July are an excellent example of UK Psychedelia. on their '68 debut album a fine blend of weird reverb and trippy stereo shenanigans drives their songs. most of them consist of a strong pop-vein that might be typical for records from the late 60's UK psych scene. on some tracks a sitar and eastern melodies emerge and build a kind of highlight for the whole album in my opinion. Dandelion Seeds appears to be a bit stoned and reaches it's peak with the dreamy passage somewhere in the middle of the playtime.
Georg Deuter established himself in the early 70's and is known to most of you for his involvment in the Krautrock genré. His early recordings are mostly built up of Acid Folk elements, eastern influences and experimental music. Today he is living in the staates and earns his money with recording meditation CD's that are related to practice and points of view teached by Osho. sadly those are the albums I can't get into. they consist of this "all-is-peaceful-and-happy-if-you-clean-this-ashram-and-visit-your-familiar-esoteric-shop-regularely-to-buy-new-age-stuff"-vibe. that doesn't mean necessarily that I think he is not authentic, but there is too much commerce about angels, tarot, gurus, ... these days it's maybe harder than ever to deal with this contents as there are too much dodgers and moneymakers out there. another issue of this new age scene is, that it's hard to dive deeper into the material by consuming all those goods that are praised to give you the "ultimate-enlightment-trip" ... you see, I'm very careful about stuff thats directly associated with this commerce. and it's probably the easiest to move out into the forest, climb a tree, prais mother earth, and be flashed by spirituality gleaming through the cosmos.
gladly this track is not as flat as the other ones he later did.... the album "D" where this song is taken from can be tagged as a real psychedelic record I think. a weird mix of Acid Folk, Psychedelic Rock and Experimental Jams will await you on it. so just forget about everything and let you take away by this swirl of mind expansion...
The beginning of this terrific track could be like the soundtrack of a surreal and strange movie in the vein of Holy Mountain or El Topo. But for you all, who are familiar with psychedelic folk music, this will be tagged as freaky acid folk ;-). All in all you can compare this one to a mix of Hanna Tuuliki's Nalle and Susan Duncan-Smith's masterpiece for the soundtrack of Keoma. If you wondered, what this duo called "The Sun Also Rises" did on the rest of their debut, I think it's the best to quote my friend Mad Hatter's words: "The husband and wife duo from Cardiff have captured moods by patterns of sound and words. Totally influenced by the Incredible String Band, the album offers whimsical, acoustic acid folk, with weird, disjointed hippie lyrics about a fantasy world of mythological beings such as fairies, elves and dragons. It’s a charming period piece."
Dean Allen Foyd is a brand new band from Sweden, who will release their debut album at the end of march on Chrusher Records (CD & LP). Their sound is oscillating between contemporary famous bands like Baby Woodrose and Vibravoid. There's a lot of garage-psychedelia to discover in their songs as well as heavy psych and classic rock vibrations that remind on Jimi Hendrix, Cream and more...
Together with a load full of other bands they will perform at the Freak Valley Festival 2012 in Germany very soon (18./19. May). So, if you have the possibility, be shure to get some tickets! more info here: www.freakvalley.de
I was really surprised, when I read for the first time of the Hollies doing psychedelic music. I was checking their '67 album "Evolution" due to the trippy coverart, but I was rather disappointed when it turned out to be another standard pop record. Shortly afterwards I gave a try to the "Psychedelia at Abbey Road" compilation and found a pretty song by the Hollies called "Maker". It's maybe nothing special and as normal as their other works, but the sitar in there gives it a completely new character. So it turned out to be a really cool psych-pop track.
listen to the song:
