Featuring Kelly Le Keux, Scott White, and with Regal 3/30 at Mission Control, this self-titled debut record is enough to blow any would-be astronauts electrical-brain-stems clean out of the skull-socket.

See QUIXODELIC RECORDS (above) for more info

It’s 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 Free 2 1

WHAT?

DG6 – as you might deduce from it’s title – is our 6th compilation that we’ve put together since March 2007. Many times I’ve found myself saying “whatever the fuck it is we’re doing”, but I think I might have finally figured it out. On a very basic level what we’re doing is stumbling around trying to find great new music, and in turn provide a platform for mostly unsigned bands to be heard. Most of these will not be household names or the product of fashion, many will be self-recorded or essentially lo-fi by nature, and some will have mastered home-recording to such an extent that they will be as far from lo-fi as you can possibly imagine. In essence what these compilations will do is create a sampler, an alternative soundtrack, a modern-day mix-tape of sounds and songs that you’ll struggle to find in the same place anywhere else. And the compilations with be genre-less – you’ll find folk and psych sitting side-by-side, along with experimental electronic instrumentals, shoegaze anthems, simple acoustic pop, indie-rock, and so and so on. Like my Mama says “The Daydream Generation compilations are like a box of chocolates for your ears, and you just never know what you’re going to get”. You might not like it all, but the chances are there will be something in there for you, a song that you can carry around for the rest of your life, a band that you can fall in love with, or simply something new when you’re tired of the radio and the music television channels, or a neverending stream of bulletins on MySpace from musicians desperately fighting for the last droplets of your attention. Sometimes I think this is some kind of revolution in music, decent people coming together free from concepts like money and advertising and t-shirt sales, and celebrating music for what it really means, and at other times I just think it is a bit of fun, something to kill a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon when there’s nothing left to do but listen. So to answer that “What?” I’d say it is a load of ideas rolled into one and rolling on it’s own accord – you can take it or leave it. Personally I think you should take it because there’s some really amazing music for you to discover, but I’m not going to blow our own trumpet for you.

Who?

The 40 bands who make up DG6 have been carefully hand-picked, or sucked in by something resembling fate. If you’ve downloaded any of our previous compilations then you’ll no doubt be familiar with a whole load of them – The Real Burnouts, Fig Mints (Of Your Imagination), Rollercoaster, Dead Canaries, Uberfuzz, Warchalking, Becky N, The Playground, CoDY High School, Jane Gilmore, James Redmond, Allan Douglas and The Tragedies, Broken Mono, Rocketships of Love, and Sucks To LaLa Land have long been friends of the project and supported us along the way with their songs and words of support. Also there are a handful of artists returning from the gargantuan technological frenzy that was DG5 – names like The Space Between Things, The Hoborchestra, William Carpenter, The Revolutionary Patriots, Kaleidonauts, The Sugar Skulls, Ghodbane, and MotherBIRD are back and will hopefully in time become established sounds on the daydream bus. Finally, there is of course a whole new army of songmakers for you to familiarise yourself with – One Unique Signal, The Falling Floors, Twisted Gimlet, Sauvie Island Moon Rocket Factory, Wild Smile, Invasions, The Gills, Vagabond Stories, The Lucid Dream, Daniel Land and The Modern Painters, The Grosvenor Suite, The Loaded Whispers, The Barefoot Kid, Riot of The Century, Love Knot, Simon Piler, and The Great Valley. It’s a mighty fine mixture of new and old, even if I do say so myself.

