Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow

Some psychedelic art from the 1960s to get you in the mood. The artwork from Trips Festival is especially crazy.

Grace Slick wrote "White Rabbit" while on LSD tripping about Alice in Wonderland. Again, psychedelic and spaced-out sounds shooked charts and made path for next trippy tunes to come. I think it's also one of the best psychedelic tunes ever written. Bass groove with guitar trippin' around is just so mindblowing. Grace's voice seems so dominant, like it's leading your mind into a rabbit hole.  (...)

I would like to hear "Comin' Back To Me" also in my dreams, because that track is brilliant. I know I sound so "this track is best track ever" on every tune I reviewd on this album, but it's true. Things like "perfect albums" doesn't happen so often. Nice and cool guitar captures so well carefree and beautiful life in '67 in the Haight, and lyrics - oooh, lyrics are the top thing here. Balin said about this song this : "the song was created while he indulged in some primo-grade marijuana given to him by blues singer Paul Butterfield". Now you know where that dream-like feel comes from. "

(review from blog Vibrant Sound of Acid)

Download link in comments, including also their other album from 1967, After Bathing at Baxter's

Os Mutantes (1969)

With admirers such as Kurt Cobain, Os Mutantes was a Brazilian psychedelic band in a time when a military dictatorship kept the country from having a real Summer of Love or something like that (though there were some Brazilian hippies, mostly in the 70s), it's amazing how they could produce such a pschedelic masterpiece with technical and social restraints that the Beatles and Pink Floyd couldn't dream of. Their first album is the best known, but later they moved on to longer, quite progressive music that is ridiculously pretentious, yet spectacular. Oh yes and later on Arnaldo Baptista would spend time in a nuthouse, try to kill himself and be seen by some as the South-American Syd Barrett.



"Panis Et Circensis" (Bread And Circuses), the album opener, is a production tour de force which is the peer of other psych production masterpieces such as "Good Vibrations" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." Impressively, where the Beach Boys and the Beatles spent weeks to months perfecting their iconic tracks, Os Mutantes (with the help of Rogerio Duprat) got "Panis Et Circensis" down in a day. Starting with a short fanfare, the tracks shifts through several worlds of sound. It's very much in the 'pocket symphony' mold with seemingly unrelated parts actually working together. For me the highlights are the strange mid-song tape drop out and the almost too busy horn parts punctuating the melody.
(Dr. Schluss)

Download link in comments!

Infected Mushroom presents: The Doors Remixed (1997)

I'm not sure if this album was released, or if it's just a treat for fans, or something else. I do know, however, that it shows the many similarities between the 1960s psychedelic rock and today's electronic music scene, both in terms of music and ideas.

When Jim Morrison sings much higher, in the famous hit Light My Fire, in this version he repeats it: higher, higher, higher, spiralling and fading out until we notice how explicitly The Doors talked about drugs.

To anyone bitching about how the DJs messed up with holy old music (as if "classic rock" wasn't an oxymoron), check this video where Jim Morrison predicts the future of music:

"I can kind of envision one person with a lot of machines, tapes and electronics set up, singing or speaking while using machines”


Download at mediafire

Mike Oldfield - Ommadawn (1975)

Omma-Dawn is a feeling
For his third album, Mike Oldfield chooses a middle path between the naïve excitement and anger of "Tubular Bells", and the more continuous, generally softer "Hergest Ridge". The result is a very satisfying, highly melodic work with many highlights, and a continuity which demands that it be heard as a complete piece.

"Ommadawn" was far from a solo album by Oldfield. While the composition credit is of course entirely his, he called upon the talents of many fine musicians to enhance the sound. Notable among these are Paddy Moloney on Uillean pipes and Bridget St John and Oldfield's sister Sally on vocals.
(Review by Easy Livin, on Progarchives)

A good album for chilling out in bed...


Download on mediafire

Miles Davis - Agharta (1975)

Now that's a crazy album. Miles got more and more eccentric throughout the 1970s, and this album shows the total madness that was his concert at that time. 

Miles has often pointed out in interviews that the ensemble on this album was his favorite band. Playing rock with jazz musicians (Bitches Brew) served it's purpose for a while, but Miles wanted a band that could really rock, as well as play jazz, avant-garde and world music as well. The icing on the cake for Miles is that he finally found a guitar player who could do what the departed Jimi Hendrix could do, plus so much more.

This album finally brings together all the influences that Miles had been trying to bring together for years; Stockhausen's Asiatic suspended musical moments in time (moment form), Sly Stone's dramatic take it to the streets call to action world revolutionary party funk, searing acid rock guitar, Sun Ra's disciplined approach to group improvisation, Herbie Hancock's futuristic fusion and timeless classical music from Africa.
(js (Easy Money), Progarchives)




If you are captivated by free jazz, Can circa Tago Mago, early Tangerine Dream, spacey Sun Ra, Matching Mole or Zappa's more atonal extravaganzas, you may well be in hog heaven with this album but failing that, these air miles won't even refund your fare.
(ExittheLemming, Progarchives)

Download link on comments!

Soft Machine Live at Paradiso 1969

"The drummer was also the band's vocalist, but not a singer with any ambitions of eclipsing Paul McCartney. I heard instead melodic conversations from someone who told strange tales of touring with Jimi Hendrix, and who concluded that living in the US is fine if you're white and like getting a suntan. These weren't songs with instrumental bridges so much as instrumentals with lyrical interludes."

Graham Bennett


"Soft Machine without woodwinds or electric guitars ? You are having a laugh !!!!
That was my first thought...... Then I started to listen to this album and I discovered a new dimension to one of my favorite bands. Something I did not think was possible.

Music wise, Robert Wyatt's vocals fills the space later to be occupied by woodwinds. His drumming is excellent too. Mike Ratledge is playing like a demon possessed and is the star on this live album. Hugh Hopper's bass is hovering menacing over and behind Mike Ratledge's keyboards."

toroddfuglesteg at Progarchives

This album is basically Soft Machine playing Volume 2 live. Wyatt still sang quite a lot, and his drum solo in the last track is devastating.

1. Hulloder (0:24)
2. Dada Was Here (8:21)
3. Thank You Pierrot Lunaire (0:45)
4. Have You Ever Been Green? (0:57)
5. Pataphysical Introduction Pt. II (1:00)
6. As Long As He Lies Perfectly Still (1:55)
7. Fire Engine Passing With Bells Clanging (2:17)
8. Hibou, Anemone And Bear (4:17)
9. Fire Engine Passing With Bells Clanging (reprise) (3:26)
10. Pig (4:21)
11. Orange Skin Food (0:15)
12. A Door Opens And Closes (1:18)
13. 10:30 Returns To The Beedroom (10:39)

- Mike Ratledge / electric piano, organ
- Hugh Hopper / bass
- Robert Wyatt / drums, vocals

Link in comments!

Soft Machine - Grides

A live album by Soft Machine, recorded at Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, 25/10/1970, some months after their Third album was released. Very good sound quality.


Ratledge's keyboard work is amongst the best (if not the best), I've heard from him. It reminds me that his playing skills, a great ability to improv, and also move the band in explosively different directions, was never matched by those more famous prog keyboardists who never risked major changes from concert to concert.
(Dick Heath, Progarchives)






First Set (Concertgebouw, 25-10-70) - 79:12


1. Facelift (6:59)
2. Virtually (15:34)
3. Out-Bloody-Rageous (8:12)
4. Neo-Caliban Grides (10:12)
5. Teeth (8:03)
6. Slightly All The Time (10:34)
7. Eamonn Andrews (1:36)
8. Ester's Nose Job (11:22)
9. Slightly All The Time/Noisette (6:43)


- Elton Dean / alto saxophone, saxello, electric piano
- Hugh Hopper / electric bass
- Mike Ratledge / electric piano, organ
- Robert Wyatt / drums, voice




Download

Steve Hillage - Green (1978)

 It's not Pink Floyd because it's way too optimistic. Hillage was high on his new age vibes, and it really works for me. All of the delays and bells and weird riffs take me floating.
(from a commentary on a blog)



1 - Sea Nature
2 - Ether Ships
3 - Musick of the Trees
4 - Palm Trees (Love Guitar)
5 - Unidentified (Flying Being)
6 - U.F.O. over Paris
7 - Leylines to Glassdom
8 - Crystal City
9 - Activation Meditation
10 - The Glorious Om Riff

bonus tracks for CD release 2007
11 - Unidentified (Flying Being) – Live at Glastonbury 1979
12 - Not Fade Away (Glid Forever) – Live at The Rainbow Theatre 1977
13 - Octave Doctors – Live at Glastonbury 1979
14 - Meditation of the Snake [alternative mix]

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