A painting from the Projekt Babelturm series by Wessi.
• “The first thing I would say is that I have no idea what authentic psych music is, and I have no wish to pursue that either. To me the idea of real psych is a paradox. I can’t see how you can have such a thing as real psychedelia when the whole thing is based on a psychedelic drug that gives you hallucinations and illusions and layers and layers of unreality.” Rob Chapman talking to Ben Graham about his new book, Psychedelia And Other Colours.
Elsewhere in a rather psychedelic week: Rob Young reviewed Chapman’s book for the New Statesman; Dangerous Minds posted “Hypnotic video of how a psychedelic masterpiece is made“; and in Germany a homeopathy conference “ended in chaos in Germany after dozens of delegates took a LSD-like drug and started suffering from hallucinations.”
• Coming soon from Dark Entries (so to speak), another collection of Patrick Cowley‘s music for gay porn films.
• Jonathan Barnbrook works some quotes from JG Ballard into the British Road Sign Project.
• “Sorcery is more popular than football in Morocco,” says writer and filmmaker Abdellah Taïa.
• “If you’re going to make something, you should try and be wild,” says Mica Levi.
• Coca-Cola Milanese: Patrick Ellis considers the state of the world’s fair in 2015.
• Hear two pieces from Collapse, the forthcoming album by Drew McDowall.
• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 162 by Ketev (Yair Elazar Glotman).
• Emptyset’s Signal transforms Earth’s ionosphere into sound art.
• Paul Laffoley: The Force Structure of the Mystical Experience.
• Fuck off, Star Wars, Ben Wheatley’s High Rise is on its way.
• Psychedelic Ride (1967) by The Ides | Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke) (1974) by Hawkwind | Psychedelic Sewing Room (1989) by Bongwater
Although the idea of psychedelic purism is absurd, I don’t think going the other direction and calling the psychedelic experience ‘unreality’ does it justice either.
I don’t think there is anything unreal about the psychedelic experience, in fact I consider it in some ways to be more real than real.
This is coming from an experienced tripper. Neophytes/experimenters often suffer from an inability to understand the nature of the experience and sometimes as a result suffer from otherwise easily avoided delusions during the trip.
Re: The conference if it was a prank whoever did it was extremely irresponsible. Not only was it ethically terrible, but using the 2cb class of chemicals is particularly dangerous as the 2cb chemicals have a very low threshold for overdose.
I read ‘Psychedelia and Other Colours’ last week whilst off sick from work – it’s a highly diverting and pretty much cliche free read, the book itself feels great in a tactile sense as befits it’s subject matter and refreshingly for a book on psych, there are no photographs. Nice too, that someone else remembers Bongwater – along with The Butthole Surfers and Shockabilly they were top of my faves from the mid 80’s contemporary psychedelic scene.
If I may be so bold, I’d recommend a listen to a recent reissue from a few years earlier: Pay Attention! by The Mothmen – it’s a demented mashup of Syd’s Floyd, The Magic Band and Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan from JouJouka as if produced by Lee Perry – I spent many a happy time listening to it whilst wrestling with my consciousness back in the day. The reissued CD also contains my favourite version of ‘Vegetable Man’ which straddles the gap between The Soft Boys’ rather mannered version of it and The Floyd’s own more ramshackle one
I’m looking forward to reading the Chapman book.
Don’t think I’ve heard anything by The Mothmen which seems surprising given their connections: first album on the On-U Sound label, a promo release on Do It Records with Yello…
Their first single, ‘Does It Matter Irene?’ on Absurd records, is tip top if you can get it (and is a different version from that on the CD) and the album itself should be required listening for Psilocybermen everywhere – the side-long (on the L.P.) title track is particularly intense. The oddest things are that key members started off in the Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias, were in The Durutti Column with Vinny Reilly, their guitarist was the subject of ‘Cowboy Dave’ by The Happy Mondays and and was found murdered with a lathe hammer. They finally ended up a lot more lucratively as the rhythm section of Simply Red alongside the red-headed, midget Lothario and erstwhile member of The Faces.