The reality is that as hard as I work at this with as little time as I’ve got, that the Daydream compilations wouldn’t be possible without the technological and moral support of several individuals and organisations – so here’s where I get the traditional thankyous out of the way. First and foremost thanks to Tim at www.transatmospheric.com who continues to host this strange little adventure we’re having here – if the DG was really a magic bus, then he’s the guy who owns it and paints it and keeps the engine ticking over. A massive thanks also to Kris for sharing the workload & halving the weight of the daydream (more appreciated than you could ever imagine), and to Chris for the cool cover art – I’m guessing tomorrow the question you’re most going to want answered is “What’s the guy in the woods holding in his hand?”. As always a huge brotherly cheers to everyone at www.cozyhomerecords.com – especially Bobby and Paul – who ride the same wavelength on the other side of the Atlantic and are as inspirationally understanding as it gets. And of course thanks to all the bands and people within bands who responded to my messages to get their songs and artwork in on time – Jon, Tim, Nick, Keith, Will, Kenji, Jolan, Cal, Nick, Dave, Casey, Kyle, Mike, Ryan, Gil, Thomas, Noddy, Jay, Becky, Daniel, Paul, Allan, Paul again, Stephanie, Mike, Paul a third time, Antonio, Celina, Helter, Jane, Rebecca, Davyd, Loudon, Vucky, and Peter. Also not forgetting the projects who have helped us along our way, especially Cozy Home Records and the Splendid Isolation podcast laddies. Finally thanks to anyone who is still reading this and goes on to click “download”. Whether you enjoy it or not is irrelevant – its the trying that counts.

WHERE?

Here: 

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e7bd6c08e4cf772fab1eab3e9fa335ca91c7edf5194e2970

AND YES IT’S FREE!!!

WHEN?

Right now.

WHY?

Well this is the one part of the equation I still can’t get my head around. For all I babbled on about the “WHAT?” it somehow still doesn’t make any sense. Just recently it was pointed out that I am the worst entrepreneur in history, the anti-thesis of a Richard Branson. “So how much money do you make from this thing then?” I was asked. 

“Erm, none” I said.

After a round of laughter in my direction and struggling to regain my composure I began to try and somehow justify the unjustifiable, “Music’s about more than money” I said.

“Yes, but what’s in it for you?” I was asked.

All I could think of was how much I loved DG6 and the five compilations that have gone before, the thrill of discovering a new song that sings it’s way into the very essence of your being, the sense of connection you feel when you recognise a little bit of yourself that has always seemed out of place in some other folk’s music, and the magic of at least attempting to create an alternative to the capitalist-media-circus that is the modern music industry. Of course, I didn’t say any of that, I just shrugged my shoulders and smiled. “WHY?” goes very deep, sometimes too deep to really make any sense.

Nonsensically yours in anticipation of you thoroughly digging this latest offering,

Smally

UBERFUZZ As If It Matters EP

OUT TODAY

With DG6 just about ready to go I’m sure those of you who frequent this site are busy twiddling your download fingers and wondering what the fuck to do with yourself until it arrives. Well twiddle no more – thanks to Paul and the rest of the UBERFUZZ team we’ve got the pleasure of hosting the latest offering from Rugby’s more recent in an acclaimed tradition of psychedelic space rock & roll.

“As If It Matters” is a 5-track ride through foot-stompingdruggy anthems, synthesized lullabies and damn fine bluesy pop songs. So fill up your ears while you can and download it for FREE from the QUIXODELIC RECORDS links at the top of the site.

Find out more about Uberfuz2 at: www.myspace.com/uberfuz2

 Out Today!

JAMES REDMOND – Too Much To Think

So this one here is pretty damn special for a whole number of reasons, including the historical context of the record, the many technological hurdles we threw ourselves through to get it together for you, and of course the sheer genius of the songs that make it up. Those of you familiar with previous DG compilations are perhaps aware of who Jay is and what he does, but seeing as it’s been over a year since we last heard from him it’s likely that for the majority of you this is going to be something of an eye-opener.

The 8 songs that make up this unique collection not only clock in under a breakneck 20 minutes, but they overflow with comedy, tragedy, and staggeringly great pop-folk melodies. With a little help from some friends, it’s got names like Dirty Ticket, The Sweetcorns, and Tramp Attack written all over it, but what you hear is 100% James Redmond.

Do yourself a favour and download it for FREE today from the QUIXODELIC RECORDS link at the top of the site.

Out Today!

KALEIDONAUTS: Tigermouse

FREE download today from the Quixodelic Store link at the top of the site (from approx 10pm UK time)

It’s a long story but I’ll endeavour to keep it as brief as possible as there will no doubt be plenty more said about “Tigermouse” in due course. It began with a Jon of The Atom/Wheelies collaboration in January 2007. Mid-2007 we tried to get a Daydream Collective mass-international collaboration off the ground, trading tracks across the oceans, but there just wasn’t enough wind in the sails and it died a death before it had even begun. Little did we know it, but at the same time the JOTA/Wheelies project was organically and accidentally becoming the very thing we were clumsily trying to create. Much has been written here on this website about the making of the first Kaleidonauts record “I Do Not Currently Own A Spaniard (Mine Died)”, but up until its release in April 2008, it was considered by everyone involved as a one-off. To anyone looking in, Kaleidonauts would bear an uncanny resemblance to Jon’s own musical manifestation, Dead Canaries. Producing, arranging, and playing most of the songs, it came from the same folk-pop-psych-experimental land of Dead Canaries earlier “Critical Mass: Flying Things Vs. Crawling Things”, and in fact, virtually all of the personnel were the same (Jon, Jane Gilmore, Katie Saul, Tim Kotch, Meghan Geiss, and myself). But it was the contribution of Warchalking on a couple of the “Spaniard” songs that would prove to be the making of this follow-up.

In the glowing aftermath of the debut Kaleidonauts offering, Kris and I began work on what we were considering to be a Warchalking/Wheelies collaboration, split down the middle, sharing songwriting, music, and lyrical duties equally, at the time under the working title of “WW”. Daily exchanges of tracks and ideas since May of this year have finally brought us to this. It wasn’t until the latter stages of the project, with the contribution of Jane Gilmore, the cover, and the glaring sound of continuity, that we all agreed that this would rightfully become another Kaleidonauts record. And so “Tigermouse” was born. Musically it is very different from “Spaniard” in many ways, but at the same time it is singing from the same page in the same book of songs. I hope you like it.

Find out more about Kaleidonauts here: www.myspace.com/kaleidonauts

Listen to “Seed” from Tigermouse:

Download audio file (Kaleidonauts-Seed.mp3)

Out Today!

The Orange Drop

The Orange Album

Wrap your heads around this one if you can…

Free to download from the Quixodelic “STORE” link at the top of the site… loads more info to follow on the latest psychedelic addition to the Daydream Collective.

Out Today!

FIG MINTS (OF YOUR IMAGINATION)

The Passionate Misunderstanding

In association with our brothers & sisters & weird cousins twice removed at www.cozyhomerecords.com we’re grinning to present a seven-song slice of history available to download at your free & easy Quixodelic Record store right now so you can hear how it all began…

JUST CLICK ON THE STORE LINK AT THE TOP OF THIS SITE

Out Today

It was a difficult decision whether to include this in the store, particularly as there are several VERY great records there already that are much more deserving of the attention. But for what it’s worth here’s my contribution to the summer of the DG EP to keep that stone a-rolling, a retrospective Wheelies collection called “The Wheelie” pulling together my own highlights from a year of recording and five albums released in full at www.cozyhomerecords.com during 2006/07. It’s hiss-ridden, lo-fi mediocrity, but sometimes strange kids dig that kind of thing, plus it’s been remastered by the elusive Bubbasmooth so it’s as good as The Wheelies are ever going to get.

You can download it for FREE from the Quixodelic Record STORE at the top of this site.

Or not. I dinnae mind either way.

Much more spectacular musical adventures will follow shortly…

As promised here’s something pretty fucking cool & then some for your weekend. Quixodelic Records is proud to present the latest in its short-line of collective musical adventurers, BECKY N and her debut TWO WHEELS EP.

Fans of the Daydream Generation compilations might be familiar with the songs, but thanks to our resident gangsta engineer Bubbasmooth, they’ve been given a bit of an audio shoe-shine. While I continue to try and fathom why so many people (including myself) love Becky’s songs so much, you can download it for FREE from the STORE link at the top of the site & hear for yourself.

Out Today!

ROLLERCOASTER

From Darkness To Light

Just when you thought the summer couldn’t get any better, we finally got our act together and have brought you a 7-track offering from the brilliant Rollercoaster. It’s a must listen for anyone who likes loud guitars, space-psych organs, and lovely druggy melodies. And you can download it for FREE from the Quixodelic Record STORE link at the top of the site. You can even throw some money Helter Skelter’s way if you dig it as much as I think you’re going to by clicking on DONATE, help him buy some more instruments of distortion or some much deserved studio time.

Review to follow… 

OUT TODAY!

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e7bd6c08e4cf772fd5a101cf914073b4d2181f8e396ef6b2

Featuring: Circuit Breaker, The Abberlines, The Real Burnouts, Wino Riot, Allan Douglas & The Tragedies, Fig Mints, Cody High School, Reels, Drum Machine Dating Service, Dead Canaries, Hopeful Monster, Artback Baker, Uberfuzz, My Electric Love Affair, Telescope Vehicle, Strangers, Jerry Kaline, Tofu Delux, Sleep School, Zebra Mu, The Hoborchestra, The Space Between Things,The People, John Ludington, Michael Wookey, Madison Acid, Becky N, William Carpenter’s Family Troubadour, Meghan Geiss, The Revolutionary Patriots, Wisdom Tooth, Nik Rayne, The Sugar Skulls, Ukelilli, Kaleidonauts, Sucks To LaLa Land, Warchalking, The Depravations, The Soft Sunflower, Dylan Gough, Rough Giraffe, Otis Liddy, Ghodbane, Isokon Flats with Uncle Jim, James P. Page, The Red Plastic Buddha, The Orange Drop, The Shivas, Rollercoaster, The Hoa Hoa’s, The Myrrors, The Six Barrels, Cassettes, The Cherry Tree Parade, Bren, Motherbird, Brigadier General, Martians, Tin-Town, Rocketships Of Love, and Jane Gilmore.

Q. How many daydreamers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. As many as we can get around the bulb baby.

I’m starting to lose count of the number of times I’ve kicked off a post with the words “So here we go again”. But, erm, here we go again. Daydream Generation 5 – even by our own quantifiable standards its a monster of a compilation – a three headed quixodelic monster breathing melodic fire to be precise. 62 bands/artists, 4 action-packed hours of music, an alternative soundtrack for your summer and hopefully at the very least, a handfull of songs for you love for every summer of your life to come. It’s reached a stage now where I’m getting uncomfortable using the words “undiscovered music” – for a start each contributor is no doubt well discovered in their own circles, but moreover if you’ve been tuned in to the DG for the last 16 months then you’ll already be familiar with at least half of the names. But as always there is much that is new (and naturally well worth checking out) to show that the mining skills are still as accidentally honed as ever, and there are several old friends from previous compilations that have been warmly welcomed back into the collective king-sized bed. You’ll forgive me this time around if I don’t do the traditional list of exact names, it was a lengthy enough excorcize at 2 discs, but with 3 to get through the day is short and seconds are precious. You’d only be skim-reading it anyway. As you probably are this.

DG5 hasn’t been without its inevitable hitches, but what do you expect with a daydreamer at the wheel? They said about Kerouac that he acted like “once it was dreamt up, it was as good as done…” Dreaming up stuff like “I know, let’s make a mix-tape of mostly unsigned bands” is the easy part. Getting down to orchestrating it is a steep learning curve everytime with just enough knocks and bruises to want to do it again. After DG3 I tried to be clever and cut the dreaded stress-inducing deadline-day out of the equation, setting up the Singles section, the idea being that when there were enough songs to fill 2 discs, the compilation would be deadlineless and thus done when it was done. It worked well on DG4 and it would have worked again on DG5 if I hadn’t made the near fatal mistake of adding up the total time of all the songs we’d mined incorrectly. I’ve overshot the 80 minutes by a track or two before, but somehow this time I managed to run over by 7 whole songs totalling a terrifying 37 minutes. But just to prove that I really do learn from one project to the next, once I’d climbed out of the initial hole of horror I remembered that previous DG fuck-ups have often produced some positive results, so I said to myself “Fuck it… let there be 3 discs…”. 2 days later and 3 discs there were. And it sounded so fucking good that I was relieved to have fucked it up in the first place. I’ll not bore you with the rest of the gremlins that sees this thing coming out a week later than planned – let’s just say I don’t want to think about “bitrate” again for a long, long time, nor will I trust Windows Media Player to calculate 80 minutes ever again, will make sure the engineer is stocked with Vitamin C before burting out a release date, artwork pedantics, overshooting the songs a second time, overshooting the 100MB limit on Mediafire, spelling mistakes and other assorted obstacles left me feeling for 24 hours like I never wanted to touch one of these projects with a barge-pole from a crouching position behind an iron hedge ever again.

And I might not. I guess it all depends on you. If you dig it then I’ll keep on doing it, but if I don’t see messages flying back and forth across MySpace to say that you loved The So And So’s song, or comments on the DG site, then I’m going to finally reach the logical conclusion that we’re all just pishing in the wind here. The Daydream Generation is not some super-slick corporate record company, nor is it even some financially viable super-cool independent record label fuelled by the oil of money, it is a hand-made Prankster bus that journeys on love & comradeship. So I’ll keep driving, but you folks have got to keep it filled up. Post a blog. Post a bulletin. Tell a friend. Or else it breaks down. In the middle of nowhere. And we don’t even know where we’re going yet.

And so here we go again (again) – the part where I say thankyou to everyone who got on board this time and gave their songs to the cause to get us moving in the first place. First and foremost a massive thanks to Tim who like that bald-headed guy at Glastonbury continues to host the DG and make nearly everything you see technologically possible. Secondly, thanks to Kris who has played the inevitable role of sounding board the last 2 months & did some creative back-slapping whenever I was choking on the making of DG5 (much needed and appreciated man). Cheers as well to the people who psychologically broke me out at various crisis points and did some of the dirty work – Jon (coffee wakes people up, and when people wake up they fall in love), Bobby (“yeah it was really easy putting together the Cozy Home comp” haha), and Loudon (good to have someone in the same time-zone as me typing recommendations bleary-eyed after midnight). Big CHEERS for Joe Bockerstette kindly doing the Pepperland cover for us (let’s start a country). Thanks of course to all the individuals and organisations behind all the music who make and continue to make this possible – Tara, Paul Burnout, Gil De Ray, Scout, Paul Le Keux, Helter Skelter, Dylan, Allan, Jared, Edd, Chris, Tim trumpet, Tim Buddha, Steve, Nik (twice!), Sommer, Tanya, The lovely Hoa Hoa’s, Griffin, Max, Joe & Jonny, Jed, all the Marcs and Marks, Becky NNN, Meghan, Jason, Bill, Kenji, Celina, T, all the Nicks, David & Otis, James, both the Michaels, Moppy Gav and Simon, Madison, Dan, Lil, Keith, Bren, CTP, Spendid Isolation Podcast, Your Psych Tunes, Pigeon Hole Records, Optical Sounds Records, Hijacked Records, World In Sound Records, Transatmospheric.com, and of course the brilliant Cozy Home Records. Ta also to Mrs Smally and Smally Jr for etting me get lost in the music factory from time to time and time again.

Finally cheers to you for reading this, for downloading the compilation, and for listening.

Daydream On.

Smally

As promised here is the first of many great EPs that we will be putting out for free download this summer to help fill your ears with quixodelic happiness. And what better way to start it than with:

the playground EP

4 songs taken from the first 4 Daydream Generation compilations by Minnesota’s very own psychedelic street urchin & friends, kazoos, woo-hoos, & organic machines galore. You can download it from the dgRECORDS link at the top of the page.

So what are you waiting for?

Oh – and there’s an interview with Mike too, just keep on reading.

Out Today

Cody High School

Baddest Fastest

See the dgRECORDS link at the top of this page

FREE DOWNLOAD

Well I always said from the outset that the Daydream Generation was not going to be a “vanity” project. But erm, fuck it.

In September of 2007 I put out feelers to find out if anyone wanted to contribute to a “Daydream Collective” recording project. The response was pretty good, but unfortunately the practicalities of coordinating such a potentially chaotic adventure was a step too far - even for my strange head. So while this was going on, in the background I was slowly but surely putting together a collaboration record with the legendary Jon of the Atom (started as far back as January 2007), and without even realising it we were accidentally making as close to a dgCollective recording as is probably possible.

The result of 15 months sporadic work is KALEIDONAUTS “I Do Not Currently Own A Spaniard (Mine Died)” the third FREE release at the dgRECORDS link at the top of this page, once again in association with our brothers & sisters at Cozy Home Records. If you can take the time to hear beyond my mediocre songs and ropey vocals then hopefully there will be much for you to discover: the Ahabian production of Jon Fink waving a gun around, the beautiful voice of Jane Gilmore, Katie Saul belting out a communist anthem, Warchalking harmonies, Meghan Geiss’ biological rhythm section, Tim Kotch’s acrobatic trumpetry, and hopefully a whole lot more.

On a personal note I’d just like to say thanks to everyone who helped out on Spaniard – it’s been a long and often insane voyage, but if you take out of it half as much as I did, then I’ll be taking out of it twice as much as you did.

You can read a whole lot more about KALEIDONAUTS at: http://kaleidonauts.googlepages.com/home

or check out the MySpace page here: http://www.myspace.com/kaleidonauts

cheers

Happy days for the Daydream Underground - together with our good friends at Cozy Home Records, we have great pleasure in introducing the latest manifestation of the mad musical scientist that is Jon of the Atom, in the form of DEAD CANARIES “Critical Mass: Flying Things Vs Crawling Things”. This truly extraordinary aural adventure that we’ve been talking about for what seems like a lifetime can be downloaded from the dgRECORDS link at the top of this page for FREE.

You know what to do

Out Today!

See the “DG4″ link at the top of the page for more information. 2 discs worth of music from bands you may not have been fortunate enough to discover yet – including The PlaygrounD, Jane Gilmore, Cashew Cook, Rough Giraffe, Fig Mints, The Shivas, Dead Canaries, Becky N, Rollercoaster, Uberfuzz, Allan Douglas and The Tragedies, The Davey Parker Radio Sound, Cody High School, The Real Burnouts, The Passerines, Holy Roller, The Bordellos, The Myrrors, The Soft Sunflower, Anandamide, The Spitshine Kid, The Wheelies, AMF, The Electric Mainline, Isokon Flats, Naked Radio, The Depravations, Magical Odyssey, Toy Soldiers, Periwinkle Periscope, Milo Bellamy, The Virgo 9, Sucks To Lala Land, Ghodbane, Dave Stine, Warchalking, Man On The Moon, Sirens, Hopeful Monster, and Broken Mono.

Just in case anyone missed it. Click on the “BEST OF” link at the top of the site to download for FREE & for more information about the project.

Thanks to everyone who voted & helped.

The final results & full tracklisting will be with you just as soon as we can get our shit together.